Mia Tavonatti Sculptural Philosophy

Biography

More than anything, Mia Tavonatti enjoys the adventure of creating life and searching for truth through the beauty of art. Art is a language she has had to learn the forms of, and refine to a state of fluency, before she could be free to explore the deeper messages of her own private dialogue. Her work is built on a long history of artistic influences including Botticelli, Michelangelo, Bernini and Mucha, cultural interests resulting from her extensive travels, and various spiritual explorations throughout her life.

Mia earned her BFA and MFA from California State University Long Beach, where she majored in Illustration. She has studied in Paris at the Sorbonne, Parsons School of Design and in the studio of renowned French impressionist Monsieur Relange’. Mia also spends her summers painting in Greece or Italy, and has studied abroad with international painters Dominic Cretara, Johnny Cariachi, and Demitri Mitsanas.

After creating art professionally for twenty years, Mia’s personal work can be found in numerous private and corporate collections including those of Marriott Resorts and Harrah’s Casinos. She has earned much recognition and exhibited extensively in the US, Italy, France and Greece, and has had work chosen by the New York and Los Angeles Society of Illustrators for their annual juried exhibitions. In 1999, her book Cramped Quarters was nominated for a Golden Kite Award by the Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Society. Most recently, Mia was chosen to participate in the US Air Force Arts Program, where her orders from the Pentagon were to document the training missions of the 550th Search and Rescue squadrons at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico; for use in the creation of a painting destined for the Air Force collection, where it will be on rotating exhibition between their various institutions including the Pentagon and National Airspace Museum.

As an Illustrator, Mia has created the art for over twenty books, six of which she has also authored, and the covers for sixty plus young adult, children’s and art instructional books for publishers like Walter Foster, Harcourt Brace, McGraw Hill and Simon Schuster. She has also worked on various editorial illustrations for trade and mass market magazines, and projects for corporations including Lysol, Tomy Toys, Ritz Carlton and Seagram’s.

Mia has also been known to paint with glass…Her intricate stained glass mosaics weave her experience as a painter together with her love of Italian high renaissance glass mosaics. She has created numerous mosaics for restaurants, private residences, corporations and public works projects throughout the US over the last eight years.

Mia has taught painting at Laguna College of Art and Design in Laguna Beach, California for over thirteen years, where she and her students have been responsible for the creation of four public murals throughout the community. She loves teaching young “potentials” and says that “they keep me on my toes, creatively”.

Mia currently resides in Costa Mesa, California.

If you are interested in acquiring the work of MIA TAVONATTI, please contact
Stacey Cavin @ 818.225.0832 or email Stacey@SculpturalPhilosphy.com
for further information.

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