Lara Giordano (Founder, Executive Director of The D.R.A.W.) is an arts advocate, artist, retired Kingston High School art teacher and lifelong art educator. Giordano was instrumental in the design and implementation of KCSD’s arts driven interdisciplinary curriculum and founder of the PUGG program which started as an extension of her advanced art curriculum at the high school. She is the Founder of the Department of Regional Art Workers (The D.R.A.W.) and a Board Member of Kingston Midtown Arts District (MAD). Giordano is a dedicated community member and has served on the Board of Women’s Studio Workshop, currently serves on the City of Kingston Arts Commission and is committed to equity and access to the arts and art education for all.
Lindsey A. Wolkowicz
Lindsey A. Wolkowicz is a multidisciplinary artist who’s work examines the relationship between us and the spaces we occupy by exploring memory, connection, psychodynamics and perception. Drawing is at the center of her studio practice, but her work also moves into the realm of photography, sculpture, video and performance installation through ongoing collaborative projects with Dillon Paul. Wolkowicz received her MFA in Painting/ Drawing from Pratt Institute in 2009, exhibits her work internationally and moved to Kingston from Brooklyn, NY in 2017. Wolkowicz is a 2018 O+ Festival muralist. She worked in admissions for NASAD accredited colleges for a decade and has taught drawing, painting and art history to students ranging from kindergarten to adult at Pratt Institute, Oregon College of Art & Design, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, The Educational Alliance in NYC and in various enrichment and afterschool programs. For the past six years, Wolkowicz has also co-taught an observational drawing and portfolio preparation intensive every summer in Turkey.
Judith Mohns is an artist and educator living in the Hudson Valley. Her art involves printmaking, drawing, artists’ books, photography, and sculpture. She is a NYS certified art teacher with a BFA (Photography) and MFA (Printmaking) from SUNY New Paltz, and an Ed.DCT from the Art & Art Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her doctoral research focused on first-year art students and teaching in college art programs. She has taught art studio and art education at the undergraduate and graduate level, as a workshop instructor, and as a K-12 art teacher in public schools.
Tatana Kellner
Tatana Kellner, Co-Founder of Women’s Studio Workshop, has been printing, assembling images and making prints and artists’ books for over 35 years. Kellner’s work was been featured in over 30 solo exhibitions in USA and abroad. Tatana is the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, a Puffin Foundation Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, and a Ruth Chenven Foundation Grant. She has been awarded residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Banff Centre for the Arts, Visual Studies Workshop, Saltonstall Art Colony, Millay Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Artpark, Blue Mountain Center, Jentel, Fundación Valparaiso, Hessisches Landes Museum in Darmstadt, Germany, Ucross Foundation, Bogliasco Foundation, Siena Art Institute and The Ragdale Foundation. Her work is featured in Catherine Nash’s new book, AUTHENTIC VISUAL VOICES™: Contemporary Paper and Encaustic. Kellner holds an M.F.A. from Rochester Institute of Technology and a B.A. from the University of Toledo. She has received numerous awards for her work including two New York Foundation for the Arts individual artists’ grants.
Tara Foley
Tara Foley is an experienced teaching artist, arts administrator and visual artist. In recent years, she has worked as the Art Studio Manager at the New York City Children's Museum of the Arts, a teaching artist at the Katonah Museum and has been running a Remote Learning Center for Ramapo for Children in Rhinebeck. Foley spent 4 years as the Education Director at The Wassaic Project and has taught visual arts courses to all age groups through myriad renown arts organizations and institutions. In 2013, she received her MFA from CalArts and has an ongoing collaborative project with her partner which combines music and hand drawn animation.
Marielena Ferrer
Marielena Ferrer is a socially engaged visual artist and the executive director of Humanamente, a diversity and inclusion consulting organization. Art is a growing component of Marielena’s larger desire to assist people in becoming aware of themselves and their environment as fully as possible.
Originally studying architecture at Central University of Venezuela, Marielena later earned a certificate of distinction in “Leadership and Empowerment” from Spain’s Polytechnic University of Valencia and a diploma in “Gender Leadership” through the EQUAL Transnational Cooperation Community Initiative of the European Social Fund. She also earned a University Expert Diploma in “Mental Health, Cultural Processes and Psychological Interventions with Immigrants, Minorities and the Socially Excluded” from the University of Barcelona.
