Hi.
Welcome to the VORTEX
Welcome to the VORTEX
Jules Weissman
Jules Weissman is an artist and art director living in Meiners Oaks. She runs Lunch Box Creative Agency and she is the emergency contact for several cats throughout the Ojai Valley.
Nicholas Weissman
Nicholas Weissman is an Emmy-winning filmmaker based in Meiners Oaks Weissman has led projects from commercial rebranding to time-sensitive feature video spots for major print and network news outlets. Commercial clients: Amex, Land Rover, Cadillac, Volvo, British Airways, Ray-Ban, Visit California, Nike, Levi's, Microsoft, and Intel.
Fran Gealer
Fran Gealer is a photographer, artist, and baker living in Ojai, CA. She is always on the quest to bake the perfect pie.
Lauren + Cassandra Van Keulen
Sisters Lauren and Cassandra have joined their respective talents in hospitality and design to create a new boutique events company, Ojai Picnic Moments. They have lived in the valley for more than 25 years.
Josh Beckman
A native of Southern California, Josh Beckman founded FBP Works in 2015 having previously worked at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles designing and building exhibits. With a background in painting, sculpture, and fabrication his lifelong practice as a maker led him to work in ceramics as his primary medium for creative expression.
Mark Lewis
Mark Lewis is a semi-retired journalist who has worked for various newspapers, the Reuters news service, and the Forbes Magazine website. As a freelancer, he has written for the Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Ojai Quarterly, and Montecito Magazine. In Ojai, he has served on the city Arts Commission and as board president of the Ojai Valley Museum. Currently, he serves on the boards of the Ojai Art Center and the Ojai Valley Community Hospital Foundation.
Sandy + Jason Arellanes
Sandy and Jason are wife and husband with an assortment of three children. One acts, cooks, plays frisbee, and rarely bathes. Another dances, reads, and writes about the ill-givings of traditional schooling. And the last makes models compulsively, paints shoes, and has drawn many a cartoon. They have a shop in Meiners Oaks called enid and edgar vintage.
Jonas Arellanes
Budding artist Jonas has more style than this whole town put together. He is currently learning with his dad construction using only hand tools. He is a library of information about paint and glue.
Diana Ortega
Diana Ortega was born in Glendale and raised in Ojai. She enjoys her time cuddling with her cats, painting, and cooking…mostly cuddling with her cats.
Frances Willsrud
Frances Willsrud is a fourteen-year-old born and “bread” Ojai girl. When not at school, she is at the horse barns or in her dad’s garden working on projects growing and building things. Her creativity knows no limits. She has become a valuable asset in her mother’s baking and dinner club projects, jumping in when needed to run pizzas, chat with guests or snap some beautiful photos.
Jimena Vazquez
“Hello! My name is Jimena Vazquez, a freshman at Nordhoff High School. I am full of laughter and smiles and I love talking — sometimes I do too much. I have 3 siblings and I’m the youngest. I’m a huge animal lover. As much as I hate it I also love going on hikes with my siblings. I’m a very extroverted person, and love to converse with others.”
Cassandra C. Jones
Cassandra C. Jones is an artist and writer living in Ojai, CA.
Joel Fox
Joel Fox started working in corporate identity at Siegel&Gale. Later he built fancy websites, made titles for 100+ commercials, and taught interactive media in the graduate design program at CalArts. Joel was a principal creative on Yo Gabba Gabba focused on interstitials, dream sequences, and general magic. Since then he’s made a bunch of other stuff in Meiners Oaks.
Andra Belknap
Andra Belknap grew up in Ojai; she’s a former Ojai Valley News reporter. Her professional experience includes the Obama Administration, the U.S. House of Representatives, successful campaigns for the presidency and U.S. Congress, and as the author of nationally published writing and commentary. For more of Andra’s work, visit andrabelknap.com.
