FABIANA NOVILLO DÍAZ
Graphic Artist - Gallery 118 Owner
Fabiana Novillo Díaz, born in Buenos Aires, nurtured her artistic dream. She defied conventions, pursuing Graphic Artistry after rigorous training in Argentina. Her career soared as she excelled in Art Direction for multinational companies. Raised by a poet mother and an inventor father, her journey unfolded amid a militarized Buenos Aires.
Her path led her to Europe, Spain, and Argentina, where she honed her skills. She traversed continents, exploring numerous countries and immersing herself in diverse cultures. Beyond her passion for art and production, she developed a deep appreciation for various traditions' culinary and beverage delights.
Yet, she found her artistic haven in Florida, launching Gallery118 and the Arts on the Move Project. Now, based in Ocala, Florida, surrounded by nature's inspiration, her tireless creativity thrives.
As a mother of three young artists, Fabiana's story is a testament to the limitless power of artistic vision and the influence of family.
Stay tuned for her future endeavors as she continues to make her mark on the world.
RAQUEL VALLEJO
Jewelry Designer - Public art curator
Contractual Cultural Programs Coordinator Raquel Vallejo has a background in arts & cultural affairs, event planning, fundraising, institutional development, and project management.
Vallejo is multicultural and multilingual and has lived and worked in the US, Cuba, Canada, and France. She is a former consultant for the Cultural Affairs Division of the City of Gainesville’s Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs Department.
Some of her previous clients include the City of Miami Beach, the City Museum of Washington D.C., and the Miami Center for Architecture & Design.
Throughout her career, Vallejo has worked with renowned artists and musicians worldwide. She is the principal designer of RAVA Designs LLC, a contemporary line of one-of-a-kind studio jewelry marketed privately and to museum stores. Besides, Vallejo is a licensed sommelier, passionate “Cubanista,” global traveler, and epicurean.
IRENE SALLEY
Oil Paintings
The oil landscapes of Iréne Salley capture the earthy, vibrant essence of North Central Florida through the eyes of a French post-impressionist. Her swirling strokes and shimmering colors seem to literally swim over the canvas. In some paintings the local beauty of her Gainesville home is captured in blithe, animated tones.
Each painting explores the boundaries between what is seen and what is imagined to be.
Salley, who was born in Guadeloupe, a small, tropical island in the French West Indies, realized her passion for art when she moved to Paris in 1974. Her ties to France and the post-impressionist movement that began there can be seen in her spontaneous, emotional style.
Salley's subject matter is now influenced by her American experience.
Like the artists who have influenced her, Salley is in love with color and motion. Each painting dances with excitement. Salley is not concerned with capturing the physical details of the image before her. Rather, she is intent on expressing the emotions those images convey. She applies her paint in rhythm to the moods within and around her, painting in giant, surging brush strokes or short, rapid swipes of the painter's knife. She is, in fact, in love with the process of painting almost as much as she is with the subjects and stories of her art.
VIVIAN ANTONINI
Acrylic - Multimedia - Installations - Sculptures
Vivian Antonini is a talented and award-winning artist best known for her abstract painting designs. Her work has been described as 2D expressionist paintings with a diversity of materials incorporated into her creations, producing rhythm and dynamism in abstract art.
Her focus is on forms, textures, and colors. She paints with her soul, putting in her works, her mind, spirit, dreams. And even her nightmares. Her projects consist of multiple books or series, with various media grouped around specific themes and meanings. Henri Matisse, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning, and Ian Davenport are her influence.
Her goal is to create controversial works of abstract art that will engage the viewer into a discussion, a sense of belonging, and an experience that will spark conversations anywhere. It’s a back-and-forth plays between her and the canvas. Her paintings are open to interpretation by the viewer without a route. Viewers need to find a road and have fun looking at them.
Her creativity has led her to expand her works, designing sculptures and installations of art using diverse materials.
She was born in Venezuela and lived many years in Canada, where she became a Canadian Citizen and since 2006 has called Georgia home.
SOFÍA SARMIENTO - Young artist
Acrylic - Oil - Pen - Murals
Sofía Sarmiento is a young and gifted multimedia artist. She (17) was born in Argentina and lives between there and the US.
