Instructor Web Site

Anne Bagby

Anne Bagby is a signature member of the American Watercolor Society and the National Watercolor Society. She is a fine artist who is intrigued by anything involving paper, paint and glue. She began working with rubber stamps years ago, experimenting with watercolor, acrylic and oil, leading her to develop her unique "painting without a brush" technique. She has learned that anything about paint will translate into any form: artist's books, puppets, Christmas cards, as well as a painting. Anne has developed workshops to introduce stamp artists to paint and taking their art to a new level, while at the same time teaching watercolor artists how to make textures and patterns by introducing them to rubber stamps!

Anne has had numerous articles featured in fine art publications and stamping magazines and was featured in a one-person show in Nashville in April 2004, in addition to her annual Christmas show in Winchester, Tennessee.

Instructor Web Site

Nina Bagley

Nina has been an artist for as long as she can remember in the sense of channeling an insane, intense desire to simply CREATE. Since 1988, she has been a professional jewelry designer, and has been teaching mixed media/jewelry workshops, both in the United States and abroad, since 2000. 

• Visit Nina's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Traci Bautista

Traci is creative director and owner of treiC Designs. She has a Bachelor of Science degree from Woodbury University, with a major in Graphic Design and Marketing. Prior to becoming a full-time artist, Traci Bautista held jobs as a graphic designer, event planner, marketing director, professional cheerleader, elementary art history teacher, fashion designer, Web designer, and tradeshow manager - just to name a few. Experiences that she gained in these positions, coupled with her innate drive to explore and create without boundaries are what contribute to her growing success as a collage and mixed-media artist.

Traci travels across the country to offers workshops and classes on handmade books, art journals, mixed-media collage, and surface design. Combining her love of making clothes, doodling and lettering, Traci creates vibrantly colored handmade journals, custom handbags and paintings that are layered with rich textures of stained papers, painted sewn fabric, "girlie glam" ink drawings and free style lettering. Her artwork has been featured in Somerset Studio, cloth.paper.scissors and various books.  Look for her new book, Collage Unleashed and her bi-monthly column, Creativity Unleashed in Somerset Studio Magazine. To learn more about her work, including "girlie glam", her eclectic line of hand-painted papers and aRt! kits, visit her web site.

• Visit Traci's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Galen Berry

Galen Berry is a nationally-renowned author, instructor and artist.  Galen has shared his mastery of the art of marbeling with students at colleges, universities and art schools such as the University Art Studio at the University of California at Berkeley, at the Ft. Mason Center in San Francisco, and at the San Francisco Center or the Book. He has also taught at Northwestern Washington University, University of Central Oklahoma, the Mt. Angel Benedictine Monastery in Oregon, the Newport (OR) Paper Arts Festival, the Coupeville Arts Center on Whidbey Island, WA and the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  He now teaches marbeling at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the Francis Tuttle Vo-Tech in Oklahoma City, and at the Firehouse Art Center in Norman, OK. 

His work has been sold to art supply stores nationwide, such as Flax of San Francisco, Rhode Island School of Design, the Minnesota Book Arts Center and bookbinders, gift shops, and picture framers around the country.  Galen has done work for the museum shops of both the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress in Washington DC.  The copyrights to dozens of his patterns have been purchased by publishers such as Random House, Ballantine, Penguin Books, Simon & Schuster, Fearon-Janus, and Colorful Images, Inc. to be reprinted as cover art or as stationery. He has also written a 24-page color booklet, The Art of Marbling, which is sold by several art-supply stores across the country. 

Galen was raised in Mississippi, lived for 25 years in California, and presently lives in Oklahoma.  He attended Mississippi College, the Sorbonne (University of Paris), and graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), majoring in modern languages.  His current hobby is backpacking through the canyons and deserts of the Southwestern states looking for natural arches and bridges and is developing a book on the subject.

Instructor Web Site

Juliana Coles

Juliana Coles, award winning artist, Creative Expression teacher and notable Extreme Journalist, received her BFA from the Academy of Art College, San Francisco with a minor in English and Dance. Coles has studied at SMU in Dallas, Columbia College in Chicago, The American Academy of Art in Chicago, and California's New College. She has studied with well known Illustrator Barron Storey who encouraged her Mixed Media Journals, and muralist Juana Alicia Montoya whose passion as an artist and activist convinced Coles to define her own style of Contemporary Expressionism.

Coles received the Wildine Fund grant for Artists for her Expressive Visual Journals Workshop at ArtStreet, an Art Center for the homeless, in 2000 and is 2002's recipient of the Madonna Fund for Artists.

