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INSTRUCTOR BIOS

Haley Barber will graduate Lesley University in 2012 with a double major in Early Childhood Education and Environmental Science. During her time at Lesley she is a member of the Oxford Street Players in which she has stage managed for Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew and Love’s Labour’s Lost. Haley is currently the Stage Manager for the theatre company First and Last Chance Productions LLC for the show Lilacs and A Grand Ole Night at the Opry.

Charlie Barmonde is a Rhode Island based ceramicist.  He has been working in clay for over fifteen years as an artist, production potter, educator and most recently as a gallerist. Charlie draws his inspiration from his life as a mariner and from the tension between quiddity and repetition.

Rebecca Brazil is a licensed Musikgarten teacher, and has a bachelor of music degree in music education as well as a master of music degree in voice performance and pedagogy. She is the musical director for the Jamestown Community Theater and has taught music to all ages in and out of the classroom. She has lived in Jamestown her entire life and loves to share her love of music with everyone around her.

Kim Chandler is the founder and director of Innerlight. A former resident of Kripalu Center, Kim directed Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training and was Associate Director of the Kripalu Yoga Teachers Association. She has since been influenced by a variety of traditions, and for the past decade she has focused on the practice of Anusara Yoga®. Kim’s teaching style combines structural alignment principles with the contemplative aspects of yoga. With a keen eye towards alignment, she offers individual attention to students within the context of a group class. Students new to yoga will be well supported by her guidance and continuing students will be inspired by her fresh insights.

Emily Coble is a student at Hampshire College and a life long artist. She has taught art classes previously for the Jamestown Arts Center and was a favorite youth sailing instructor at the Wickford Yacht Club for several years.

Elizabeth Congdon has an affinity for French Impressionist and Italian Renaissance techniques. Working with natural tea-toned linen she creates paintings of vibrant color and texture. Drawn to paint outdoors on Nantucket in what she calls “the last hurrah of afternoon light”, she returns often to Gibbs Pond and the moors to capture in paint a message of “ heart, hope, and beauty”. Her studio still life paintings express the same message in a rich mix of flowers, fabrics, family heirlooms, and mystery in a pure and saturated palette. 

Ben Ellcome has a BFA, in studio art and photography from Alfred University, NY, and has been working in the Newport area for 10 years doing visual arts, public arts and youth development. He has worked at the MET school, the Boys and Girls Club and the Women's Resource Center.

Nancy Escher is a certified teacher of Shiva Rea's Prana Flow yoga at the 200-hour level and is working towards her 500-RYT. Influenced by the dynamic, breath inspired journeys of Prana Flow, Nancy’s classes encourage students to explore energetic alignment to truly embody their yoga practice. She offers diverse and creative Vinyasa classes that blend both classical and innovative styles. She teaches to share the remarkable power of yoga. The power to heal and enhance health, and the power to bring clarity and acceptance into every day. Nancy also teaches yoga to children and teens. She is a trained YogaMinded-Yoga 4 Teens instructor and a Radiant Child Children's Yoga instructor, RCYP Levels 1-3. Nancy also teaches at Innerlight in Middletown and All That Matters in Wakefield.

Fran Gorman
MAE Art Education, Rhode Island School of Design
BS Art Education, Rhode Island College
Art Educator, Jamestown Schools K-8
Program Assistant, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Adult and Children's Programs
Director, Jamestown Gallery
Artist

Ross Harris is a long-time photographer who has shown his work in galleries and museums. He developed a photography curriculum for high-school students and wrote a book describing his approach, “Making Photographs,” published by Van Nostrand Reinhold. He has also taught photography to adults in workshop settings. After years of working in the darkroom, he now uses a digital camera and edits and prints his work on his computer. Ross believes that learning to photograph means learning to see in a new way, experiencing a sense of wonder at the amazing world we live in, and sharing one’s discoveries with others.

Kimberly Holcombe is a professional photographer shooting primarily commercial work in the fashion and beauty industry. More valuable than the BFA in Fine Arts she received, was the endless classes at the Maine Photo Workshops (now the Maine Media Center). She jumped into digital capture the day she heard about it back in 1996 and has been on top of the technology ever since. She lived in Milan, Italy with thousands of other eager fashion photographers and then moved to New York City to compete with the same talented bunch. After 10 years of the weekend commute to Rhode Island, she now lives in Jamestown full time, but travels back to NYC and anywhere else work takes her.