Yosephina Peters
Yosephina Peters is a young artist, writer, and researcher living in Ojai after recently graduating from Barnard College in New York City. Based in Ojai since 2014, she has returned to blend her Urban Studies, Environmental Science, and Dancer degree toward creative pursuits. She is the co-founder of Stencils for Justice (@stencilsforjustice), an arts group creating work inspired by current events.
Serena Cornell
Serena Cornell is a young artist raised in Ojai. She enjoys painting, baking, and sewing when she’s not spending time with her friends and family.
Abigail Napp
Abigail Napp is a multimedia journalist focused on food and wine, and a contributing writer for La Cucina Italiana.
Fanny Penny
Fanny Penny is a fiber artist and ceramicist living in Meiners Oaks, CA. As a stylist, she has worked for Vacationland Studio and GOOP.
Andy Carlson
Andy moved to Meiners Oaks after completing kindergarten in 1957 from San Fernando Valley. In Ojai, he went from 1st grade to graduation, with his class of 1969 being the 1st class to spend all six grades from 7th to 12th in the current High School campus (caused by the campus switch in the fall of 1966). After college, he moved back to Ojai in 1991, where he remains to the present. He acquired the dream house of his childhood best friend after his friend's dad's passing in 1997 and lives two blocks from where he grew up.
Brandi Crockett
California-born and Ojai native, Brandi has been a professional photographer for over 10 years. Her photographic candor is a vision steeped in extremes; profound cinematic-like storytelling, intimate weddings, vivid landscapes, and authentic candid moments shot through the lens of raw, rich portraiture.
Amelia Arellanes
Amelia, soon to be 17 years old, lives in Meiners Oaks. When she's not manning the vintage shop for her mom and dad, she can be found teaching herself Latin or practicing Kpop choreography. She has been unschooling since she was 8 years old.
Nicholas Pelton
Nick Pelton raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, is a young adult fresh out of high school looking to get his feet wet in the fashion film industry. Some of his favorite things to do are making people laugh, skating, and having an all-around good time.
Arley Weller Sakai
Arley Weller Sakai is a writer, visual artist, and musician from Ojai, CA. They've been starting chapters without conclusions for over two decades.
Marc Alt
Marc Alt is a filmmaker and photographer based in Ojai, California. Instagram: @marcaltphoto
Charlotte Ward
A self-made woman in no sense but literal. An Ojai native & lifetime student at Ventura college. A disaster junkie, people still call when there's smoke in the air. Charlotte collects stories, from the mundane to the nonsensical, and with that in mind, she will do anything at least once.
Jessica Pregnolato
Jessica Pregnolato is a woman who can’t make up her mind. She is currently posing as a writer and VO artist living in Ojai, is slightly fanatic about food and wine, and hopes to fulfill her dream of acting in a foreign film while pretending to know another language fluently.
Derek Opperman
Derek Opperman is a writer, occasional podcaster, and wild marine collagen advocate based in Ojai. Before his life here, he lived in Berlin, where he was the editor-in-chief of Electronic Beats, a digital magazine focused on electronic music culture in Central and Eastern Europe.
Emma Claire
Emma Claire is the event producer at Bart’s Books, having been a bookseller and working in fine printing.
Tom Pazderka
Tom Pazderka is a Czech-American painter, installation artist, and writer living and working in Ojai. He is the founder of A Secret Plot, an online art and theory publication and micro gallery. Instagram @tompazderka
Ari Abramczyk
Ari Abramczyk is a Los Angeles based photographer and one half of the photography duo Sharum+Ari. She loves collaborating with friends, which is why this shoot for Vortex was so fun! Clients include Abercrombie&Fitch, lululemon, Goop, NYX, Smashbox, North Face, and Vince.
Ashley Woods Hollister
The multi-faceted bi-racial Ashley Woods Hollister is an arts champion, curator, and supporter of the Santa Barbara nonprofit community. She’s served on the boards of Explore Ecology, and the Santa Barbara Mental Wellness Center, and just joined the board of the Foundation for Climate Change Action. She is the co-founder of T.W. Hollister & Co. with her husband, Clinton; is the co-curator of “Sanctuary,” Lotusland’s 2021 Spring art exhibition; and is the mother of two young children who have been at home with her since the pandemic hit.