Coles, based on her expression as an artist, developed Extreme Journaling as a workshop in 1992 for the Epilepsy Society of San Francisco, and has taught and refined her unique creative process that combines journal writing assignments with art making explorations in the safe container of a book for twelve years. Her Visual Journals are featured in Making Journals By Hand, by Jason Thompson, and appear in Lynne Perrella's Artist Sketchbooks and Journals, Somerset Studio's 2002 Engagement Calendar, and will appear in an upcoming book by Lark Publishing on Altered Art, as well as Jan Smiley's The Art of Fabric Books. Juliana has been keeping journals since she was eleven and has been creating Visual Journals since she was fourteen.

Instructor Web Site

Lisa Cook

The creative urge has always been a part of Lisa's life from making shoebox houses as a child to exploring mixed media as an adult. Her folk art style blends old objects with new materials and techniques. Teaching comes naturally for Lisa, as she has been a high school "Home Arts" teacher since 1976. Her work has been in several Somerset Studio publications, ARTitude Zine and the 2005,2006, and 2008 Art Play calendars. Writing is another keen passion and she has contributed articles on soldering, altered books, and art techniques for Cloth Paper Scissors and magazines. Her art and writing appear in several books including, The Altered Book Scrapbook and The Artful Storybook. 

• Visit Lisa's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Mira Coviensky

Mira Coviensky's artwork is intriguing and thought-provoking. She combines sculpture, photography, and text to create artists' books. Her work uses everyday materials and is based on encounters in daily life. Her choice of the artist's book for her art form fits her view of life as narrative. In her work, she explores formal issues of book structures and of transparency and translucency while retaining the familiarity of the book form. Her work is in over forty public collections, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard University, MOMA, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in England. Mira Coviensky has over 20 years experience leading workshops. She is past faculty at the Toronto School of Art and past Program Director at Art Starts Neighbourhood Cultural Centre. She is based in Toronto and travels internationally to exhibit and teach.

Instructor Web Site

Michael DeMeng

Michael deMeng is an assemblage artist from Missoula, MT who exhibits throughout the United States. As an educator, he has been actively involved with VSA Montana, providing art education and encouraging participation in the arts to people with disabilities. Through these activities, as well as his artwork, deMeng fosters community awareness, and offers creative methods to explore the human experience.

In his art, he addresses issues of transformation. Discarded materials find new and unexpected uses in his work; they are reassembled and conjoined with unlikely components, a form of rebirth from the ashes into new life and new meaning.

These assemblages are metaphors for the evolutions and revolutions of existence: from life to death to rebirth, from new to old to renewed, from construction to destruction to reconstruction. These forms are examinations of the world in perpetual flux, where meaning and function are ever-changing.

• Visit Michael's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Daniel Essig

Daniel Essig got into bookbinding while studying photography at the University of South Illinois at Carbondale. One of his first books was an altered book, printed in Greek, with bindery that was completely self-taught. Rather than mounting his photography on gallery walls, he decided to place them in boxes or books so the viewer had to actively explore the art, rather than passively wandering past. At that time, he met Al Buck, who was making wooden-covered Coptic books. This binding was first used around the fourth century, in Ethiopia or North Africa, or perhaps this is just the area where the books were best preserved. Unlike most hand-bound books, Coptic books open completely flat. Images on the pages were wholly visible without struggling with the binding.

Dolph Smith helped push Daniel beyond the simple Ethiopian book, with his sculptural books that hung paper from wooden structures. Daniel's bridge books using the same Coptic binding with exaggerated elements were developed under that influence.

After completing his degree at Carbondale, his mentor Frances Lloyd Swedlund encouraged Daniel to attend the Penland School of Crafts, where he concentrated exclusively on Ethiopian Coptic books.

Instructor Web Site

Katie Kendrick

Katie Kendrick lives with her husband, two dogs and cat, on seven acres along the banks of the Tahuya River in western Washington, surrounded by the Tahuya State Forest. The peaceful beauty of her environment is a constant source of inspiration and nourishment for her creative spirit, along with the magical innocence and mystery of her three young grandchildren with  whom she spends time with frequently. Her work has been featured in Cloth Paper Scissors, on the cover of Art and Life, and in several books and magazines. She travels nationwide, teaching classes and workshops on her style of mixed media collage, intuitive painting, and Folk Art doll making. She finds creating art is one of the most powerful ways to connect with her innermost nature while at the same time discovering her authentic voice. She enjoys the experimental and intuitive layers of creating, exploring inner and outer worlds simultaneously.

