Hear Ye!

Here Yeah!

Here YES!

Announcing SICA-USA’s First Annual Online Auction of our National Subud Treasures!
Starting June 17th and running through July 17th you can visit the SICA-USA Auction site and begin bidding on some amazing cultural/artistic outpourings – over 100 offerings representing 36 Subud artists, writers, painters, sculptors, ceramicists, performers, musicians, multi-media-ists, mixed-baggers, and rag-taggers. You’ll be amazed at the wonder-filled spectrum and far-reaching scope of our Subud Art World! Join us online to meet artists you may not have heard of, revisit images of established professionals, or simply scroll through the vast wealth of Subud Culture! Although the Online Auction is being conducted as a fundraiser to support the work of SICA-USA, especially SICA Project Grants, we’re very excited about the exposure it will bring to all contributing artists. We trust that you will find your online experience to be exciting and inspirational as well. Bidding prices range from $10 to $850, so there’s something here for every pocketbook.

Presenting Amazing Female Artists:
Previous Meet the Artist Articles featured the Subud Cultural Brotherhood, now meet some of our prominent Cultural Sisterhood.

Roberta Hoffman

Roberta is a graphic designer, illustrator, web designer, and web developer. She works in dip pen, pencil, digital, gouache, watercolor, and acrylic, and likes to interweave humor into her work. Influences include graphic design studies at UC Berkeley, Pushpin, Low Art, Dada, New Wave, Punk, and Grunge, plus exposure to the Funk Art movement at a young age working in her father’s gallery in California.
She learned art practices from her father, Rasjad Hopkins, a painter/sculptor, and her mother, Aisjah Hopkins, an abstract expressionist artist.

Roberta is contributing two pieces to the SICA Auction:

Rabbit 48: an homage to the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland with this modification: “I’m late; I’m late; I’m late – better take the 48!” In this case the White Rabbit is riding a Harley Davidson 48, definitely built for speed!

Octopus II: Imagine an octopus riding a Norton motorcycle with an abstract background. The winged helmet alludes to the experience of motion at high speed. This print is part of a series on motorcycles.

Sharifa Morag Benepe

Born as Morag Clyne in Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1936, she married architect Barry Benepe in 1963 and moved to the United States. Mrs. Benepe has lifetime experience as an artist, craftswoman, teacher, and industrial designer. She has produced collections of hand-painted designs on silk for leading dinnerware, bedding, and apparel companies. She is contributing her hand-painted China silk scarf entitled Camassia with Tulips and Roses. This amazing piece was inspired by a workshop conducted to express the spirit of Subud USA in a banner for the 2014 National Congress.

Camille Hofvendahl

Camille is a visual artist working in many mediums including clay, yarn, cloth, painting furniture, print-making, and more recently, watercolor. She was drawn to painting Native American images photographed by Edward Curtis at the turn of the 20th Century. His subjects were on reservations in the early 1900’s living an authentic lifestyle and wearing traditional clothing. Camille likes to use his compositions because he took great care to preserve the essence of native people. Camille is contributing her watercolor painting entitled Hoop Dancer.

Connie Cheifetz

Connie creates intimate sculptures and functional work. Each piece is hand formed from slabs, pinching, or coils. She then applies textures through carving, slip trailing, and stamping, using midrange stoneware and porcelain with Cone 6 oxidation finishes. Connie is contributing two pieces entitled Ocean Snack Plate and Seaside Rattle.

Hellene Higgins Chapman

Hellene started painting in the 1970’s with art classes at the local community college, completing a Master’s Degree in Studio Art at Northern Arizona University with honors in painting. Always fascinated with the effects colors have on each other, she began working in a more abstract style. Her work has been exhibited in Arizona, New Mexico, Oxford, England, in the Northwest, at the 1997 Subud World Congress in Spokane, Ruth Gullixson’s Gallery, and Devry University owns several of her paintings. She also taught art to children through the Arts in Education Program at a local art center. Hellene is offering her acrylic painting entitled Emanating from the Source for the SICA Auction.

Illene Pevec

Ms. Pevec was opened in Aspen in 1970 and through the first wave of talent testing received she had the talent to promote culture. She worked extensively in multicultural education for children in Canada and Portugal using myths, legends, and theater. Investigating the impact on adolescents engaging in school and community garden programs, she interviewed over 100 at-risk teenagers across the United States. These teens from many diverse cultural backgrounds learned to grow food, feed themselves and their communities healthfully, and learned business skills when they sold their produce to restaurants and at Farmers’ Markets. Extensive research supplemented by beautifully candid interviews with students, illustrate the life altering physical and mental benefits that mentored gardening programs can provide. Their young, honest voices make up the bulk of her book entitled Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health and Joy.

Maria Pacca

Ms. Pacca has lived in many places, so her work is varied in subject matter and media, depending on where she was living at the time of each creation. When she lived in Hawaii for fourteen years, she painted the ocean; in Guatemala she painted volcanoes; in Brazil she created exuberant landscapes; and in Colorado, majestic mountains. Throughout her involvement with each locale, she has been highly
concerned with the environment, considering that even rainbows might become an endangered species.

Her art is focused on the beauty and fragility of our planet. Maria is offering her watercolor painting entitled The Hills Are Alive!

Rachel Amos

Originally from Lake Forest, Indiana, Rachel is a long-time Subud member who has lived in Denver for over fifty years. She has worked in various media and taught emerging artists at several colleges in Colorado. She has submitted three pieces: Carved Snake with Odds and Ends (ink drawing), Alexander von Humbolt’s View of a South American Volcano (pastel chalk), and Roots and Mycorrhi (pastel chalk).
These three pieces offer two threads of her interest: one being the way things look; the other seen through the lens of feeling or awareness. The Carved Snake line drawing is an example of the former, and the two chalk drawings are examples of the latter.

Sarah Wroe Clark

Sarah has been collecting sand from all over the globe, or wonderful friends brought sand from their travels, for nearly 30 years. She designs the sand to create work that will make each viewer aware of the endless variety on this Earth, while expressing her feelings about it. Her “happy place” is a beach! Sarah is contributing a sand painting entitled Interweave, composed of natural sand on painted board.