“For those of us living far from our places of origin, creating colorful expressions of art helps preserve our personal and cultural identities, while maintaining a bond to the lives we knew,” she says. “It lets us explore, decide, declare, express, experience and question ideas about our identities over time.”
See her portfolio here.
Carol Struve is an artist who lives in Kingston, NY. Her works have been shown nationally and has been honored with several grants and residencies including a Studio Fellowship at Women’s Studio Workshop and the Robert Angeloch Award for Excellence in Printmaking from the Woodstock Artist Association. As former director of Herter Art Gallery at UMASS Amherst, she has curated myriad exhibitions and served as a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship panelist and. Struve earned a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and MFA from U Mass Amherst. She has taught art for 20 years including at UMASS Amherst, Bemidji State University MN, SUNY New Paltz, Dutchess Community College and SUNY Ulster.
Hannah Crisafulli (she/her) is a photographer, painter, and educator living and working in Kingston, New York. She draws artistic inspiration from abstract expressionist painters, horror films old and new alike, femininity, identity, and movement. She received her BS in Cinema and Photography with a concentration in still photography from Ithaca College in 2019, and has been using her education in the arts to promote inclusive and empowering creative spaces for young people since. Crisafulli has also shown her work in several art exhibitions, and is a James B. Pendleton Photography Award recipient and a member of the Arts Society of Kingston.
Christina Fusco
Christina Fusco is an artist and arts educator living in Kingston NY. She has taught in museums, galleries, schools and private studios for the past 7 years in NYC and the Hudson Valley. Fusco earner her Master’s Degree in Art Therapy and Creativity Development from Pratt Institute, and enjoys developing programs that focus on accessibility, making visual arts inclusive for people of any age, ability or background.
Chris O'Neal
Chris O'Neal was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He works in a range of media, from drawing and painting to poster and website design. O’Neal studied at Pratt Institute and lives and works in Kingston, New York.
Dillon Paul
Dillon Paul is a certified teacher of K-12 Visual Arts and Teacher of English to Students of Other Languages (TESOL). Her experience includes a decade teaching Media Arts at The Flushing international High School in Queens and two years teaching Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) at Dutchess BOCES. She currently teaches English as a New Language (ENL) at Fallsburg Junior Senior High School. Dillon’s goal is to create a safe and welcoming environment where English Language Learners can develop skills in reading, writing and speaking in English while learning how to express themselves through art.
Dillon Paul es una maestra certificada de artes visuales K-12 y maestra de inglés para estudiantes de otros idiomas (TESOL). Su experiencia incluye una década enseñando artes multimedia en The Flushing international High School en Queens y dos años enseñando a estudiantes con educación formal interrumpida (SIFE) en Dutchess BOCES. Actualmente enseña inglés como nuevo idioma (ENL) en Fallsburg Junior Senior High School. El objetivo de Dillon es crear un ambiente seguro y acogedor donde los estudiantes del idioma inglés puedan desarrollar habilidades de lectura, escritura y habla en inglés mientras aprenden a expresarse a través del arte.
Joe Gonzalez
Joe Gonzalez works primarily in photography but has been running creative workshops and classes for young artists for years. He teaches cartooning, theatre, photography and filmmaking and is an avid player & game master for tabletop RPGs. Gonzalez is the creator of one of the longest running podcasts in the comic book industry, Comic News Insider, and is one of the creators and producers of Art Walk Kingston.
Wayne Montecalvo
Wayne Montecalvo is a multi-disciplinary artist who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He currently lives and maintains his studio in Rosendale, New York. Montecalvo’s work has been featured in solo and two-person exhibitions at The Hall of Awa Japanese Handmade Paper, Yamakawa, Tokushima, Japan; Muroff Kotler Visual Arts Gallery, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge, NY; and CHRCH Project Space, Cottekill, NY. His awards and honors include the 2016 Awagami Artist-in-Residence Program in Japan; Two Full Fellowship Awards from the Vermont Studio Center; Two Residencies at the Frans Masereel Zentrum voor Grafiek, Kasterlee, Belgium and the John Michael Kohler Foundation Arts/Industry Artist-in-Residence, Sheboygan, WI. From 1998-2013 Montecalvo taught in the Art Department at the State University of New York, New Paltz campus. His additional teaching and related experience include R&F Handmade Paints, Pilchuck Glass School, the Printmaking Center at the College of Santa Fe, and Bard College.