From the age of two, she began a prolific artistic production that her mother, family, and friends still conserve as valuable contemporary art pieces.
Her trips back and forth to the United States, Europe, and Argentina, stimulated her capacity and curiosity to nurture her artistic ideas.
Raised in a family of creative artists, she is the youngest of three children. Her oldest sister and her hero brother are both artists that she admires.
As a high school student, her participation in art exhibitions is always a celebration and recognition of the teachers and classmates who appreciate her work.
She began her first steps into muralism by the hand of the public art curator, Mrs. Raquel Vallejo.
Raquel trusted Sofía to be a helper to the muralist artist, Mr. Mwanel Pierre-Louis, to paint the town's first mural in Micanopy, Florida. Vallejo also encouraged Sofía to paint her first "solo" mural and second later at her cottages in Micanopy. The third mural in town.
Her techniques combine drawing, painting, oil, pencil, acrylic, textile art & murals. She is also a jewelry model, and together with her mother, they form an artistic team creating multimedia artworks.
Self-taught, Sofía is very determined when it comes to working. She is a top-level art critic, hard worker, gifted and talented artist.
Thank you, Sofi. I am so proud of you.
Fabiana Novillo Diaz
GALLERY 118 DIRECTOR
MARÍA INÉS NOUZEILLES - Guest artist
Graphic art - Multimedia
Provocative. Question maker, author of thoughtful and profound work.
Maria Inés Nouzeilles works in contemporary art, feeding back on her medical experience. It brings elements of medicine and re-signifies them. It generates a series of new bodies, the Cyborgs or Cyborns. It invites us to think.
She was born in La Plata (Argentina 1968), where she studied medicine and took ceramics classes. Then she traveled to specialize as a neurologist in the City of Mar del Plata (a spa city 400 km away), where she entered her first art workshop. After completing her training, she moved to Buenos Aires to continue specializing and began the University of Art, where she did not prosper due to job demands. Then she starts her tour of workshops of local artists of international importance. Initially, she drew. Then, coinciding with her pregnancy with twins, she had an exponential turn in her work. She left the charcoal and filled with color, turning to abstraction.
Years later, she temporarily left medicine to dedicate totally to art. She attended the School of Projects, a school of art clinics led by teachers of artists.
This how the Cyborgs / Cyborns series came about, reading Donna Haraway and delving into contemporary art.
From here, she did not limit herself to a technique but to try to convey an idea. In general, taking inspiration from medicine, which she later returned, and permanent feedback.
Many times she takes elements of medicine and re-signifies them. Thus generates a wheel that gives visibility to thoughts and reflections on vital issues and tries to ask questions.
Currently, she lives in Punta del Este, Uruguay.
VIVIAN JENDZIO
Drawings - Paintings - Mixed Media
Vivian Jendzio is a Latino-Austrian German artist who grew up with the richness of both cultural heritages. Born and raised in Chicago, her childhood was filled with relatives, journeys and adventures, along with her parents supplying her with drawing and painting mediums, watercolors, pencils, charcoals, oil paint, papers, sketch books and canvas. She would spread them all out on the floor and paint and draw every night after playing outdoors.
Vivian has degrees in Fine Art from the University of Florida and Northern Illinois University and in Physical Education from the University of Illinois which translates into a kinetic expression in her artwork.
Vivian’s paintings reflect movement, energies, and life forces. To her, painting and drawing are both automatically entwined with each other, intuited through the feeling and sensitivity of the subject matter.
Combining the use of paint and drawing, Jendzio creates vibrant tensions while the underlying images and motion show through. Jendzio’s combination of sheer luminosity and opacity create a vibrant tension, allowing the underlying images in her artwork to take on a life of their own. The subject matter becomes her means to express the need and desire to move.
Jendzio’s artwork has won numerous awards, and has been shown in many solo prestigious exhibitions at Art Galleries and Art Centers.
Her paintings and drawings are present in numerous private collections throughout the United States, as well as in corporate representations by Art Galleries, where she is known for her expressive large mixed media works.