Joni Bishop - Everyday Miracles (1995)

Joni Bishop is an artist who uses two mediums to express her creative side. On one hand, she is a singer/songwriter of folk music who won a competition among new musical artists during the 1987 Kerrville Folk Festival. On the other hand, she is a visual artist who employs bold hues in her collection of portraits of legendary musicians and singers who made their mark in the genres of blues, jazz, and gospel, including Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Mississippi John Hurt, and Billie Holiday. Bishop, whose real name is Ilze Platais, has put out four albums, including the Bonneville Worldwide Entertainment (BWE) release Endless Christmas. The collaboration with Electra Reed offers holiday tunes in both Latvian and English. Originally released in 1993, the recording was reissued five years later. BWE, located in Salt Lake City, UT, also released her 1997 album Threads. Tours have taken Bishop across North America and to the Far East and the U.K., and she has played festivals in Latvia, Ireland, England, and the Netherlands. Her interest in music emerged when she was a teenager and she began to play the guitar. She listened to albums from her brother's collection, releases that included works by Peter, Paul & Mary, Odetta, Hurt, and Joan Baez, to whom some critics later compared her. Drawn to the faces on the albums' covers, Bishop started sketching them. ~ Linda Seida