Tiffany Smith
Tiffany Smith is originally from the Midwest and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. She studied photography at the University of Buffalo and at The Academy of Art University, earning her MFA in 2011. Her passion for art education started when she moved to New York City and started volunteering at the Children’s Museum of the Arts. The museum hired her to assist classes, and quickly she moved up to writing and leading her own. She has taught many children’s art workshops and camps in various mediums including photography, printmaking, sculpture, textiles, bookmaking, and more. In 2016 she moved to the Hudson Valley where she lives and teaches now. She believes all children should have access to art and that art education should be centered around experiences, allowing children to play and experiment with their ideas and materials. In her own artistic practice she is most inspired by found objects, heirlooms, nature, and folk art.
Thomas Sarrantonio
Thomas Sarrantonio studied Painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia where his teachers included Will Barnet and Sidney Goodman. He also holds degrees in Biology and English. His paintings have been exhibited widely and he is the recipient of numerous honors including a Pollock-Krasner Award, a Visiting Artist Residency in Normandy, France and an Artist Residency Fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ballycastle Ireland. Sarrantonio taught Art and Art History at SUNY New Paltz for over thirty years and he maintains a studio in Rosendale, New York where he lives with his wife and children.
Wadiah Mohammad
Wadiah Mohammad is an artist and educator of Media Arts and Visual Arts. She taught at East++ Institute for New Artistic Inquiry during her undergraduate study at SUNY Purchase. Recently, Mohammad has also been a teaching artists at Chautauqua Institute School of Art and New Color Arts Academy in Great Neck, NY. With a background in illustration, animation, and video art, Mohammad strives to help further develop students’ skill-sets and nurture their ideas.
Gregory Hedderman
Gregory Hedderman is a visual artist whose work focuses on painting and drawing, combining the personal with allegory and symbolism. He holds a BFA and MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He currently lives and works in Shokan, NY and actively exhibits his work.
Stephen Lewis
Stephen Lewis is a painter and printmaker who is work is primarily concerned with art of observation of both the sociopolitical and natural world. In that sense, his work is unique in that it inhabits two distinct genres; naturalism and political art, but the artist sees his practice as incorporating the same principals in the creation of both bodies of work -they are tied together by the artists unique ability to articulate realities that only become obvious thru monastic observation and study.
Sam Hack
Sam Hack is a visual artist, puppeteer, and art teacher. Hack was raised in New Mexico and lives in Brooklyn and Kingston, NY. As a puppeteer, they have worked with many award winning artists, both as a builder and a performer. Hack has a BFA in visual art from S.U.N.Y. Purchase, and a Masters in Art Education. They have taught students of all ages in many different learning environments, including KlezKamp, Buck’s Rock Camp, the New Victory Theater and her 15 years as a NYC public school art teacher.
Emilia Wrobel
Emilia Wrobel is a graphic designer and multidisciplinary artist from Philadelphia, PA currently living/working in Kingston, NY. She works within the realm of abstract and experimental form, creating unique images through an intuitive process. Wrobel makes digital art, print work, and short films, among other creative endeavors and collaborations. She recently graduated from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA and has a BS in Graphic Design with minors in Fine Arts, Photography, and Art History. While currently working as a freelancer, Wrobel is also working on a series of daily posters, exploring different styles and digital techniques while challenging her practice to consistently completing new work every day.
Beth Humphrey
Beth Humphrey studied printmaking at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and surface design at Oregon College of Art and Craft. She has had residencies at the Ucross Foundation and the Penland School. Humphrey was a NYFA Mark Fellow in 2009 and exhibits her work nationally. In 2005, she co-founded Art Lab, an arts based non-profit promoting affordable arts programming for children based in the Hudson Valley, and is the Education Curator for the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum.
Judith Hoyt
Judith Hoyt has been making art work with found metal, paper collage, and encaustic wax for over 35 years. She has shown her work in many group exhibitions and has had several individual shows focusing on “recycled” content in venues both nationally and internationally. Hoyt has received national honors and awards for her work which has appeared in numerous books and catalogues featuring found object art including Altered Art by Terry Taylor, 500 Brooches by Marthe Le Van and Found Object Art by Dorothy Spencer. Judith was born in the Catskill Mountains and now lives in Rosendale, NY.
Felix Olivieri
Felix Olivieri grew up in the Bronx and now lives and works in Kingston. He's always had a passion for the arts and a gift with helping young people share their talents through art expression. Olivieri has won awards, instructed workshops, exhibited in gallery shows, parades and more. Over the years he has, developed skills in video, film production, animation, web design, graphic design, package design, theater & television production and Virtual Reality art. His portfolio also includes audio recording and engineering for audio books and voice overs.
