Whew, it’s been quite a year. If you had a particularly rough 2018, the only promise we can make is that 2019 will be different.

Some people just don’t believe in New Years resolutions. We get it. There are plenty of reasons to be seizing the moment right now. For the rest of us, let’s set an intention for our work in the new year, shall we?

Sometimes we find that our career aspirations tend to line up with our personal aspirations when we turn a positive eye to the future. Beyond whatever work we do that makes up our ‘job’, there’s plenty of self-work that happens in the process to make us better people.

We caught up with several local artists to hear how they’d like to approach their work in the upcoming year. Not surprisingly, that also included a bit of self reflection.

Regardless of what’s on your plate for 2019, we’re over here wishing you a Happy New Year.

Amandalynn, Muralist and Installation Artist

“For 2019, my Art Resolution is to be more free in my work. I am excited to explore a new body of work that is more about the process, than the illustration of a story. I also plan to paint many murals around the world this coming year, but am determined to paint one big massive one here in my hometown of San Francisco (so any readers out there who have a big wall screaming to be painted, please let me know!) In my personal life, my resolution it to try harder to reduce my environmental impact on the world, and hopefully inspire other to do so as well. I have been traveling a lot to the Caribbean for work this year, and it is really hard to see insanely beautiful nature covered in plastic and trash. A friend said to me earlier this year; ‘once you see another man’s trash, it becomes your own’. It’s a delicate dance, but I do believe if we all just try to make a few simple efforts to be conscious in our life, it will help.”

Amandalynn is a San Francisco-based Muralist, Fine Artist, Conservator, and Art Director.  Inspired by the female form and spirit, she depicts strong, seductive women and illustrates their strength through line work and decorative patterning. Her works can be found in galleries and streets all over the world.

Chuck Sperry, Artist & Printer

I work with the connection between making art, and helping to tune our society into a better harmony. In 2019: I will keep working hard, and by way of work, imagine and strive to create a diverse, free and fair space for our shared compassion and humanity to grow, flower and become ever more beautiful. Expression of the desire to grow is a meaningful pursuit of art. In other words, I’m not a cynic. Anyway, I don’t think cynical resolutions are a good idea. Haha!”

Chuck Sperry’s newest book Chthoneon, The Art of Chuck Sperry celebrates the divine feminine and the regenerative power of nature, gathering together work shown in his first museum solo exhibition “All Access” at Fort Wayne Museum of Art in September to December, 2018. Sperry has been preeminent in rock poster art since the late 90s and has largely defined the genre in each decade since; with a distinctive style and masterful screen printing technique.

Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu (HYBYCOZO), Installation Artists

“To integrate a social practice component into HYBYCOZO. My New Years resolution is going to be to figure out how to partner with other groups and non-profits and learn from them and help us create a program that works for kids, teachers, and members of the community. I am also excited to learn how to integrate high-tech platforms like augmented reality to really bring the educational parts of our sculptures to life.” (—Yelena)

“To take time and take care of developing myself as an artist. Sometimes you can get caught up in doing doing doing and don’t have the time to invent, create, innovate. I’d like to step outside that cycle and really push myself to create new work, work with new materials, and bring new concepts to HYBYCOZO as a whole.” (—Serge)

HYBYCOZO is a collaborative installation arts collective made up of Serge Beaulieu and Yelena Filipchuk. Their work consists of larger than life sculptures with laser cut patterns that draw on inspirations from mathematics, science, and natural influences. Their passion stems from an impulse to celebrate the inherent beauty of geometric form and pattern, and showcase it in ways that harmonize the experience of sculpture, light, and shadow.

Rachel Lena Esterline, Photographer

“As an artist in this New Year, I plan to continue to unravel the stereotypes and stigmas placed on myself as a woman to help my fellow sisters be who they want to be.”

Esterline has spent the past five years documenting women who are sex workers. In 2013, she entered a strip club on a freelance gig, and up until that point, had been conditioned by her father, a Christian pastor, to only understand strippers as downtrodden women with few prospects. Upon meeting the sex workers, her ingrained feelings of shame and sadness morphed into feelings of admiration and respect, and she began seeing them as goddesses in charge of their own destiny. Through her photography, Rachel Lena shatters stereotypes and works to lift the deadly stigma surrounding sex work. Her ethereal portrayals of women are unapologetically beautiful celebrations of women who take off their clothes for a living.

Viktor Kastro (Shamanic Labs), Inter-dimensional Artist

“My 2019 resolution is to be the most recognizable Mexican-American artist in the world by year’s end.”

Viktor Kastro is an Oakland based artist, and Head Alchemist at Shamanic Labs.  As a self-taught sketch artist and creative builder, his work naturally explores the different dimensions of intricate line-work. Since leaving his day job in Silicon Valley, he’s been able to incorporate a deeper understanding of manufacturing and technology to influence his modern installations, digitizing and rejoining abstract “lego” pieces in new ways. You can sometimes find him handing out chicken mole tacos from a secret station behind his exhibits.

