Meet Our Artists
Heather Young
Heather L. Young lives and works just outside her hometown of Savannah, Georgia. Formally trained in illustration at the Savannah College of Art & Design, she draws inspiration from her coastal Southern heritage and her love of moss-draped live oak trees.
Heather’s delicate pen and ink drawings explore both the linear elements of architecture and the more organic forms found in Southern flora. She has detailed the sprawling branches of live oaks across the Southeast, and her work can be found in collections both nationally and abroad.
While she enjoys the technical aspects of drawing, her heart lies in painting. Through her distinctive oil wash technique, Heather applies thin layers of paint to the surface, then carefully subtracts pigment with erasers to build rich values and depth. The resulting work offers a contemporary approach to oil painting, revealing a nuanced interplay of color, light, and surface texture.
Heather serves on the executive board of the nonprofit Arts on the Coast and is a contributing arts writer for Reflections Magazine.
When she’s not in the studio, Heather enjoys spending time with her husband and two sons, exploring the ever-changing landscape of the Lowcountry.
Dicky Stone
Throughout much of his adult life, trees and wood have played an important role in his work. His paternal grandfather introduced him to woodworking at the age of ten, teaching him furniture repair and refinishing. Although he did not particularly enjoy it at the time, in retrospect, it marked the beginning of a lifelong journey of learning, exploring, working with, and loving wood.
All the wood he uses is indigenous to North America and, in most cases, locally sourced. He never uses endangered tropical hardwoods, nor does he intentionally cut down trees solely for their wood. Much of his material comes from friends. Because of the local nature of his raw materials, he knows something of the history of almost every piece of wood he works with. In most cases, he knows where the tree grew, the people connected to it, something of its life, often far too much about its death, and how old it was when it died.
For him, the process of working with these materials and creating something from them is deeply spiritual. When he successfully transforms a piece of wood into something new, the tree lives on in another form, hopefully one of beauty. The story of the wood, the process of working with it, and the finished creation are all equally important to him.
His artistic influences are varied and deeply personal. Buckminster Fuller inspired him through his innovative designs, particularly as the first house he built was a geodesic dome. George Nakashima and Sam Maloof influenced him through their pioneering furniture designs, while Betty Scarpino was the first woodturner whose work truly captivated him. Richard Raffan's books became an invaluable source of knowledge, which he studied for months before daring to pick up a turning tool. Finally, William Hunter and David Ellsworth remain significant influences, artists whose mastery and craftsmanship he deeply admires.
Daniella Bester
Daniella Bester is a South African illustrator and visual artist whose interest in art began at an early age. She studied Graphic Design for three years before completing an Honours degree in Illustration. Her background in both disciplines has shaped her creative approach, allowing her to combine design and illustration throughout her career. Through her freelance business, Daniella Illustrations, she has worked on a variety of projects, including illustration commissions, logo design and other creative work.
Her personal practice is rooted in traditional mediums, particularly watercolor, watercolor pencils and fine liners. She is drawn to organic forms, intricate details and the freedom of creating unusual little creatures and imagined worlds. Rather than working on a large scale, she often prefers smaller, detailed compositions that invite closer observation. Her work is influenced by artists such as Piet Grobler, whose imaginative approach to illustration resonates with her own creative interests.
Over the years, Daniella’s style has gradually shifted away from vibrant colour towards a more monochromatic approach. She has developed a particular interest in black-and-white illustration, using line, texture and contrast to explore the expressive qualities of drawing. For her, art is primarily a form of self-expression and an opportunity to explore ideas through imagination and experimentation. Her creative process allows room for curiosity, spontaneity and the freedom to develop each piece naturally.
Joy Dunigan
Joy Dunigan is a photographer, mixed media artist, and graphic designer whose work explores the relationships between place, culture, and preservation. Deeply rooted in her family’s ties to Savannah and the Lowcountry, her art reflects a connection to the land and water that sustained generations before her.
Her family’s history on Callawassie Island—as agricultural laborers, hunters, fishermen, and caregivers—shaped an enduring appreciation for her surroundings as a source of sustenance, wonder, and belonging. Raised among enthusiastic family storytellers who documented their lives through photographs and home movies, she came to understand image making as both creative expression and purpose.
