JOEL GRAY, JR. I am from Milton, MA. I am an Illustration major at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and will be a senior there in September 2022. I have been drawing since childhood, and have always gravitated towards cartoons. However, since starting college, I have been branching out to other styles and mediums such as charcoal, ink and even a little bit of painting which is something I am new to. I have been able to incorporate the simplicity and style that I was used to into different materials, and this has inspired me to tackle aspects of art that I did not attempt before. I still hold cartooning as my favorite but I am bold enough to branch out into unfamiliar territory that I would not have seen myself going into only a couple of years ago.
GAUTAM N. SHAH I was born and raised in India, came to USA for graduate studies and stayed. Wellfleet, MA is my home now. I have a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and so art seems an unlikely activity for me. But I had dabbled in it as a boy, and with the genes of my father who was an accomplished artist himself, and inspired by my artist wife Jean, I took up art after I turned 60. It is now a favorite pastime and a source of pleasure. It also teaches me patience which I do not claim as my dominant characteristic. I took up pencil drawings first and then included acrylics. I enjoy both. My unfulfilled dream is to produce brush strokes like Van Gogh and pencil lines like my father.
MARY JEAN SHAH Jean was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, and was educated with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts, an MBA, and also a CPA - another unlikely combination. Jean was a naturally artful person - as a cook, as a gardener, as artist, as an observer. Her artistic passion was water color which she pursued with determination and studiousness. Her goal was to achieve looseness in her compositions and to this end, she devoted a good part of her time to exercises using books and other sources and occasional workshops. A traveler's kit was always in her back-pack and she turned out delightful water color sketches on trips. Occasionally, she used acrylics in her studio, and the few works she produced suggest strongly that she would have excelled at acrylics too with time, had she not been taken away from this world unexpectedly at an early age of 69 when she was in the best of health and fitness.