For many years Allison and the group of artists at Around the Coyote have been at the forefront of experimental and traditional art. In years past, BOI Magazine has featured many artists and businesses in the Bucktown-Wicker Park neighborhood, but never have we taken the time to look at some of the individuals that are making the difference at Around the Coyote. In this feature we will highlight some of the artists that are making their mark on the art community.

Anthony Michael Zahner I see photography as an exploration, a personal investigation of my own understanding of my environment. I try to explore that which I find fascinating and beautiful in any given environment. In my experience, that environment is most often the urban existence, namely Chicago. The urban environment can be very brutal and chaotic. Finding order in that chaos is my moment of clarity when the nature of things are revealed. I often find that order is found by reducing things to just its essential parts. I find my art when these essential parts rise above their context. I try to celebrate the nature of the object and the nature of its environment by expressing its pattern, texture and color. Ben Myers Ben works at Northwestern University, teaching students and researchers how to operate scanning electron microscopes. He also conducts research on nanopatterning with electron beam lithography, developing methods for fabricating the next generation of electronic and optical devices. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) is a powerful tool used in both biological and physical sciences. For these applications, the SEM has a number of advantages over conventional optical microscopy. The resolution of an optical microscope is limited by the wavelength of visible light (300-600 nanometers) - a nanometer is one billionth of a meter. The SEM is capable of resolving features less than 1 nanometer in size. The depth of focus at high magnification is also greatly improved with SEM, allowing the production of images with a fantastic 3-D look. In addition, as an analytical tool, the SEM can provide a wealth of information about the crystal structure, elemental composition and electronic structure of a material in addition to surface morphology. Lauren Feece Lauren has been making things to look at since she was a little tiny girl. After a childhood creating and an adolescence of art, she decided being an artist was the ony career that wouldn't make her a sad, mean person. While working toward a Bachelors degree in fine art she began to exhibit her work. After finishing her degree she moved ot Chicago in 2002 and began a rigorous exhibition schedule. She has enjoyed several solo exhibitions, including "For the Birds" at Gallery 645, "In Bllom" At Hotcakes Gallery in Milwaukee, and "Blossom' at the Lobby Gallery in Chicago. Often Lauren's work has focused on the snapshot; how a snapshot, an unpretentious mirror of reality, can be translated into the iconographic, language of painting. At times her work focuses more on her own response to photographs or contemplations on the reality of time and space. Whatever the subject of her work, she muses on the everyday, its supposed monotony and the layers of meaning an beauty buried below the surface. Karen Lang Working primarily with the abstract forms, I find my work to be similar to the abstract expressionists in whom they projected their inner psychological dimensions and emotions through paint using formal art elements. Forms appear in my work but on before many layers of color, line, shape and texture have created the surface. The forms begin to tell stories that are personal let open enough to be universal. There are chapters that can be read in the paintings through the different boxes representing the variant beats and pulses similar in everyone's life. Through the multiple lenses of modern life, I hope that my autobiographical paintings connect with the audience for them to first explore and then to leave with a smile. Masha Aptekar My art is about family. Concentrating on specific, personally familiar subjects has shaped an engaging and authentic artmaking process for me. I've depicted members of family, myself, and the domestic spaces we share dozens of times and the subject doesn't get tired. The people and relationships change over time and the body of work exists as a record of this. The works submitted for your show are portraits of my grandfather whose optimistic personality and strength have been guiding in my life. In this series and others like it, I set out to honor him with "muse treatment" and with the work, explore aspects of his presence. By the way, he is a terrific model and loves the attention. Formal visual elements are used to convey attributes of this presence. I pay a lot of mind to line, color and texture. Preliminary rounds of model (test) compositions are large part of the process that go into each work. I have no one preferred medium and try to use the inherent qualities of different ones-watercolors, oils, acrylics-to most effectively put forth the envisioned idea. Gabriel Mejia Gabriel Mejia was born in the Chicago area and began incorporating art into his daily life at a very early age with his discovery of the medium of comic books. He received his undergraduate degree from Northern Illinois University, and shortly after relocated to Orange County, California. There he taught high school art for 5 years, while getting some exposure in the Southern California art scene through various group and solo exhibitions at Bergamot Station, Gallery 825, and Grand Central Art Center. In 2004, he returned home to Chicago where he still teaches high school and continues to explore is creative abilities.