For nearly 30 years, Dunigan has built a successful career in advertising, marketing, and design, with work spanning high-performance yacht racing, international trade, business aviation, nonprofit organizations, event marketing, and public relations. She founded her independent studio, JOY, in 2003. Her commercial practice and fine art continually inform one another, bringing the precision and visual discipline of design into conversation with a more personal exploration of imagery and concept.
Influenced by music, film, fashion, and magazine culture, her work ranges from unadorned photography to mixed media compositions that pair bright colors and polished surfaces with soft focus and abstraction. These contrasts invite viewers to consider the tension and harmony between the traditional and the modern.
Dunigan holds a B.F.A. in Graphic Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design and owns Photopoint Gallery in Richmond Hill, Georgia. Her work has appeared in group exhibitions at ArtFields, Telfair Museums, Sulfur Studios, Location Gallery, SouthxSoutheast Gallery, Arts on the Coast Gallery, and Photopoint Gallery.
Teake Zuidema
Teake Zuidema
Teake Zuidema (1953) grew up in the Netherlands where he studied cultural anthropology and specialized in the use of photography and film in anthropological research. He did his anthropological fieldwork and made a documentary film while living in a community of Maya campesinos in Mexico. After that, he became a freelance photographer. In his career he photographed wars in Middle America, religious rituals and customs in countries like Brazil and Bhutan, and he worked for travel magazines like National Geographic Traveler and newspapers like the Guardian and many others. He thought photography and darkroom techniques at the photographic center De Moor in Amsterdam. In 1995 he moved to Pittsburgh, PA where he continued his work producing photo stories about ecology, science and technology that were published widely. After moving to Savannah in 2021, he turned to landscape photography. He traveled along the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina and became a member of the Kobo Gallery in downtown Savannah. In 2025, with a Sea Grant from the University of Georgia, he exhibited his project Living on the Edge at Arts Southeast in Savannah. This project shows the difficult lives of trees living on the edges of the forest and the marsh, the forest and the river, and the forest and the beach. He currently works on a photobook with coastal landscapes from Georgia and South Carolina. This book will be published by the University of Georgia Press.
Antoine de Villiers (Antoinette Louw)
Antoine de Villiers (also known as Antoinette Louw, BoHouse’ owner/designer and host) is a lifelong traveler with an artist’s soul. Working across multiple mediums, her art remains deeply personal, shaped by a life of exploration, adversity, and resilience.
During a difficult childhood marked by her parents’ struggles with mental illness, Antoine survived a devastating motorcycle accident that claimed her friend’s life. Days later, her meticulously kept diaries were stolen, taking away her primary means of expression. Art became her new voice—and a means of survival.
Rejecting a conventional path, Antoine abandoned her Graphic Communication studies to backpack through Europe and the UK, finding greater inspiration in museums than classrooms. She later earned a Web Design Diploma with Student of the Year honors before moving to the United States, where she explored 46 states, studied marble sculpture and yoga, and exhibited internationally.
In 2014, Antoine moved to India, where she spent five years exploring South Asia while studying photography, Reiki, Indian art, modern art, and philosophy, including coursework through Oxford Continuing Education. She also taught art to marginalized women and children, from the brothels of Old Delhi to the slums of Maharashtra.
Today, Antoine lives in Savannah, Georgia, with her husband and two sons. Her work has appeared in over 70 exhibitions across the globe, including England, India, South Africa, and the United States.
Her numerous accolades include Best Figurative Artist at the Richmond Art Museum (2007), Best Solo Artist at Art Expo New York (2009), First Place in Figurative Painting from Artrepreneur (2020), and the Excellence Award at Art San Diego (2022).
Her original artworks are held in public and private collections worldwide.
Freddie Higdon
Based in Rincon, Georgia, Freddie Higdon transforms discarded metal into whimsical, one-of-a-kind bird sculptures. After losing his job at Gulfstream, Freddie invested in a welder, sparking the beginning of his creative journey into scrap metal art. Drawing on his experience repairing lawnmowers, he repurposes old machine parts alongside scrap metal collected from friends and neighbors. His rustic, imaginative creations give forgotten materials new life, celebrating the beauty of recycling, resourcefulness, and creativity.