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Seth Apter
I am a mixed media artist, instructor, designer, shopkeep, and author from New York City. I came to the world of art later in life, transitioning from a full-time career as a psychologist to being a full-time artist and maker. My artistic practice is based on the concepts of community and collaboration, and I believe in the power of art to bring people together. My work has been exhibited in multiple exhibitions and can be found in numerous books and national magazines. I have also published two books of my own, The Pulse of Mixed Media and The Mixed-Media Artist, with North Light Books. My love of the creative energy that occurs when artists are brought together has led me to spend a great deal of time teaching workshops - both online and in person across the world. As a designer, I have created collections with many companies over the years, including FreeSpirit Fabrics, Impression Obsession, StencilGirl Products, Spellbinders, Emerald Creek Craft Supplies, WOW, Aladine, and PaperArtsy. Art for me is everything and sharing the process in all these different forms makes it even better.
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Michelle Armstrong
Michelle Newby Armstrong was the visual arts teacher at Cardinal Valley Elementary school in Lexington, KY for 31 years. As an activist and artist, she combines her understanding of art and the power that it has to bring beauty and convey a message. She has collaborated with a variety of artists and organizations to celebrate art in the community. Through these efforts she has created many public works of art and has exhibited in several local galleries and hosted workshops, celebrations, and exhibitions. Michelle’s studio is located in LuigART Studios in Lexington, KY where she is fortunate to spend time with several talented artists. Her artwork is often inspired by nature with the hope that we can learn to work together to create a healthier planet.
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Patrick Armstrong
Patrick Armstrong is known as a master craftsman in Lexington. His work has excellent attention to detail, and exemplary quality throughout. His wide range of fabrication and tool skills afford a unique approach to the problem solving that naturally occurs during a project. His work is found in some of the finest homes and businesses in Lexington, KY, Including La Belle House (former George Headley residence) and Epping's Restaurant. In addition to his contracting work, he is also part of a support network for local artists including his father Steve Armstrong, his stepmother Diane Kahlo, and his wife Michelle Armstrong. His artistic endeavors include collaboration on a number of pieces with his father, including a mechanical zoetrope that imparted motion to carved wooden dancers. His wide range of skills make him an essential part of any arts team and his passion for the visual arts makes him an outstanding art teacher.
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Thomas Ashman
Hailing from Salt Lake City Utah, Thomas Ashman now lives and works in the magical town of Taos, NM, and is a book binder, doll maker, and mixed media artist who likes to create with one foot in the light and one foot firmly in the dark. Reveling in the irony of juxtaposition, Thomas starts with forgotten toys, discarded dolls, rusty metal, and other resurrected materials, then breathes a new and interesting life into these abandoned objects by transforming them into macabre story-tellers and unexpectedly complex studies of the literary characters and supernatural deities that inspire him. The haunting images adorning the covers of his glass and metal journals give his work a kind of classical darkness that conjures a spooky and ‘old-fashioned’ aesthetic.
Coming from an academic background with a degree in English literature and music, his visual art explorations began back in the early 2000’s, and have allowed him to travel all over the country to teach his original “no-sew” metal book binding technique, and other workshops, at local shops and national retreats such as Artfest, Art & Soul, Art Unraveled, Create, Art Continuum, et.al. Thomas exhibits locally whenever he can, and has had his work published in Cloth, Paper, Scissors, and Somerset Studio magazines, and has received a few awards in juried exhibitions.
When he isn’t in the studio, Thomas enjoys camping, kayaking, skiing, reading, educational podcasts, horror movies, live music, and banging his head and his drums, as often as possible (with a particular affection for classic heavy metal skullduggery). Thomas also loves just hanging out in his his 100+ year old adobe abode, baking cookies, growing flowers and vegetables, and watching true crime shows with his four favorite ladies. Leighanna, Lily, Peetie, and Jessie, and an ornery ol’ gato gordo named Hairy B.
ThomasAshmanArt@yahoo.com
www.blacksheepartist.com
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Lisa Bebi
Lisa Bebi, since a small child, has loved two things: looking through snapshots in her family album and painting as expression. For over three decades, the San Diego native has married these two things together, and her work has received international awards and recognition for its content, style, and color. Lisa received her BA in fine arts from SDSU, where she developed as a colorist, straddling representation with abstraction. Daughter of a journalist, Lisa always finds ways to tell the untold story she sees in snapshots. “I love the authenticity of the snapshot. It’s a single moment in time but by painting it I can extend that moment, revel in it and bring to life characters and scenarios that I fancy. Working this way gives me enormous pleasure.” She extracts the “behind, the behind” using innovative techniques and finesse. Over the course of her life she has received awards, accolades, and endorsements. She has been a longtime contributor to many international mixed-media magazines and several books; has taught in artist residencies locally and internationally; is a Golden Paints educator; and is often a local juror.
