the dirt

Paolo is one of the nine artists participating in Sticks + Stones | Palos + Piedras  exhibition at Earth Art Studio. He is primarily a painter but dabbles in sculpture and his mixed media piece entitled, Impossibilita d’Amare (Impossibility to Love) in right at home in our sculpture garden.

About the Artist:
Paolo was born in 1953 in Ravenna, Italy. Ravenna was the capital of the Western Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire and was a historical city of art and cultures, so since childhood he has been attracted to colors and art. After high school he studied art, theatre and set design. This love of art continually grows and evolves throughout life experiences, travels and intense strength to be able to peel back this veil of omerta or the wall of silence that shrouds the world. Paolo currently paints and sculpts in his studio in the desert just north of Todos Santos. 

Work for Sale at Earth Art Studio:

About the Art:
Our deep roots from the center of the earth are affected by the current society making the individual more fragile and selfish, and at the same time transforming him into an unthinking being. This sculpture is a hymn to the awareness of taking back the intense and positive energy from the earth we tread and that we must love and respect.

IG: @paolomelandri53

Earth Art Studio believes in supporting working artists! Purchasing art work and/or contributing a donation for your visit to the sculpture trail helps keep our creative community thriving and making more art!

Currently, the studio is only open for scheduled events and by appointment.

Please contact us if you’d like to visit!

Rudy is one of the nine artists participating in Sticks + Stones | Palos + Piedras exhibition at Earth Art Studio. His contemplative sculpture made of copper and charred wood is entitled Mauna and sits in the center of our labyrinth.

About the Artist:

Incorporating copper into my sculptures allows me to explore the metal’s tactile warmth, energy conductivity, and also reminds me of the ineffable. By manipulating copper, I engage in a dialogue between form and function, resonating with both physical presence and conceptual depth.
The minimalism allows the material and spiritual to be felt as one: physical form plus accompanying energetic resonance. I combine copper with the tradition of Yakisugi wood burning which symbolizes silence, impermanence, and the void. The dialogue between the elements invites contemplation, the main objective of the piece. Contemplate the piece, contemplate yourself.

About the Art:

This work, constructed from copper, emerges from a quest to materialize the interior space that opens to silence. Its form and layout are conceived to invite a deliberate pause: an interruption in the usual flow of perception that allows one to enter a meditative state.

Inspired by listening—not only to sound, but to the silence that remains afterward—it proposes a meditative threshold in which the viewer becomes an active part of the work.

Copper, due to its acoustic properties and its ability to reflect both light and the environment, acts as a channel between the visible and the audible. By approaching the piece and placing their body in direct relationship with it, the viewer participates in an intimate gesture of listening. This act can be interpreted as a metaphor for deep attention: not necessarily to a specific sound, but to the resonance that remains after the experience of listening.

The charred wood acts as a vertical line that indicates the silence after the sound, the shadow after the fire. The desert installation reinforces the idea of ​​a fertile void, where silence is not absence, but potential space. The piece doesn’t emit sound; rather, it becomes a threshold to awareness of the environment, the body, and the present moment. As if it were a door or a ritual ear opened toward the desert and its vast sound.

IG: @rudylango

Earth Art Studio believes in supporting working artists! Purchasing art work and/or contributing a donation for your visit to the sculpture trail helps keep our creative community thriving and making more art!

Currently, the studio is only open for scheduled events and by appointment.

Please contact us if you’d like to visit!

Ulises is one of the nine artists participating in Sticks + Stones | Palos + Piedras exhibition at Earth Art Studio. He is a printmaker, muralist and street artist but for this exhibition, he also created 5 sculptural works in concrete. Later this month, he will also be giving a printmaking workshop in the studio.

About the Artist:
Ulises was born in Oaxaca de Juárez (Mexico) in 1987. He is a self-taught visual artist. He has lived in B.C.S. since 2012. His works are characterized by themes such as environmental conservation and community identity in various parts of Mexico.

Ulises Martínez has distinguished himself for his urban work, with more than 80 murals created in the cities of La Paz, Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico City, Puebla, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Chihuahua, and Campeche.

He is co-founder of the project “The Color of Memory” with photographer Leonardo Luna, where they share stories that give identity to the communities of B.C.S. through murals and short films. They also have their own website, www.elcolordelamemoria.com, where you can learn about these stories. Founder of the graphic design workshop “Frente al color” in La Paz, Baja California Sur, in 2021, where workshops have been held for children and adolescents. 

Work for Sale at Earth Art Studio (all prints are framed):

About the Art:

In April 2024, I began a series of six murals titled Agaves and Coyotes, where I explored shapes and color in spaces such as private homes, restaurants, and a building. To continue this exploration, I decided to create carved MDF prints, using black and white to highlight qualities that caught my attention as I carefully observed the possibilities that agaves offer in their natural environment, thus exploring new forms and abstractions of the image.

For the exhibition “Sticks and Stones,” I prepared a series of sculptures made using the ferrocement technique, an exploration that continues both in form and concept. From my Oaxacan origins, I observe the Southern Californian desert and reinterpret it. Here is the desert, here are its creatures, here the desert speaks.

www.ulimtz.com IG: @frentealcolor

Earth Art Studio believes in supporting working artists! Purchasing art work and/or contributing a donation for your visit to the sculpture trail helps keep our creative community thriving and making more art!

Currently, the studio is only open for scheduled events and by appointment.

Please contact us if you’d like to visit!

Abel is one of the nine artists participating in Sticks + Stones | Palos + Piedras exhibition at Earth Art Studio. He is known for his jewelry but in this exhibition, he is working on a much larger scale showcasing three sculptures made from recycled metals and mixed materials such as corn husks and cardboard.