Felix Olivieri has been a digital arts educator at the Katherine Gibbs College in New York City for many years. He's developed and created numerous ground breaking projects within the Kingston community including an Art Shop in the Rondout called Olivieri's where he offered art supplies, consultation on projects and housed the area’s first commercial 3D printer. He has taught classes at the Everett Hodge Center, Rondout Recreational Center, The D.R.A.W. and others. His works have been featured in a variety of magazine's, galleries, museums, showrooms, schools, websites and videos.
As a midtown Kingston resident Felix has also volunteered his talents for the betterment of his community. He's spearheaded many projects including leading youth in the creation of multiple parade floats for the City of Kingston's Children Day Parade, decorations and costumes for the SinterKlaas Parade, audio and video production for MyKingstonKids, Radio Kingston and Rupco. He was also presented the 2nd Annual "Good Neighbor Award" by Kingston Midtown Rising in 2018. His most recent program is Art in Virtual Reality. Olivieri hopes to provide youth from all backgrounds and abilities to express their ideas and imagination through this exciting and immersive art form.
Kate Hamilton
Kate Hamilton is a sculptor, costumer, and designer based in the mid-Hudson Valley. Her practice explores the architecture, experience and nature of garments in work ranging in scale from palm-sized to room-sized. Hamilton’s kinetic sculpture has been installed in museums, galleries and alternative spaces in the USA. Her costumes and sets have appeared in art performances, events, and festivals in New York, Berlin, Canada and Zürich. She has taught body-based sculpture classes at Parsons, and taught costume to teenagers at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn and the West Kortright Center in East Meredith, NY for several years.
Maureen Cummins
Maureen Cummins received a BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art, where she studied Fine Art with an emphasis on Printmaking and Book Arts. After studying with printers and binders in California and New York, she set up a working printshop in Brooklyn, NY dedicated to producing limited-edition artist’s books, prints and works-on-paper.. She has been making limited edition artist’s books for over twenty-five years. The work of Maureen Cummins is held in over one hundred permanent public collections throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, England, Africa, New Zealand and South America. Institutional collectors include the National Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Cummins has received over a dozen major grants and awards, including the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. She has been awarded residencies throughout the United States and was recently an artist-in-residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin, Ireland.
Annie Dwyer
Originally from upstate New York, Annie Dwyer is an illustrator, cartoonist, writer and mom of three in Kingston. She studied Studio Art at Skidmore College but is mostly self-taught in her illustration, comics and animation techniques. For a number of years, she illustrated columns for Chronogram and Organic Hudson Valley. Dwyer also illustrated two children’s books for Xist Publishing: If A Dog Could Wear a Hat and There’s A Dog on the Dining Room Table.
Suky Kearney
Susanna (Suky) Kearney began drawing as a child and never stopped. She recently moved from NYC to the Hudson Valley with her husband and two young adult sons. Kearney taught art to children, teens, and adults in New York City for years and now is a working artist with a studio in Kingston, NY where she goes everyday to draw and paint. She is a professionally trained artist with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri and a Master’s in Creativity Development from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Kaitlin Patterson-Ueda
Kaitlin Patterson-Ueda is a Kingston High School and School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni. She has extensive knowledge of bookbinding, from custom made books to antique book repair. Previously employed in Manhattan at one of the only bookbinding companies in New York, she has returned home to the Hudson Valley to bring her knowledge of bookbinding upstate in hopes of revitalizing a dying art form as the owner of Little Mountain Books.
Kelly McGrath
Kelly McGrath has been a practicing artist since 2007 and Art educator since 2009. She utilizes wax, paper, plaster, wood, clay and found materials in her process driven work. She explores themes that are influenced by biologic process like growth and decay, mutation and evolution. McGrath has been invited to present and teach at R&F Handmade Paints, Women's Studio Workshop, Castle Hill Center for the Arts, Peter’s Valley and Snow Farm. She earned her BFA in Sculpture from SUNY New Paltz in 2007 and her Master’s in Art Education from Hunter College in 2019. She is currently employed at SUNY New Paltz as the Instructional Support Technician for the Sculpture Department.
This project is made possible in part through support from the County of Ulster’s Ulster County Cultural Services & Promotion Fund administrated by Arts Mid-Hudson.
Kingston Midtown Arts District and its programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
