Ramin Samandari is an extraordinary artist and  photographer whose work is in the permanent collections at the San Antonio Museum of Art and the University of Texas at San Antonio, along with numerous private collections. He has embarked on a remarkable project to photograph San Antonio artists. Here’s what he writes:

“I started this project about a year ago with two objectives in mind: To make photographs that show a glimpse into the artist’s emotions and psyche, and to make an important archive of the San Antonio’s visual art community, which did not exist.

I decided not to photograph the artists in the usual way, with their work in their studios. Instead I wanted to make portraits where the viewer has to encounter the artist’s face with no other distraction.”

I visited Ramin on Tuesday, and he just sent me this photograph from my session at his studio – I love it – many thanks, Ramin, for your talent and vision (and your mastery of Photoshop!). Plus, now I have a head shot that doesn’t involve cats or a messy studio in the background! Yay!

Lyn Belisle, photographed by Ramin Samandari

You can see an Interview with Ramin as he photographs my good friend, Anne Alexander. And you can get more information on funding the project here at Ramin’s website.

Ready for the Friday Free-bee? Yep, it’s a B Beautiful bee dish! One lucky SHARDS subscriber will win one of these little guys to keep or give. A portion of the sales of these hand-built pieces goes to support the Honeybee Conservancy. Drawing will be held Sunday night – good luck! And thanks for bee-ing a subscriber!

PS – I sold all of these at the last studio event, but I have several dozen more back in stock – they are coming out of the kiln today (just in case you don’t win the Friday Free-bee and still want one :))