• Visit Katie's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Stephanie Lee

Stephanie Lee lives and works in Rogue River, Oregon as a mixed media and jewelry artist where for nine years she also ran her own very successful wedding floral business. Her artwork has been featured in galleries, private shows and multiple art publications. She has her own book featuring her mixed media jewelry coming to bookstores in February 2008. A modern day expeditioner, Stephanie practices her own version of archeology, scanning the terrain for intriguing bits and pieces that present themselves - or that are hiding but don't easily escape her grasp.

Stephanie is most inspired by nature and its melodic effects on the human spirit. Her simple, yet organic, approach provides viewers with a thought-provoking, visual experience. Passionate about repurposing everyday objects, she is committed to reinventing normal into something eclectic, expressive and spiritually transformational.

• Visit Stephanie's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Shanna Leino

Shanna Leino is a book and tool maker living and working in Harrisville, New Hampshire. Her love for early book structures such as the leather-covered Coptic and Ethiopian led her to tool making -- there was a need for a tool she didn't have and boy, was it fun to make it! Shanna has taught book making classes for The Garage Annex School for Book Arts, Well's College, New York Center for Book Arts and Penland School of Crafts.

Instructor Web Site

Keith Lo Bue

Keith Lo Bue is a jeweler, sculptor and teacher whose work is featured in many major collections, including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the Museum of Arts & Design in New York. His work has been exhibited all around the US and in Germany, Australia, New Zealand, France, Ireland and England.

Books featuring Lo Bue's work include One of a Kind: American Art Jewelry Today (Abrams), 1000 Rings (Lark), The Art & Craft of Collage (US/UK), Found Object Art (Schiffer), and Metalsmith, American Craft and Ornament magazines, plus the Virtual Gallery of Contemporary Jewellery CD-ROM (UK). His workshops have been presented to enthusiastic reviews at Haystack, Penland and scores of other art and craft institutions across North America, Australia and New Zealand.

Instructor Web Site

LK Ludwig

LK Ludwig creates art and chases her three small children around in a Victorian four-square in a very small town (pop. 4,023) in western Pennsylvania.  Many weekends are spent in the woods and at the river, where family memories and art are made while the Allegheny River flows by.  With a strong belief in creating around what she knows, nature, parenting, love and life seep deeply into LK's artwork, making it content rich and personally meaningful. LK's book Mixed Media Nature Journals will be out in January, and her second book, True Vision: Authentic Art Journaling is due out in July.  Her work has been in a number of books, magazines and shown in various galleries.  LK teaches at various venues across the US and enjoys it very much.

• Visit LK's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Kathy Malkasian

Kathy Malkasian is a primarily a book artist who enjoys exploring multiple mediums. She has taught workshops on bookmaking and papermaking, has served as an art juror for the Percent for Art Program for the State of Wisconsin in 2004 and other art venues. She is a consultant to other artists interested in exploring book arts.
 
Kathy is co-founder of the Bone Folders' Guild in Madison, Wisconsin. Her books have been on exhibit at Kohler Art Library, Madison, Wisconsin, Golda Meir Library in Milwaukee, the River Arts Gallery in Prairie du Sac, and the Canterbury Inn, Madison, Wisconsin. As the owner of Valley Ridge Art Studio, Kathy has worked with artists and writers to develop a wide variety of creative workshops in Book, Paper, Photography, Mixed Media and Writing Arts since 2000.

Instructor Web Site

Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann has been an active participant in the contemporary American craft movement for the past thirty years as an artist, gallery owner and lecturer. He describes himself as an artist working in the medium of jewelry and sculpture. The primary design vocabulary he employs in the making of jewelry objects combines industrial aesthetics and materials with evocative romantic themes and imagery. He calls this design system Techno.Romantic. Though it is not the only design mode in which he works, it is the one for which he is best known.

Instructor Web Site

Misty Mawn

Misty Mawn is a down to earth mixed media artist living amongst the Blue Ridge mountains of rural Virginia.  She has had a strong passion to create art ever since she can remember, a passion that continues to bless her life with purposeful work and fulfilling adventures. When not in the studio she can be found amusing (rather being amused) by her two ever growing children, cooking up come creative concoction in the kitchen, or strolling the back trails with camera in hand. She studied studio art at Moravian College, started a pottery business, and has since retired from clay to focus on painting and teaching mixed media art.

