A Connecticut native, Sheri graduated from UCONN with a BFA in graphic design. She worked in retail art depts and was the Marketing/Art Director for an international commercial tableware company before relocating to Coral Springs in 1997. Her love of comics and animation led her to substitute teach one summer, which became a regular teaching position. Her chosen mediums for her own artwork are clay, photography, painting with colored inks.
In addition to teaching, She is also the Interim Director of the Museum.
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Nazli Amirghasemi has a BFA in Fine Art. She is a graphic designer, an illustrator, and a photographer. Her experience involves teaching at University, and working as a graphic designer for private industry here in States and also overseas. She has had exhibitions of her work in galleries such as Niavaran. Currently, she works as a freelance graphic designer for Ad-Excellence, an advertising agency in Hollywood, FL. Additionally, she is working at a private studio in Coral Springs, FL.
Learn more at www.nazliart.com.
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Julia Black Andrews is a Pompano Beach resident whose art focuses on vividly, vibrant oils and strikingly perceptive charcoals. She enjoys teaching and has offered classes to children in her home studio and local elementary schools.
Prior to joining the team at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, Andrews served as Curator and Program Manager for ArtServe, Ft. Lauderdale, and was responsible for curating exhibits, program development and membership relations. Additionally, Andrews holds experience in both hospitality marketing and film production. She is a member of several local arts organizations.
Learn more at www.jblackandrews.com.
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Linda Cain is a graduate from Bowling Green State University in Art Education. She has taught Art for many years in both private and pubic schools mostly in the elementary grades. She also works as a potter creating handmade porcelain jewelry and stoneware pottery. She sells her work at street fairs and online. Linda has lived in South Florida for 10 years now with her husband and two children.
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Sally Cooper has been painting all her life and began actively pursuing her creative talents in the late eighties. By 2000 image reference was left behind and her style evolved into explosions of color, markings and movement. Her work has been included in numerous regional and national competitive exhibitions receiving awards in most. She was awarded First Place in 2004 and Second Place in 2006 in the Experimental category of The Artist's Magazine's national competitions. There were over 10,000 entries in each competition.
Among other professional organizations she is a member of the Boca Raton Museum of Art Artist's Guild, International Society of Experimental Artists and National Association of Women Artists.
Learn more at www.sally-cooper.com.
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Deborah Fletcher has been an artist from a very early age. She studied art for 2 years in Minneapolis and has taken courses at both Broward College and Florida Atlantic University. Besides art she's spent 2 years studying architectural drafting and 2 years studying mechanical drafting receiving a State Certification upon completion. Deborah's completed a number of commissions and designs for advertisements and sales including Johnson & Johnson where her work has been listed with Sotherby's. She's won 5 blue ribbon awards including of Best in Drawing and Best In Fine Art and has appeared in many juried exhibits in galleries and museums.
Deborah is a versatile artist who is proficient in pen and ink, oil painting, silverpoint and more. She divides her artistic energies between the two somewhat opposing styles of realism and expressionistic surrealism. Deborah has been teaching at the Coral Springs Museum of Art for 12 years.
Learn more at www.paintedeaselartstudio.com.
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Deborah Gregg, was born in Buffalo, New York and moved with her family to Hollywood, Florida at age 16. It was at that time she was taken under the wing of an art teacher who set forth in motion the artistic direction to where she was headed. Deborah earned a B.F.A. from the University of Miami, studied at the Arts Students League in New York City and spent many summers at OxBow in Saugatuck, MI. She began her career as an Art Director for ad agencies, first in Michigan, then as Creative Director in South Florida. She has received numerous Regional, District, and National ADDY awards, both in Michigan and Florida. Later, she transitioned into teaching art and mixed-media sculpting.
Deborah has exhibited in many juried exhibitions and continues to expand her knowledge and technical ability through workshops and connections with other artists. She now lives in Parkland, Florida with her husband and their two teenage daughters.
Learn more at www.deborahgregg.com. and www.facebook.com/deborahgreggartist
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Teresa and her family moved to South Florida in 2007. Her love for the arts prompted her and her daughter to take a pottery wheel class taught by Jan Kolenda. She has since learned everything she can about clay and is continuing explore all the aspects of the wheel, hand-building, glazing and firing. She enjoys teaching others what she has learned.
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"I am a clay artist who works with highly decorated functional and sculptural pottery. The source of my inspiration comes from nature."
"I grew up in a small town in Michigan surrounded by woods and open land. My fondest memories are of exploring the surrounding area and discovering all that nature had to offer. The trees, bugs, birds, plants and animals held my total fascination. My interest in the outdoors, and in all things wild and wonderful, has never diminished."
"I have worked with clay for over 20 years and the process has never failed to excite and inspire me. I am drawn to the plasticity of the medium and its responsiveness to touch. No matter how many times I take wet clay, manipulate it and finally fire it, turning the material and my impressions to stone, I am continually amazed with the transformation.