Hadley Johnstone received her BA in art history from Connecticut College and taught art at St Micheals in Newport for 4 years and at the Newport Art Museum for 20 years. Hadley has also taught workshops at St Georges. Her work has been exhibited at the Newport Art Museum, deBolis Gallery, Spring Bull Gallery and Arnold Arts. Starting this summer she will be attending the New York Studio School.

John Kotula is an artist, writer and arts educator who has been making art for 60 years. He has extensive experience teaching both adults and young people. He is currently the arts coordinator at The East Bay Met School in Newport.

James Langston is a furniture maker, figurative sculptor and interior designer, draws the figure for fun more than profit. He has taught and been inspired by his talented friends and 30,000 years of two dimensional images. He has various RISD classes under his belt. He also owns at least eight books on drawing .

Peter Marcus Peter Marcus creates large-scale experimental prints inspired by and based on architecture, and his work attests to his technical mastery of the printmaking process. He has exhibited widely across the United States, including New York and Chicago, and internationally in the Netherlands. He has always favored intaglio printing, referring to any image created from a recessed design in a plate, and has used this as a base for experimentation, often combining digital photography with his prints. His innovative technique of bonding coated paper to canvas permits his large-scale presentation without the distortion of glazing, a technique that challenges the distinction between printmaking and painting. Complex patterns and textures draw the viewer into his work, with space-defining areas of color applied over primarily black-and-white collagraphs, a form
of intaglio printing related to engraving and etching.In 2011 Marcus received The Excellence in Teaching Printmaking Award at the Southern Graphics Council International Conference.

Miranda Maxwell has been a professional artist in NYC and LA since 2002. She has a Fine Arts Degree from Syracuse University. Ms. Maxwell has also taught Art classes at numerous schools and after-school art programs ranging from kindergarten to high-school students.

Mary Beth Murphy is a former professional ballet dancer with the Island Moving Co. who has practiced and taught Pilates and dance since 1984 at Newport Academy of Ballet, Providence Ballet, and Rhode Island College. Her B.A. in Biology, in conjunction with a 25 year career as a dancer, gives her a unique working knowledge of the body.

Allison Newsome received a MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from Chico State University. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Newport Art Museum and Federal Museum Jualas de Palanco, Mexico City, Mexico and her scultures are in the permanent collection of The RISD Museum, the Newport Art Museum, Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama, and The Beatrice Wood Museum. Allison presently teaches "Clay and the Figure" at Harvard University and the Boston Museum.

Seth Rainville is a professional potter from Dartmouth, Massachusetts. He has shown in major exhibitions and galleries across the country, and his work can also be found in major collections and museums across the globe. Seth has an extensive background in education as well, having developed the ‘Phoenix Center for the Arts’ Ceramics Program and has also conducted over 30 workshops at Colleges, Universities, Art Centers, and Artists Studios reaching as far away as Seward, Alaska. Seth is known for his Narrative Porcelain Vessels called “Ink-ware” and can be found currently at the ‘Ferrin Gallery’ in Pittsfield Massachusetts and at ‘Santa Fe Clay’ in Santa Fe New Mexico.

Sky Sabin is a musician, filmmaker, and photographer. He received a BA from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, with a concentration in music composition. He has performed his original songs in Boston, Providence, New York, and Cork, Ireland. His first short film, “At The Heart Is The Guitar,” debuted at the Woods Hole Film Festival in 2010. Since then Sky has made a variety of short films about local agriculture for Buy Fresh Buy Local Cape Cod, filmed the Boston GuitarFest 2010, created a how to video about backyard chickens, and has been making surf and skate videos for local shops in Newport, RI.

Ernie Savastano
Coleman Art Center
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Cape School of Art
Conanicut Island Art Association, President 2010-2011
Botega Studio and Art Center, owner

Natalie Squillante was raised in Saunderstown, Rhode Island. Her interest in clay grew throughout the many pottery classes at North Kingstown High School. She spent five years in Portland, Maine studying at Maine College of Art.  She now resides in Newport and has her BFA in Ceramics and Art Teacher Certification K-12.

Gray Twombly studied at Alfred University and Rhode Island College in ceramic art.  Gray has worked as a ceramics instructor at a summer camp in Starlight, Pennsylvania teaching children ages 7-17.  He continues to make artwork out of my home studio in Jamestown, RI. 

Casey Weibust holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. She teaches Introduction to Printmaking courses at Lawn and Melrose Schools in Jamestown in the after school programs.

Will Wilson is a Jamestown resident and nationally sydicated cartoonist who has been illustrating professionaly for eight years. He has had two cartoon collections published and his comic "Ordinary Bill" appears in the Jamestown Press. All in all, just a big goof ball and wonderful teacher.