• Visit Misty's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Linda and Opie O'Brien

Opie and Linda O'Brien are mixed-media artists, authors and teachers, who enjoy pushing the envelope in myriad ways, using organic, recycled and found materials because they seem to have a voice that must be heard, a story that must be told, and a life that would otherwise be too soon forgotten. They consider themselves "caretakers of the mundane and the ordinary" and their unique offerings include jewelry, dolls, books, assemblage, collage, masks and more. They are project designers for several publishers, teach art workshops nationally, in Mexico and France and for two museums, based on many of the techniques in their book: Metal Craft Discovery Workshop. Their work has been featured in over 20 books, in several magazines including Belle Armoire, Art Doll Quarterly, Somerset Studio, Legacy, Handcrafted and the Craft Report as well as art galleries, museum gift shops and both group and solo shows. Opie, an artist and musician, attended SVA in N.Y.C., while Linda is self-taught.

New York transplants, they now live in Ohio on Lake Erie with their cat Angelus and his cat Angel.

• Visit Linda and Opie's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Carol Owen

Carol Owen has been a professional artist for 30 years, working in various media. For the last 12 years she has been working with collage and assemblage, making mixed media shrines. Her book, Crafting Personal Shrines, was published in 2004, and her work has appeared in numerous books and magazines.  Carol is an exhibitor at the 2007 Philadelphia Museum of Art craft show and is an upcoming featured artist in Mary Englebreit's magazine Home Companion.

Her shrines use old photos and memorabilia to tell family stories. At first they were about her own family. Then she began to make up stories, using found photos and objects (the search for these items is half the fun!) She and her husband live in North Carolina, near Chapel Hill. They love to garden and travel, but her main passions are making art and teaching.

Instructor Web Site

Lynne Perrella

Lynne Perrella is a mixed-media artist, author, graphic designer and workshop instructor. Her work appears in many paper arts publications and books.  She is the author of  Artists Journals & Sketchbooks, Alphabetica, Beyond Paper Dolls
and Art-Making, Collections & Obsessions. 

Her interests include collage, assemblage, one-of-a-kind books and art journals.

Instructor Web Site

DJ Pettitt

With a love of teaching and sharing, as well as a passion for color and texture, DJ Pettitt delights in experimenting with multi media, using unconventional art methods and creating new techniques to incorporate in her art and teaching. A southern Oregon artist, DJ combines a background in fine art with photography, whimsical fabric painting,  and recycled textiles, creating new works in the form of art books, wearable art, and giftables.

• Visit DJ's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Pamela Sussman

Pam Sussman is a full-time teacher, author and book artist working in paper and fabrics. Formerly a graphic designer, Pam studied bookmaking with Shereen LaPlantz and for many years taught classes at Art Continuum in Cleveland. She is the author and illustrator of Fabric Art Journals: Making, Sewing and Embellishing Journals from Cloth and Fibers, published by Rockport/Quarry Books in November, 2005. Recent teaching venues include the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, Quilt Surface Design Symposium in Columbus, and ArtFest.

Instructor Web Site

Beryl Taylor

Beryl Taylor arrived in the USA in 2002 from England, having graduated in City and Guilds Creative Embroidery. Whilst in Britain she had spent many years exhibiting her work with a textile group called "Threadmill". She has taught many workshops in mixed media collage. Since arriving in the USA, Beryl has continued to teach workshops, has had her work published in many national and international magazines and has continued to exhibit her work both in the USA and throughout the world. In June 2006 she had her first book published with Quilting Arts Publications titled Mixed Media Explorations.

• Visit Beryl's blog.

Instructor Web Site

Karen Wallace

Karen Wallace is a registered art therapist living in Victoria B.C. She is a mixed media artist and art instructor who teaches in Canada and U.S.A. Karen also teaches workshops on art therapy, body image, art journaling, creativity and Tarot. Karen is a dynamic and generous teacher who shares an excitement for the pursuit and exchange of new ideas and methods.

Instructor Web Site

Michelle Ward

Instructor Web Site

Jane Wynn

Jane Wynn was born in Baltimore, Maryland on a cold day in December, 1969. She grew up making art as her focus and passion.

As a graduate from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 1995, with a Bachelors of Fine Art, she continued on with her education and received her Masters of Fine Art at Towson University in 1997 with a degree in Interrelated Media. In 2000 having just completed her degree, she began to teach art at Towson University and the Community Colleges of Baltimore
County. Teaching is Jane's passion. In 2002, she and her husband Thomas began to venture off to teach at workshops all over the country. Since this time, she has traveled quite a bit and have met many wonderful students and fellow teachers along the way.

She and Thomas live in Baltimore, Maryland with their three cats, a fish, and two fun Vespa scooters which they like to take for quick trips on weekends to the local coffee spots in town. Her book, Altered Curiosities: Assemblage Techniques and Projects has just been published and is now available.

• Visit Jane's blog.