LIVE/WORK STUDIOS

Eli Ragland and Niko Whitfill are Lubbock-born artists that work in mixed media. Eli works primarily as an oil painter and Niko regularly works across media-together they seek to create common experience between their artwork and organizing. They host DIY style musical shows, inviting musicians from across the US to share their space with local acts. Inspired by religious and mystical iconography from the Dharmic tradition to the tarot of the Cathars, both artists work to flesh out a pantheon of their own visual dialect. Fish, dogs, snakes, and bird populate their work as a 'becoming-animal,' or, as they seek to melt the line between ones own creative urge and the creative endeavor of the community of people, places, animals, and things that comprise a creative encounter.

CASP has given me and my studio mate space and exposure to focus in on our crafts. We expanded our music venue project to reach a regular audience of creatively minded folks. Our paintings, sculptures, and prints got bigger and better with the regular relationship to the variety of people Lubbock's culture supplies FFAT with.