Joel Daniel Phillips, Draftsman

“In 2019 I want to find time to explore other aspects of my creativity — particularly ones that have no pressure to perform and are not tied to success (or lack thereof). Since I quit my day job in 2013, it’s been truly wonderful to pour all of my time and energy into my art. However, I’ve found that in some ways this single-faceted approach has shaped my creative passions in unavoidable, practical ways, and that the unbridled, freeform joy of creating can get lost at times in the pressures and normalcy of spending every day in the studio. In 2019, I want to find other spaces to make things that are less affected by outside pressure—whether this is playing music, or carpentry. I can’t wait to see where it leads.”

Joel Daniel Phillips is an American artist whose work focuses on the tenets of classical draftsmanship employed in monumental formats. Inspired by the depth and breadth of human experience, he strives to tell the personal and societal histories etched in the faces of those around him. Through the tip of his pencil, the artist seeks to find moments where our projected senses of self are transparent, allowing deeper, more truthful emotions to become visible.

Laura Kimpton, Installation Artist 

“My resolution to make more art instead of managing art. That is huge for me right now. In 2018, I’ve mainly designed, managed and moved art around. I want to learn to live in more peace and less fear (because I also have a 19-year-old). I also want to learn to surf. That’s probably my biggest goal. I’m just not in my studio right now because there’s so much to manage. I wanna get dirty… paint and build.”

Laura Kimpton is the conceptual force behind the Monumental Word Series that began back in 2009 at Burning Man. Jeff Schomberg has collaborated with Laura in building and installing her revolutionary conceptual designs. Kimpton also works with jewelry, paint, mixed-media installations and sculpture. Her creativity stems from a desire to question traditional views on social interaction, invoking, through her art, a reaction and discussion from her viewers that ultimately completes her projects.

Joshua Margolis, Sculptor 

“My New Year’s resolution is to complete my second book ‘Melvin the Super (duper) Robot’ before San Diego comic con in July, and my third one ‘Melvin the Lost Robot’ before 2019 ends. One of the books is about kindness, which I also think should be my every year resolution. To be more kind, to those I know and to those I don’t. I also want to be present and in the moment with both my pleasure and pain. I spend too much time romanticizing the past and worrying about the future, that I fail to appreciate the now. And even though the world sucks, I keep on meeting more and more people that make me feel otherwise. So focusing on the good over the bad.”

Joshua Margolis is a clay sculptor who recently wrote, sculpted, and then photographed the Bay Area set children’s book, Melvin the Sad…(ish) Robot. He spends his days teaching clay arts at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, while working on his next sculptures and books in his free time.

Carmen McNall, Printmaker & Woodworker

“My resolution is to be more open with my work. To not be afraid to work with new materials and to work in larger scales. Be brave and open to changes that come with learning new things and to remember to trust the process.”

Her work tells the stories of female figures of strength, focusing on those who work with their hands; keeping alive the artifacts of humanity. She finds great power in the passing down of trades from generation to generation, commanding a presence and pride as craft-makers and workers of dying traditions. Incorporating patterns in nature, she reflects on the relationship of people and their environments as times change and we change. She tries to recreate the emotional content of a time, place or face that she fears will be lost in the near future. She’s interested in capturing the odd experiences of the human condition: the simple, quiet moments between large events; the details in life that are easily forgotten.

Jeremy Dan Fish, Fine Artist & Illustrator

“In 2019 I will get a divorce. In 2019 I will try to surround myself with a short list of good people that I can actually trust. In 2019 I will celebrate 25 years of living and making art in San Francisco, with a solo show at The Hashimoto Gallery in December. In 2019 I will make better drawings and paintings than I did in 2018. In 2019 I will stay in North Beach, the greatest neighborhood on earth. In 2019 I will continue to feast, fuck, and fart my way around the world while trying to represent San Francisco to the fullest everywhere I go.”

Jeremy Dan Fish was born in Albany, New York in 1974 and relocated to San Francisco in 1994. He received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997 with an emphasis on painting and printmaking. Fish’s education and work experience has led to a successful career as a fine artist and commercial illustrator. Finding a balance between exhibiting his work across the US, and internationally in galleries and museums. While producing commercial illustration projects for a wide range of corporate and independent clients all around the world. Fish was the first ever San Francisco Arts Commission artist in residency at SF City Hall in 2015 to celebrate the 100th birthday of the building.

• Tag: 2019, Amandalynn, artist, bay area, Burning Man, Carmen McNall, Chuck Sperry, drawing, HOPE, illustration, installation, Jeremy Dan Fish, Joel Daniel Phillips, Joshua Margolis, Laura Kimpton, Melvin the Sad...(ish) Robot, muralist, New Year's, Rachel Lena Esterline, resolution, San Francisco, Serge Beaulieu (HYBYCOZO), Viktor Kastro (Shamanic Labs), Yelena Filipchuk