The founding Collective
Cone9Colab is built on equal creative partnership.
Three artists. One shared philosophy. Infinite possibilities when we work together.
With open chair policy to collaborate with guest artists
Robert Diken
I am a self-taught artist and a firm believer that art can be anything and belongs to everyone.
My creative journey began where most honest things do — without a plan. Watercolor landscapes came first, a way of learning to see. Then came clay, hand-built and fired, and with it a question that changed everything: what if imperfection is the point? That question led me to the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi — the beauty found in asymmetry, roughness, the natural arc of growth and decay. It became less a philosophy and more a practice: stay in the moment, trust the material, let the work arrive without forcing it.
Today I work across watercolor, collage, assemblage, sculpture, ceramics, and photography.
SIMON KELLER
Simon’s motif is gestalt in its infinite manifestations. He works with clay, preferably wild clay and other remarkable natural objects he mostly finds in nature. Experiencing the geological metabolism of clay is a journey of lifelong learning and awe ever since he was a child. He facilitates tiny instantaneous accelerations in sculpting, turning or painting. Forging the clay in the intense heat of the kiln and fusing it with natural ash glaze and relies only on bare necessities to create. His work is an open-ended series of takes. Meetings of moments in life with deep time. Some effortless, some struggling, intense or chill. Each is a unique expression experiencing deep time, real and now.
John marron
John is a Zen writer, artist, publisher, Family System Life Coach and lay monk student of Robert Aitken Roshi, Manfred Steger, Perle Besserman, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Krishna Das & Dogen Zenji.
John’s art work embraces Wabi-Sabi, Dada, pure play, chance, sumi-e gestural abstraction and poured acrylic. More recently John has completed multimedia commissions to address food insecurity, LGBTQA+ rights, income inequality and climate change.
John is also a passionate community organizer and activist.
collaborating artists
One of the things that makes Cone9Colab unique is our open chair policy. For select events, we invite special guests to join the collective — artists whose work and philosophy align with the Wabi-Sabi aesthetic and who bring something unexpected to the table. These collaborations keep our work fresh, unpredictable, and alive. Like a pop-up super group, no two Cone9Colab events are exactly the same.
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Frank May
Artist / Owner @ M Galleries
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Nolan Yamashiro
Photographer
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Spencer Soletto
Butoh Dancer / Haiku Poet
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Ben Vogler
Ceramic Sculptor
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Eric Spencer
Paper Word Cutter
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NEVE
Actor, Singer, Dancer, Choreographer, Writer
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Marek Benczewski
Ink Painter
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Benjamin Heidersberger
Media and Sound Art, Journalist
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Grace LaForge
Ceramic Artist