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Sunny Carvalho
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Pam Cooke
Pam is a full-time science teacher and a part-time artist, indulging her imagination by creating whimsical characters of polymer clay. After dabbling in many forms of mixed media art, Pam found her niche in polymer clay sculpture after taking several classes taught by Lisa Renner.
Pam enjoys trail running near her home in Northern California and was recently able to be a kidney donor.
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Gail Crosman Moore
There is a richness on many levels regarding Gail’s rudimentary forms of inspiration. Pods, eggs, seeds and seashells serve to hide, conceal and protect a vulnerable interior as it offers unseen potential: opening doors to hope, beauty and mystery. Gail’s pieces come from a place where biology and botany might meet time travel. Seeds, pods, bones, cocoons, shells, cells and eggs; the evidence of lives previously lived or in the process of becoming, are some of what capture her attention and drive her to interpret the forms that embody the essence of emergence, evolution and potential. Its the yin-yang, push-pull, hard-soft, shiny-mat, cold warm dichotomy that intrigues her and calls her to juxtapose many different materials. Everything starts with a seed, a thought, an action. Her body of work has grown out of that inspiration and imagery for many years, starting with an education in horticulture which set the stage for a lifetime of honoring this basic life form. She uses the pod as metaphor to illustrate the exceptional phases of life. Pods house seeds and hidden potential. Seeds emerge into life, meant to reproduce. Life fades, husks decay and are reclaimed by the earth. This full circle serves to enrich her personal experience and emboldens her to share what she has learned and practiced with students the world around. She can be found exhibiting at craft shows that have included The Smithsonian Craft Show, The Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show and The League of New Hampshire Craft Shows as well as various Bead Shows worldwide. Teaching where invitations take her including Japan, Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and The Bahamas all add to a rich pool of visual resource and wonderful human connections. www.gailcrosmanmoore.com https://gail.bigcartel.com Etsy: VenerableElements Gail Crosman Moore - multi- medium designer, teacher and photographer with an eye for the unusual and beautiful realm of Nature.
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Helen Driggs
Helen Driggs is the former Jewelry Group Technical Editor for Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist magazine and an experienced metalsmith. Her popular column “Cool Tools & Hip Tips” and Metalsmith Essentials video library from Interweave Press make her a popular and sought-after instructor on the show circuit. Her newest book, Metal Jewelry Workshop was published in 2018. Helen holds a BFA from Moore College of Art and is a passionate handcraft enthusiast.
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Sulie Girardi
Sulie Girardi was born in Chicago, but has lived in Vienna, Austria for the past 30 years, where she owns and operates Vienna Expressions Studio. Sulie has obtained the Art Clay Levels 1,2 and Teachers Certificate/Higher Diploma, as well as the Metal Clay Diploma from the Cornwall School of Jewelry. She teaches in her own studio and is also a frequent guest instructor in the US. Sulie’s work has been published in numerous magazines in Europe and the US, and has won awards in the Fire Mountain Gems and Beads Jewelry Competition and Bead Dreams. She is featured in a number of instructional videos on Craftcast.com.
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Micah Goguen
Micah Goguen grew up in Central Georgia and obtained his Bachelors in Art and Art History and his Masters in Art Therapy from Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville. He focuses primarily on bringing art to the community and using art as a form of communication for those struggling to understand and cope with life situations.
Goguen produces work while teaching art to both adults and children. He also volunteers time at the local community center and works with adults in alcohol and substance recovery as well as uprooted and traumatized children. Using mural work, art for entertainment and art therapy for healing, Micah collaborates with school systems, local shops, and non-profits to help unify and most importantly “spread a message”. The overall vision is to focus and rededicate back to a buy local, shop local mentality that strengthens community through unity and purpose.
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Dar James
Dar James is a full-time mixed media artist, writer, and illustrator of six children’s picture books. A lifelong teacher and workshop leader, she is trained by Golden Acrylics and is a Silver Brush Educator. Based in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, she exhibits regionally, facilitates annual art retreats for women, and leads online courses that focus on expanding color understanding and building a strong foundation in acrylic mediums through experimentation and play. She has been a featured instructor for Drew Steinbrecher's Collage Maker's Summit, Este MacLeod's Colori Flori, Lifebook by Willowing and Sonheim Productions.
About her work, Dar says: “Color is always my way in. Every mark becomes a decision that leads to the next—what I call ‘rocks to sand,’ a process of building form and meaning step by step. My imagery grows from nature, but it lives in imagination. To be an artist is to live in wonder, and I love helping others find their way there.”
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Erin Keck
An Assemblage Artist residing in Mechanicsburg, Pa., Erin Keck's artwork results from re purposing found discarded objects. She loves to breathe new life into castaways from yesteryear. Erin's artwork is shown and sold in three prestigious art galleries in Pa. The 2nd Floor in Mechanicsburg, Pa, Village Artisans Gallery in Boiling Springs, Pa, and Perry County Council Of The Arts in Newport, Pa. She has been a Featured Artist in two of the galleries with Private Showings. Recently Erin's work has been published in the book, “1000 Steampunk Creations” by Grymm. Seven of her pieces were chosen for this book. She has taught community craft classes on a monthly basis from 2007 – 2010, and has taught classes at the Charmed I'm Sure Studio owned by friend and colleague and fellow Art & Soul instructor, Jean Van Brederode. Erin has lectured at the Central Pa. Bead and Jewelry Society, and has also taught private classes in her home studio. She has attended Art & Soul retreats for the past three years, and values the inspiration and knowledge that she has received from the Art & Soul instructors.You can see more of Erin's artwork at www.EKCreations.etsy.com. (be sure to view her sold items.)
