Cafe Balcony

Each month a new visual art exhibit is installed at Café Balcony. All our artists are local talent, and we have featured every kind of art from modern and abstract paintings to photography, collage, and small-scale installations. Featured subjects have included pop culture, emotions, travel, and foreign culture. If you're looking for something new for your apartment or house, many of our artists do also offer their works for sale.

Previously @
Cafe Balcony...

Oct 2007 - Sasha Shumyatsky
Sept 2007 - Aime Akazawa
July-Aug 2007 - Julie Dorsey
June 2007 - Lubae Harris
April-May 2007 - Kio Griffith, Allen D Glass II, Misato Nagare
March 2007 - Gary Conner
February 2007 - Tomoe
January 2007 - Fernando Linhares
December 2006 - Peter Brooker
November 2006 - Anne Yukiko Keehn
October 2006 - Oku-Show
September 2006 - Doug Eisenstark
August 2006 - Liza Epps
July 2006 - Damon Warren
June 2006 - Sasha Shumyatsky / Jennifer Wong
May 2006 - Denise Otterson
April 2006 - Susan Rosenwasser
March - 2006 Gary Conner
February 2006 - Chris Johnson (Irie Ied Surf Art)
January 2006 - Angelique Gettle
November 2005 - Greg Shenk
December 2005 - Fernando Mendiola
October 2005 - Noreena Manio
September 2005 - Shinichi Ono
August 2005 - Angelique Gettle
July 2005 - Douglas Eisenstark
June 2005 - Derek Quint / Ingrid Herrador
May 2005 - Gerimi Burleigh / Ingrid Herrador
April 2005 - Takeo Uedo
March 2005 - Aime Akazawa

Julie Dorsey

Julie Dorsey was born and raised in Hawaii, before moving to California. She is the eldest of six children and has a cat named Mr. Wolf. He plays fetch . . . sometimes.

Julie enjoys sculpting and sewing, painting and hair design, just to name a few. She considers herself a mixed media artist, and enjoys fusing 2-D and 3-D and well. Julie enjoys using found objects in her work, and prefers her art infused in all aspects of life. Everything can be art, everything can be sacred.

Ceramics were a focus of Julie’s for many years. Lessons of form and texture were the result; but the true passions of ceramics for Julie are glazing and the firing process: earth meets fire and air. The element of surprise. Magic and X-mas every time the kiln was opened. Earthy, organic textures and effects, like rust or moss reclaiming what humans claimed from nature. Homemade shinos, and raku are the big favorites.

In painting, Julie takes inspiration for her candy color choices from Hawaii’s tropical diversity. The yellows and the blues, the fushias and the teals are from real life experiences. California colors are more subtle, more muted in comparison, and the result is that Hawai`i-inspired colors become hyper-real, almost otherworldly in a California context. These colors are from another time, another place: Memory Eternal. This current body of work was all created while in Hollywood.

The dream worlds and the subconscious also heavily influence Julie’s compositional choices. Stream of consciousness, intuition, spontaneity. This is where inspirations come from. Self messages emerge, like sirens from the depths. Self-visions, predictions, memories, spilling from the inner mirror. Stories within stories, elusive, like cloud-gazing, contact-improvisation, tale-spinning. “I pluck essence from air, I weave riddles for my soul . Like time folding in on itself, the mind blossoming on canvas.”

Julie can be reached at

She welcomes questions, comments, e