Sarah Fox, owner of Graphic Fusion, seeks to combine her own artistic visions with those of Earline Thomas, bringing together different media and different artistic approaches into one entity. The goal of this venture is to offer fine art to the public at prices that most people can easily afford. Graphic Fusion is able to do this through the power of the Internet. Most artists must support enormous overhead by displaying and selling their works through galleries, whether their own or those of third parties. In contrast, Graphic Fusion sells its works through a virtual gallery on the Worldwide Web, with minimal overhead.
Moreover, because the artists are not tied to any physical location, they are free to roam the countryside, capturing even more images to be sold to the public. After all, orders can easily be processed on the road with a laptop computer.
Sarah Fox, photographer. Sarah jokes that she was once a starving scientist, but now she's seeking her fortune as an artist. She was born and raised in West Texas, the only child of an artist and an architect. During her childhood in West Texas, she developed a love of the desert, grassland prairie, and farm country, which are themes in much of her photographic work..
Sarah did her first photography at age 6 with a Brownie box camera she found in the attic. Almost all the shots were double-exposed, because she consistently forgot to wind the film between shots. Her parents soon gave her an instamatic, which remedied that problem. At age 11, her mother taught her how to do basic darkroom work, using an antique enlarger. Sarah soon took over the utility room and enjoyed experimenting with cameras and photographic techniques.
At age 14, Sarah bought her first 35mm camera with her allowance money. It was a late 1960's vintage Honeywell H1 with a semiautomatic lens, and it had already been worn out through heavy use by a local news photographer. She eagerly bulk loaded the camera with Panatomic-X and recruited the minister across the street as a model for some double-exposure, trick photography. When she tried loading the 40 exposure roll onto the 24 exposure reel in her development tank, that's where she ran into a problem. Clumsily fumbling with the film in the dark, she managed to "make" it fit. Most of the pictures were ruined, but her "Ghost in Mourning" photo survived. She entered the photograph into a local contest and won 2nd place, competing against many local professional photographers and college art students. She bought a used 135mm lens with the $50 prize money (and also a bigger, better development tank!).
As a teen, Sarah photographed school plays and sold the pictures to the students. It was with this income that she was able to support her camera habit. She also provided most of the artwork for her school arts and literary magazine. After buying a more serious camera and strobe, she developed an interest in collecting, refurbishing, and experimenting with antique cameras, which is an ongoing pastime.
When Sarah went to college, she no longer had time for her pastimes, including photography and piano. This diversion lasted through graduate school, a short stint as a very stressed-out university professor, a prolonged and unsuccessful attempt to get funding for her research, and a nasty divorce. Two decades after she set her camera down, she returned to her passion for photography. Her old Spotmatic F was no longer functional, so she entered the age of digital photography, fascinated with the artistic freedom afforded by digital photo editing. Now Sarah is back, selling her photographic work once again.
To find out more about the equipment and techniques Sarah uses, please
Earline Thomas grew up on the coast of Virginia. She began her art career at age 12, when she developed a passion for horses. Her parents, realizing the enormous commitment that would be required, suggested gently that she should study music or art during the summer -- or perhaps take up sailing instead. After polling her fellow students on the playground, she quickly realized that music took a lot of long, hard practicing. With this valuable insight, she soon began taking drawing and painting lessons from a local artist who worked out of her garage studio. (She also bought an old Sunfish, and so began her lifelong passion for sailing.)
It was Earline's love of sailing that directed much of her artistic energy during her teenage years. The regattas in which she competed were an early theme in her oil paintings. (Similar to Picasso, she expects this to evolve into her "blue period.") Just like her Graphic Fusion business partner, she entered one of her early works in a local competition and took second prize.
Because of her rich experiences in coastal Virginia, Earline developed a love of the sea and aspired to become a marine biologist, ultimately majoring in biology at the College of William and Mary. Fortunately, the faculty recognized her true talents as an artist and heavily discouraged her further pursuit of marine biology, especially considering her grades in calculus. And so she completed her BA in Art and Education. This was fortunate, since there is already an overabundance of Ph.D. marine biologists feeding dead fish to orcas at Sea World.
After leaving William and Mary, Earline moved to Manassas, where she taught art in a newly opened public school, which was an education in itself. She loved her job. Because the school system was emerging, the students and teachers were able to excercise their creativity in the establishment of new programs and curricula, reflective of the rich culture of that area. Being a teacher and watching her students evolve creatively was probably the most rewarding experience of Earline's career as an artist.
Life was good, until one day Earline's husband told her she had to move with him to the formidable frozen North for a fast paced life as a corporate Stepford wife. Although she was still able to enjoy time with her children, especially fostering their artistic talents, she missed her own artwork. She had no time for it. Now, a divorce later, and wholely in agreement with the friendly recommendations of the vocational specialist her ex-husband hired to evaluate her job worthiness, she is able to return to doing the artwork she loves.