About the Artist:
Abel has spent 23 years as a jeweler originally from Jalisco and 17 years living in Todos Santos. The idea of how art is the creative and conscious manifestation between the human being and the universe, through the ability to maintain a prolonged focus and concentration. Curiosity has led him to transcend jewelry and delve into sculpture, using recycled materials to raise awareness of the garbage problem in our community. Seeker of human truth and the causes of its behavior. 

Work for Sale at Earth Art Studio:

About the Art:

Cosmodesierto
The roadrunner, is adapted to maintain balance with the desert. Its reflexes help it survive in the ever-changing, rain-dependent environment of the Baja California Sur desert. It is adapted to live in droughts; it is a mysterious animal capable of devouring rattlesnakes. It is a very resilient and swift animal at the same time. 
To be a roadrunner is to be part of a unique and complete cosmos. Where humans see a limited desert, the roadrunner sees a perfect universe, even where the notion of time is irrelevant. The desert guides the roadrunner to an infinite and perfect space, where running elevates the definition of love to a perfect state of mind. 

Burro  
The donkey with a human body represents how moral consciousness manages the instinctive essence of impulses and anger. Wearing the mask can transform your personality into a completely free state of being. Braying, stamping, and wagging your tail can free you from the foundations of human ethics and morality and feel the essence of your psyche change.

 Cactus, the grandfather of the desert.

IG: @imaginabel.creativity.jewerly

Earth Art Studio believes in supporting working artists! Purchasing art work and/or contributing a donation for your visit to the sculpture trail helps keep our creative community thriving and making more art!

Currently, the studio is only open for scheduled events and by appointment.

Please contact us if you’d like to visit!

Steven is one of the nine artists participating in Sticks + Stones | Palos + Piedras exhibition at Earth Art Studio. He is showcasing a large hand-built stoneware piece that is displayed in the arroyo. His piece entitled, possible votive artifact, provenance unknown SJ-1112-TS has metallic oxides, glazes and has gone through multiple kiln firings to achieve its surface. 

About the Artist:

Steven discovered ceramics almost by accident, taking a summer pottery class with his mother while home from college in North Carolina. He was lucky enough to work for four years under well-known Japanese ceramic artist Hiroshi Sueyoshi; acquiring an attention to aesthetic detail and craftsmanship that guides his work to this day. He went on to study and assist at a variety of schools and studios where he learned a broad range of traditional and cutting-edge techniques.

Steven founded Barro Sur Studio in 2020, providing the Todos Santos community with its premier location for ceramic classes, artist workspace, ceramic supplies and a fully equipped studio with which to follow his own artistic path in clay. He loves creating ceramic sculpture and truly enjoys creating functional art and vessels for the home. During this years studio tour both sculptures and a variety of functional ware will be on display and available.

Work for Sale at Earth Art Studio:

About the Art:

The desert environment, with its sparse landscape and arid environment has for millennia been seen as a place of discovery. Preserved traces and artifacts of persons of mysterious origin are part of the lore surrounding our attraction to the desert the world over. Steven Jacobi continues his “unknown provenance” series with this piece, in which he seeks to touch on an emotional connection to the lives of others we can never truly know, yet feel the commonality of our shared humanity all the same. 

IG: @ceramicasrj studio@barrosur.com www.barrosur.com

Earth Art Studio believes in supporting working artists! Purchasing art work and/or contributing a donation for your visit to the sculpture trail helps keep our creative community thriving and making more art!

Currently, the studio is only open for scheduled events and by appointment.

Please contact us if you’d like to visit!

Christa is one of the nine artists participating in Sticks + Stones | Palos + Piedras exhibition at Earth Art Studio. She is showcasing 5 acrylic on plywood paintings of bones she found in the desert. She also has a selection of her wood fired wheel thrown pottery displayed for sale.

About the Artist:
Mexico beckoned and Christa Assad relocated her home and studio south of the border in 2017. She was captivated by the small Pueblo Mágico of Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, with its colorful decorations dangling across the narrow streets, and one long dirt road out to her new land. Her desert hideaway now houses the only wood kiln in Baja, and there she enjoys experimenting with local clay and found treasures from her hikes in the dramatic landscape. She balances her time between potting and painting, beach combing and exploring cities on the mainland.

Assad’s work is in the permanent collections of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Ceramic Research Center at Arizona State University Museum, and The Penn State Fulbright Scholar Collection, and is included in Garth Clark’s Shards, Kevin A. Hluch’s The Art of Contemporary Pottery, and Lark Books‘ 500 Teapots and 500 Pitchers. Her paintings can be found locally at Galeria Militar in central Todos Santos as well as by appointment at her studio in Las Playitas.

Works for Sale at Earth Art Studio:

About the Art:
“My daily walks through the desert with my two Baja-born and rescued dogs is always what I call a ‘sniffari’ – an adventure full of scents. The dogs in particular have an excellent nose for deteriorating animals and bones. My infatuation with skulls and jaw bones has manifested quite a collection, and with collecting came creating paintings of the found objects. This series includes representations of deer, goat, and sea turtle skulls, and a conglomeration of cow jaw bones and teeth. I enjoy the intricacies of each skull and jaw bone and find the cow teeth especially amusing. I hope to inspire the viewer to take a closer look at the simple beauty of bone shapes and the subtlety of their colors, as well as their symbolism of death, decay and the return to the earth.”

– Christa Assad

christaassad.com IG: @christaassad

Earth Art Studio believes in supporting working artists! Purchasing art work and/or contributing a donation for your visit to the sculpture trail helps keep our creative community thriving and making more art!

Currently, the studio is only open for scheduled events and by appointment.

Please contact us if you’d like to visit!