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Kathy Murphy
With over two decades of hands-on experience, and 14 years as sole proprietor of Macon Mud Pottery Studio in Macon, GA., I have established a career as a multidisciplinary maker, although my primary medium is clay. Trained initially in architecture, I transitioned into art to pursue a “simpler life”. What could be more simple that mud? Whether in the studio or the classroom, I am process driven. For as long as I can remember, I have been a “maker”, and the process of creating is more important to me than the medium.
Artistic Philosophy: As both a maker and educator, I am driven by the belief that each step of the creative journey offers an opportunity for discovery. My architectural background informs a disciplined approach to structure and composition, while my love of traditional craft techniques keeps the work grounded. Whether shaping clay, carving linoleum, forging metal, or building three-dimensional forms, I try to foster an environment where experimentation and skill‐building go hand in hand.
For inquiries about workshops, commissions, or collaborations, please contact:
Kathy Murphy maconmud@gmail.com maconmud.com IG:@maconmudpottery
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Susan Schenk
Collage is a wonderful way to wake up the sleeping artist within. Collages are unique individual expressions, just like the artists are. I am exploring a range of subjects without a political agenda, welcoming the technical challenge of making realistic renderings from recycled materials. I enjoy making something attractive from discards, appropriating images and putting them together in intriguing ways. Like any artist, I am especially thrilled when my work calls to a viewer to come closer and spend some time engaged in the piece. While my pictorial collages are best viewed from a distance, a close up inspection can reveal a very different piece of art.
"My goal as an artist is to let my work bring joy to the viewer."
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Lynne Suprock
Lynne Suprock is a creative mixed-media designer, writer, and instructor, making a difference through art. She believes through art, the opportunity for emotional or physical healing truly exists.
As a mixed media artist, Lynne uses a variety of products in her work, such as enamel, metal, clay, paint and fabric.
Her work has been published extensively in several journals published by Stampington & Company, as well as in Cloth, Paper, Scissors and Lark Book, Showcase 500 Art Necklaces.
She served as a 2015-2016 design team member for Amazing Casting Products, and has been the featured fabric artist for Gel Press.
Lynne has been recently featured on seven episodes of the PBS show, Make It Artsy, (Season 3, 5, 6 and7) which aired between 2017-2019. Some of those episodes can also be found on the Make It Artsy website at:
https://www.makeitartsy.com/
Www.lynnesuprock.blogspot.com
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Kate Thompson
Kate's experience as a fiber artist was working with fabric and fiber to create abstract 3-dimensional forms. In 2009 she started painting and hasn't stopped since. Her current work is the combination of the two disciplines. Using watercolors, acrylics, inks and pastels she paints on substrates such as layered vintage linens, fabrics, laces, plaster, paper and wood. The portrait or figure is the focal point and she works at creating images that parallel her spiritual and personal life.
She teaches art online and on location. She is as passionate about teaching as she is creating. The creative process is where all the energy is and she loves and gets energized by sharing her artistic journey.
To learn more about Kate visit her at:
www.fracturedangelics.blogspot.com
fracturedangelics.com
facebook.com/katethompsonartist
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Jean VanBrederode
Jean van Brederode is the founder of Charmed I'm Sure Studio and Enamel Warehouse, an artist and instructor specializing in enameled jewelry and glass casting. She is a retired teacher who now teaches art, sells her work on platforms like Etsy, and has an online presence, including an Instagram account under the handle @charmedimsurestudio.
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Chelsea "Sparks" Weiss
Chelsea Weiss (aka Chelsea Sparks) is a mixed-media artist, designer, and storyteller whose work celebrates curiosity, texture, and joyful experimentation. With a background in Graphic and Interior Design, Chelsea has spent over two decades exploring the boundless intersections of art and design. Her creative practice spans acrylic and alcohol ink painting, resin collage, assemblage, wearable art, and textile transformation, often incorporating hand-painted and vintage fabrics into one-of-a-kind creations.
Drawn to materials that feel lived-in and layered, Chelsea’s work plays with contrast—where colors collide, textures converse, and a hint of sparkle brings unexpected delight. Each piece she creates is an experiment in narrative and energy, inviting viewers to look closer and feel the story within the layers.
As an instructor, Chelsea is passionate about sharing the joy of artistic discovery. Known affectionately as “Chelsea Sparks,” she inspires others to embrace play, imperfection, and imagination—the very moments where creative magic ignites.
