In 1976 I apprenticed to Stephen White, an architect who had developed a unique form of lightsculpture made from thin strips of wood bent into a frame then covered with paper soaked in polyvinyl resin and illuminated from within y incandescent light bulbs. Most of my designs are inspired by natural forms.

I have done shows in Hawaii and California. My work has been used on the stages of Startrek; Generations. I am featured in the December 2003 issue of The Robb Report and appeared on HGTV, the Carol Duvall Show episode #1618, this May. Recent commercial installations include Iron Wok China Bistro in Temecula, Bliss Restaurant in Beverly Hills, and Zov's Bistro in Irvine.

I am also a finalist in the 2004 Spertus Museum (University of Judaism, Chicago) Competition for representing Ner Tamid. This exhibition opened in October, 2004.

Janet's eclectic designs combine her lifelong interests of fashion, art, and technology. She learned to sew at age 7, and installed miniature lights in her own dollhouse. Over the years, her costume-making hobby began to incorporate electronics, with illuminating results.

With more than eight years of experience in this newly-emerging field, Janet is well known as a pioneer and innovator, creating unique apparel for a variety of international clients.

Do you need to be a rocket scientist to design clothes like this? Probably not, but it doesn't hurt, either. Janet has extensive formal training in engineering.

Her other artistic interests also exhibit a high-tech edge. Janet paints in an abstract geometric style, and creates illuminated wall panels and sculptures, in addition to the lighted clothing.

Janet is a Pisces, and has lived in the San Diego area since 1979.

Artist's statement for Janet Cooke Hansen

Janet Hansen is an interdisciplinary visual artist, scientist, fashion designer, and engineer. Her formal training is in areas as diverse as robotics, image processing, electronics, molecular biomechanics, and dynamics analysis of aerospace structures.

Her artistic interests exhibit a high-tech edge; she paints in an abstract geometric style, and creates illuminated wall panels and sculptures with embedded electronics. Janet is also known for her pioneering work in the field of illuminated clothing. As founder of Enlighted Designs, she creates wearable art and technology in the form of custom lighted clothing and costumes for a variety of international clients

She has experimented in other areas of fiber art and has created miniature silk tapestries, and silk paintings, art quilts, and art felts. Her artwork is admired around the world and is found in museums and private collections throughout Europe, North America, and New Zealand.

From 1997 through 2000, Valentyna Royenko was a distinguished professor of art at Kiev National University of Culture and Art and headed very successful programs during her tenure.

Since 2001, Valentyna has been living and exhibiting in California, and today, she continues to explore the amazing and inspiring possibilities of fiber, while pursuing her dreams in the USA.

Artist°òs Statement

Color is the spiritual language that reveals my being, the movement of my soul from my darkest days to the light of the full spectrum of my new life. Color is the medium that blends my old life with my new.

My life has been full of strong emotion, which has been imprinted on my soul and reflected in my art. I have experienced the universal feelings of love and pain, sorrow and exultation. I was thrown down into the depths of darkness and despair from which I almost did not recover. However, in time, this experience became a catalyst for my artistic work, forever altering my sense of color, forcing me to work only with abstraction.

My art is a metaphor for my personal journey on the road to self-realization, a journey from death to renewal. The colors and images of my work are a direct translation of how my soul sees the world. Each painting tells a chapter of my life and functions as a vital part of the whole - my life experience.

All these years later, my undiminished photographic passion has received the support of generous sponsors and patrons, such as the Polaroid-Nippon corporation who commissioned a show of my work for their gallery in Tokyo or the CECUT in Tijuana, Mexico, who bought a portfolio of my images and organized a bicultural, cross-border event and traveling exhibit built around it.

My documentary work has traveled throughout Mexico for two years through the auspices of the French cultural services.

My images have also had the good fortune to catch the attention of the Tuscany Photographic workshops, which attracts the best names the photoworld can boast of, and to which I was invited to participate when I won their first prize.

With the advent of the new digital technology, I have endeavoured to push the photographic envelope by exploring formats much larger than the conventional photo standard has so far permitted, bringing photography a more architectural dimension or visibility.

I hope to continue on such a path, with a possible exploration of multi media, or even three dimensional pieces in which photography would still play the central role.