Kirtsen Stoltmann
Kirtsen Stoltmann is an artist and candlemaker no longer living in Meiners Oaks. If you’re missing a raccoon, she’s your first suspect.
Drew Mashburn
Drew Mashburn is a lifelong Ojai Valley resident and volunteer with the Ojai Valley Museum.
Keren Nedivi
Karen Nedivi is the founder of HAND EYE PICTURES, a videography and photography production company based in Ojai. She lives in Matilija Canyon.
Sally England
Sally England is a fiber artist living and working in Ojai, California. Raised in the Midwest, she received her B.A. in Communication Arts from Grand Valley State University in West Michigan. England later attended PNCA's Applied Craft & Design MFA program in Portland, Oregon. While exploring fiber techniques in graduate school in 2011, she taught herself the art of knotting (aka 'Macramé'). Using thick white cotton cord on a super-sized scale, images of her work went viral, catapulting her into a career as a full-time artist and inspiring a knot-work revival.
Larry Parker
Larry Parker is an Ojai-based multidisciplinary designer, photographer, and creative director. His current projects range from capturing everyday life to developing workforce housing and innovative management solutions for Type 1 diabetes.
Holly Vesecky
Holly Vesecky is a florist, floral sculptor, and gardener living in Meiners Oaks.
Jennifer Jordan Day
Jennifer Jordan Day is an animator, prop maker, budget overseer, and super-duper organizer of many things. She spent years of her life coordinating meet-and-greets for musicians like the Black Eyed Peas and Justin Timberlake. Working at Oxygen Media (NBCUniversal) as the Production Manager helped hone her budgeting and production management skills. The last few years have been spent creating videos for children’s television. On her off time, she enjoys feeding the emu, Pecky, in her backyard in Meiners Oaks.
Winston Braun
Winston Braun, an illustrator from Ojai, has a diverse background in the arts. He worked as an Archives Assistant at the American Institute of Architects Santa Barbara Chapter, gaining skills in archival research and management. Additionally, he served as a Curatorial Assistant at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara, enhancing his artistic and organizational abilities.
Mia Riddle
Mia Riddle is a musician, mama, and native plant enthusiast living in Meiners Oaks.
Em Stoltz
Professional crisis negotiator, relationship counselor, and “what is this thing on my scalp?”- checker impersonating as a hair stylist/makeup artist in Ojai. I know all the secrets.
Moira Tarmy
Moira Tarmy is a photographer living in Ojai, CA.
Martha Moran
Martha Moran brings a fresh take to the ancient art of rockstacking, using inherently sculptural boulders with sculpted stone, petrified wood, obsidian, Geode inlays, antique slag glass, shrapnel and copper.
Alice Brophy
Alice Brophy is a fashion stylist, brand consultant, and model currently working with individuals, non-profits, and brands from Santa Barbara to NYC and everywhere in between. Her work has been featured in Santa Barbara Magazine as well as WWD and Vogue online for her work in collaboration with Lotusland Celebrates.
Liz Fish
Liz Fish is a photographer and videographer. It’s about remembering and longing, the passage of time. “When I was a kid, we had a Kodak 110 camera. We did all the wrong things - we were headless, blurry, tiny. I cherish those ways to remember! We have one child, no dog, and we live in Ojai, CA.”
Jaide Whitman
Jaide Whitman is President/CEO of The Conservation Endowment Fund, steward to Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve, in the Santa Ana Canyon, and also works in partnership with her mother, Julia, managing the Blue & Emerald Iguana Inns.
Jeffrey Schulz
Jeffrey specializes in traditional green woodworking techniques and offers custom pieces and workshops out of Ventura, California.