Kolenda, an award~winning artist, has exhibited nationally and is currently the ceramics instructor at the Museum. Jan and fellow artist, John Foster, are the creators of The Everglades, a 54' by 17' relief ceramic tile mural on an outside wall of the Museum. This was the Artist in Residence program for 2003, which involved the participation of over 30 volunteers. Jan is also the Artist in Residence for the 2012 season creating a 5' x 12' scroll entitled Imagine Florida.
Learn more at www.sticks-n-stonesstudio.com.
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Cory Laub is an artist and writer who hails from South Florida, where he teaches English at Coral Springs High School. Trained in art at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon & Graphic Art, Mr. Laub has instructed students in Cartoon Art for six years at Pine Crest Day Camp, and last year taught a high school level course on the history of graphic literature.
A mainstay at Orlando's MegaCon comic book convention, Cory is currently working on his second of four comic books to be released in 2007.
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Rolande has been a full time for the past 40 years and an art instructor since 1983. She is a painter of all subjects, including portraiture, in every medium, in a contemporary realistic style.
"I take great pleasure in teaching the Art of Painting to beginner, intermediate and advanced students, and to see the aspiring artist grow and discover their hidden talent, regardless of age."
Rolande has organized and conducted workshops in France for 8 years and was commissioned by two French Cathedrals and Club Med for artwork. Invited as a guest artist Franco American Exhibition in France, Best in Show International Exhibition, Biarritz, France and exhibited in a Bonnet House special exhibit winning the People's Choice Award.
Listed in Who's Who in American Education since 2004 and in Who's Who in America since 1978.
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Since earning a BFA & BA (Sculpture and History) at Cornell University, Ry Nielsen has apprenticed in a foundry, helmed a horticultural design company, directed a college art gallery, curated exhibitions, promoted film studio, sung with the Florida Philharmonic and Unity International's music team, mentored at-risk teens at his former middle-school, tutored gifted ESL students, recorded readings for the blind, interviewed S. Florida pioneers for oral history archives, and trekked to studio intensives in Bora Bora, Canada, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Denmark, England, Jamaica, Mexico, New Zealand, Prince Edward Island, Virgin Islands... plus summer sessions at Alfred Univ., Program In Artisanry, Haystack Mountain School, OSU, Penland and RISD... with iconic teachers including Cynthia Bringle, Cecil Baugh, Val Cushing, Ruth Duckworth, John Leach, Harvey Sadow, Bob & Paula Winokur.
More recently, Ry Nielsen founded and directs ClayArt South Florida, coordinates juried exhibits (including Works On Paper Invitational & the 2013 DBA: Artists Doing Business As...), teaches studio art classes at museums and ArtReach programs, and sculpts and paints at ONA, his "studio garden" (and sometime gallery space) in Ft. Lauderdale, FL... He feels fortunate to reside in Ft. L. most of the year, with seasonal escapes to his studio/retreat near Asheville, NC.
"My current fascination with deconstructed vessel forms or retro-engineered, post-industrial totems (with fictitious fetishes and de-accessioned shards) is all about transmutation. I'm also poking fun at my adolescent preoccupation with National Geographic and Treasures of King Tut snarcheology, crafting what might, when excavated some day hence, elicit puzzlement."
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Al Razza was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1954. He moved to South Florida in 1979, and currently resides in Coral Springs, FL.
Educated in New England, Razza received a Bachelor of Fine Art Degree from Massachusetts College of Art in 1977. He also attended Pratt Institute in New York, the Art Institute of Boston, the University of Rhode Island, and Florida Atlantic University.
In 1982, while working on a Masters Degree at Pratt Institute, he was awarded an assistantship and two fellowships. In 1991, Razza won one of the first South Florida Consortium Fellowships, awarded for artistic excellence, which included a $15000 stipend.
His work has been exhibited in museums, and galleries, and is included in private and public collections. He has taught in the Broward County Florida School System; and is an instructor at the Coral Springs Museum of Art. He is also the owner the Design Crafters Inc. where he maintains a studio and does custom framing as well as teaches private art lessons.
Learn more at www.razzadesign.com.
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Isabel Perez Salazar was born in Caracas, Venezuela. She has Venezuelan and Italian nationality. On 1994 she majored in Fine Arts at the Cristobal Rojas school of Visual Arts. Perez received a scholarship in drawing I and II at the Federico Brandt Art Institute. She completed studies in stained glass, wood carving, molds, resin and photography.
Perez Salazar is a home based fine art and mixed media artist with a solid trajectory of more than twenty years in international and national exhibits, including art juried competitions.
She lives with her husband and two sons in Coral Springs. As she says "Florida has expanded my creative horizon and has deeply impacted me and become part of my inspiration".
Learn more at www.isabelperezsalazar.com.
