Meet Your SICA-USA Merch Artists!

Assembled by Fayra Teeters

This year the 2025 SICA Fundraiser features the creations of three artists offering their images on merchandise goods for you to acquire with your donations to SICA. Now’s the time to meet these artists . . .

Halimah Polk

My watercolor painting began in 2008 as the combination of having breast cancer and of an inner spiritual push. A beautiful Colombian psychic whom I saw for healing recommended that I change my life and begin to make use of a talent she felt I had in my hands—which confirmed something I was already feeling inside. This was a bit surprising as I had been thrown out of art class when I was very young because the teacher deemed I was too talkative. Luckily, I have found an art teacher and art class where my chatter and singing were happily appreciated. I am drawn to painting landscapes, landscapes that for one reason speak to me and I have experimented with abstract watercolor paintings.

When I learned of the passing of my dear friend, Halimah Brugger, I set about painting a memorial tribute to her beautiful spirit, calling the piece “Magnolia” in honor of the Steele Magnolia I knew her to be.

Lawrence Pevec

I’ve been an artist and designer my entire life. I enjoyed working in graphic, exhibit, and film / TV design for over fifty years. I’m currently retiring from design / build projects and focusing my creative time on fine art. In the recent years I’ve been exploring encaustic medium. Encaustic: (burn in) is painting with pigmented wax. It is fast and satisfying as so many variations are possible. Many, but not all, of my pieces are mixed media which incorporate photography, found objects, like seeds, collage materials, and other dry media. I’ve been searching for that unique combination that will define my art. It is a joyous journey.

 I’ve entitled this image “Creation Myth #2” because it encapsulates a vision of the grand and inspiring beginning of our cosmos.

Roberta Hoffman

Roberta is a graphic designer, illustrator, web designer and developer. She works in dip pen, pencil, digital, gouache, watercolor, and acrylic; and likes to juxtapose concepts while interweaving humor into her work. Influences include her graphic design studies at UC Berkeley Extension, Pushpin, Low Art, Dada, New Wave, Punk, and Grunge. Her background in art includes exposure to the Funk Art movement at a young age in California, working in her father’s gallery while learning art practices from her father, Rasjad Hopkins, a painter and sculptor, as well as her mother, Aisjah Hopkins, an abstract expressionist artist who worked as a ceramist for many years before transitioning to painting.

Roberta created her “Underground Mouse” illustration as a tongue-in-cheek graphic response to the monthly Notes from the Underground: Musings from the SICA Board initiated in 2024. Whether you enjoy your morning coffee with a chuckle, or carry your artistic tote around a Subud Congress with hilarious aplomb, she hopes these tokens bring as much joy as she experienced in creating them!