Gigi Spratley studied abroad in Rome at the St. Stephen’s School from 1974 until 1976. After her time at St. Stephen’s Gigi moved to Claremont, California where she earned a BA in art from Pitzer College and a MFA in painting from Claremont Graduate University. She then moved to Los Angeles where she lived and worked as an artist from 1983. In Los Angeles in 1985, working primarily in two-dimensional media, painting and drawing, she aquired her first computer and sought to integrate digitally produced imagery into her drawing practice. Since moving to New York in 1995 she’s expanded into sculpture, assemblage, photography and digital prints.
Jack Waltrip received his MFA in music in 1984 from the University of Northern Colorado. He has lived in New York City for thirty four years, and has been forging a unique and innovative style in art and music during that time.
Gigi and Jack work together on many levels. Their work addresses the cycles of life, the rotation of the earth, the passage of time, and the inevitability of change. They attempt to accentuate the beauty of organic forms. Their 3-D work is conceived as a space between dreams and meditation where veiled potential can be revealed, just as the 3-D glasses reveal an alternative experience for the viewer. Their projects have evolved from street art, writing and animation projects. The process of collaboration involves Jack’s scanning of Gigi’s art and digitally manipulating the color, texture, and sometimes the composition to create a new image.
Milo Martin, a native Californian originally from the Monterey Peninsula and the San Francisco Bay Area, found his way down to Los Angeles, coming up in the now-legendary East Hollywood ONYX poetry scene in the mid-late ‘90s.
He co-founded the original Hollywood/Silver Lake Poetry Slam Team in 1997, later winners of the National Poetry Slam in 2004 and 2005.
He received his Master’s Degree from the University of Southern California in 2004, studying with the likes of Hubert Selby Jr., Aram Saroyan, Steve Wasserman, Mel Shavelson, Marvin Bell, Clayton Eschleman, and Holly Prado. It was in conjunction with USC that he won a scholarship to study Poetry and Linguistics in Prague, Czech Republic at the Karlovy University, Summer 2003.
He was the poetry editor of the Southern Californian Review at USC and the popular online literary site The Nervous Breakdown.com.
Milo has toured America and Europe extensively, (five tours) both solo and with the international poetry troupe, POESIE UNITED, performing spoken word at international literary festivals, rock venues, libraries, and universities. His work has been translated into five languages (German, Italian, French, Croatian, and Estonian).
He is the author of Poems for the Utopian Nihilist, {Echo Park Press 2008}. He is currently finishing his next collection of poems entitled Sublemon/Sublime.