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Silicon Valley Open Studios (SVOS) returns for its 37th year with a more packed schedule than ever. The event’s largest showing yet, according to the SVOS website, sees 375 artists welcoming visitors to a variety of spaces where they create or display their work. Visitors can check out spaces throughout the Peninsula, South Bay and Coastside. With open studios unfolding over three weeks in May, there’s plenty of time to visit artists in every area. Each weekend highlights a different region, with Coastside and northern Peninsula studios open May 4-5; Midpeninsula studios on May 11-12 and South Bay studios on May 18-19.
In a two-part series, we’re speaking with artists you can visit this weekend in the Coastside and northern Peninsula areas. Next week, we’ll features artists showing in the Midpeninsula area.
Dipti Irla — San Mateo
The vibrant vistas and cheery patterns in collage artist Dipti Irla‘s work come from sources not typically associated with beautiful things: junk mail, packing materials and old magazines. Irla draws on a fashion design background and a desire to create sustainable art to transform these humble materials into colorful pieces that often take inspiration from nature.
Collage had a natural appeal to her because it could incorporate a lot of the techniques Irla had used in fashion. Some pieces resemble quilts, and many pieces feature a kind of fabric-like weaving, though they are made of paper.
“I also still draw inspiration from a lot of textile techniques that we used. I think those techniques still come out in my art, like surface ornamentation,” Irla said of her work in fashion.
Irla first studied fashion in India, where she grew up. She moved to the United States after she got married and received her MFA in fashion design from Academy of Art University. She worked in the fashion industry for a while, showing at New York Fashion Week in 2011. Irla took a break after having a child and while at home during the pandemic, began to experiment with making art to keep her brain active, she said.
She kept going with the work and at the urging of friends and family, Irla began to pursue making art professionally.
“I started using a lot of the old magazines that were lying around — all these junk mail flyers and all these letters that we get. So instead of just throwing them away, I started making use of them to make a more sustainable way of making art,” Irla said.
Lately, Irla has been exploring using more traditional canvas backgrounds for her pieces, which makes it a little harder to create a piece that’s completely upcycled, but the bulk of the materials she uses are still repurposed, she said.
In addition to handmade collages, as she has expanded her offerings into prints, she has tried to ensure the prints also reflect her sustainable ethos. She has sought out printers who use more eco-friendly practices and sourced a printer that uses canvases that are 100% recycled.
This will be Irla’s first year participating in Silicon Valley Open Studios. She said that visitors can expect to see a lot of bright colors and nature themes.
“Most of my art, even though it’s driven by textile techniques and craft techniques, the inspiration comes from nature. (There are) a lot of abstract collages and a lot of florals or foliage,” she said.
Irla will show all three weekends of Open Studios: May 4-5 at 1797 Rex St., San Mateo; May 11-12 at 1022 Webster St., Palo Alto and May 18-19 at 1583 Meadowlark Lane, Sunnyvale. diptiirla.com.
Mykola Kulishov — Pacifica
To create his gracefully curved wood sculptures, Mykola Kulishov draws on both mathematical concepts and traditional woodworking techniques from Ukraine, where he was born and raised.
“My works explore the beauty and character that exist in wood, often as a result of tree environmental conditions, wood storage environment, etc. In that regard, wood is like a person: stress and living conditions develop interesting character in both,” Kulishov said in an email interview.
He also focuses on using salvaged wood for his pieces.
“Much of the wood used in my sculptures is salvaged wood, repurposed from felled trees in the Bay Area, trees that are given a second life in a new form.”
Kulishov typically works with large pieces of green wood and said that he developed a unique process that keeps the wet wood from cracking during carving.
“An additional distinctive aspect of my work is that every bowl or vase comes from a single piece of wood. To make carving more efficient, I developed techniques for removing wood from tricky spots that are hard to reach. Then, I make sure to smooth and polish these areas really well,” he said.
Kulishov has a high-tech background, having graduated from Kyiv Shevchenko University in Ukraine with a degree in radio-physics. He worked in Kyiv for nearly 20 years at the Institute of Cybernetics, National Academy of Sciences, where he also earned a Ph.D. degree in Optoelectronics. He moved first to Canada for a job in the high-tech industry and then came to the U.S. in 2006 to work as a business development director.
“As a researcher, I published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals, three book chapters and two U.S. patents,” he said.
Before retiring in 2023, he was working as a sales engineer for semiconductor light sources and optical amplifiers.
His array of technical knowledge has found its way into his art, with fluid shapes such as Möbius strips that have “no boundaries” evident in his pieces.
Kulishov’s Ukrainian upbringing also had a significant influence on the techniques he uses. He also noted that some of the chisels he still uses in his work were made by his father over 30 years ago.
“In Ukraine I also studied our traditional wood carving during my trips (during the) ’90s to the West-Ukrainian (Carpathian) region, the place of most famous Ukrainian wood carvers, and soon after wood sculptures became my hobby. I have developed my own designs of wood bowls and vases, and I perfected these designs and my skills over many years. Wood carving has become my creative refuge,” he said.
In addition to Ukrainian carving techniques, he also sometimes incorporates a twisted copper wire as a decorative element, which he said is a common Ukrainian style.
Mykola Kulishov will show all three weekends of Open Studios: May 4-5 at 2021 Palmetto Ave., Pacifica; May 11-12 at 12133 Foothill Lane, Los Altos Hills; and May 18-19 at Maker Nexus, 1330 Orleans Drive, Sunnyvale. kulishwood.com.
About Silicon Valley Open Studios
Silicon Valley Open Studios takes place 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. at all sites over the weekends of May 4-5, May 11-12 and May 18-19. Admission is free. For more information and a map of participating artists, visit svos.org.
