INSTRUCTORS
FAVA hires instructors to teach a variety of classes. If you are interested in becoming a FAVA instructor, please submit form here:
questions? favaeducation@gmail.com
Margaret Montse Brock
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Margaret is a Teaching Artist with FAVA, happily wrangling the Youth Puppet Troupe kids as well as FAVA’s Friday Art, an after-school outreach program in Elyria, where a lot of Toy Theaters and Big Ideas are racing to the finish. Margaret also leads the small Big Parade workshops that focus on hand and finger puppets and wearable laundry basket theaters. Her classes for kids and teens rely on making and more making, with plenty of encouragement to think out-of-the box. Classes focus on comics and zines, finger, hand, rod and shadow puppetry, and 3d all-media constructions. This summer, bring your kids and find Margaret at the Oberlin Farmers Market from 9-1 every Saturday in front of the Oberlin Public Library. FAVA is supporting free puppet-making for all!
From speedskating on lake-ice 3 feet thick in northern Minnesota, Margaret arrived in the cornfields of Oberlin last fall. In her Minnesota life she connected with the wild and wooly Twin Cities puppet community, with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater becoming a place dear to her heart. She mentored with Sandy Spieler, the Artistic Director of HOBT, learning puppetry skills that soon took shape and became her own. In 2013-14 Margaret was a recipient of a Jerome Foundation Grant for emerging puppeteers, during which she worked at HOBT alongside four fellow artists with direction from Alison Heimstead and Janaki Ranpura. Her shadow performance that developed from this work, “The Lie,” was based on a true and crazy story of childhood poisoning. Her most recent show, “The Incident,” another true and possibly fatal story, was performed for a Pecha Kucha Night as Monserrat Kitty Business, with hand puppets and her first wearable laundry basket theater. Though basing her original stories on her own life events, Margaret also has an affinity for making Dracula shadow shows that scare and delight her in the darkest nights of the year. Come summer, she gravitates to her Tiny Bike Shows for the terrible and tiny fairy tales: Li’l’ Red, Nail Soup, Lamby Tongue, and Jack, the Bean, and the Mean. Currently she is working on a new series of true and mostly true plays and wall-size paintings that shakedown through love and death in Cookieland. Despite this bend, teaching puppetry to and with kids rises to the top when she thinks about FUN! |
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Whitney Brown
Bio coming soon
Joshua Chrosniak
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Joshua Chrosniak is an enthusiastic and energetic artist instructor who has taught art classes for kids of all ages. Josh has also taught for FAVA's summer art camps and is an occasional guest instructor at FAVA's origami group, FAVAGAMI. Josh received his Bachelors in Art Education from Cleveland State University. He is a working Artist, who shows work in local Cleveland Galleries. He also is an artist in the Oberlin Chalk Walk.
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Donna Coleman
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Donna Coleman received her BFA, Honors, in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, and her MFA in Painting from CUNY Brooklyn College, New York. Her paintings have been exhibited extensively in Washington DC, her hometown, and in northeastern Ohio, her home since 2000. She has received three grants from the Ohio Arts Council, four grants from the DC Commission on the Arts, as well as grants from the Ellen Johnson Visiting Artist Fund of Oberlin College, Art Matters, Inc., and the George Sugarman Foundation. Before moving to Ohio, she was the Director of the Dreamcatcher Arts Summer Camp and Middle School Art Teacher at Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC. She has taught art to young children for many years, and has been teaching both children and adults at FAVA since 2001. She also teaches Drawing I to adult students of all ages at Lorain County Community College. Her paintings can be seen on her website: www.dcolemanpaintings.com
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Carol Kornelius
Bio coming soon
Gregory Cross
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Greg Cross earned both his BFA and MA in Education from Kent State University, and has been teaching art in the Cleveland area for almost 40 years, beginning in 1973 at Elyria High School. He has taught at various regional elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as at Cleveland State University and Central State University. As a teacher, Greg is of the belief that we all stand on the shoulders of giants, drawing from each others' wisdom and humanity. In light of this, Greg values relationships with each individual student, and encourages them to trust their instincts and expand their own patterns of creativity and inventiveness.
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Bill Farley
Bio coming soon
P. Mark Johnson
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P. Mark Johnson has been an artist for over 50 years. He specializes in silver jewelry, scrimshaw, and copper enameling. Mark was a teacher of Visual Art at St. Edward’s High School for 10 years and taught at Lake Ridge Academy for 28 years. He is presently teaching at the Firelands Association of Visual Arts in Oberlin, Ohio.
His work has been displayed and sold at Uncommon Objects, Kent State University, The Cleveland Institute of Art, Admiral’s Daughter and Schriebman Jewelers. He is also a set designer and designed an award winning set for Serendipity Theatre in Los Angeles. Following the performances, the set was chosen to be installed in the Armand Hammer Museum for a show featuring children’s theatre. |
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Dana Juliano
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Dana Juliano is an illustrator from Atlantic City, New Jersey. She majored in illustration at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree of Fine Arts. At The University of the Arts, Dana focused on the traditional side of illustration, mixing illustration and fine art.
Illustrators are different than fine artists in a way that illustrators are more inspired by the written word, the story, or the history of their subjects. Dana finds inspiration from other people’s stories, how they affect her personally and artistically. She is also very inspired by nature, animals, and, the beauty that she absorbs from the world around her. Dana’s paintings usually feature portraits but are not limited to portraiture work. Dana currently resides in Oberlin, Ohio working as a free-lance illustrator. She has shown at The Feve, The Oberlin Public Library, Kendal and a few other local establishments. Dana was also published twice in a student run magazine for Temple University in Philadelphia named Fourteenth Street Magazine, as well as working on private commissions since graduating in 2009. |
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Linda McNulty
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http://luminousencaustics.com/
Linda is an Ohio artist formally trained at Columbia College, Chicago, with degrees in Fine Art and Modern Dance. As a young college student she ultimately found a home dancing in performance art on the streets of Chicago and in Russian ballet training. This love of movement and bodies in motion led her to the sculpting of the human form, which then led her to carving in wax. Wax eventually led her to Encaustic Painting, which then completed the cycle back to drawing and visual art. |
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Elizabeth Meadows
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http://MotherMetalsculptor.com
http://mothermetalsculptor.tumblr.com/ www.flickr.com/emfairmeadows Elizabeth M. Meadows has been teaching FAVA art residencies, youth and adult classes for over 12 years. She is also an integral instructor in the FAVA Summer Art Camp program. With a concentration in sculpture, Elizabeth received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and has been working with metal, drawing and ceramic sculpture for over thirty years. She taught welded art, sculpture and art at LCCC, Oberlin College, local public, private, charter schools and day care centers in Lorain County. Elizabeth also was the Vice President and Operations Manager for a successful art business for 15 years. Her teaching style is based upon the Reggio Emilia educational approach. The goal for her students is exploration of new materials and collaboration with each other to facilitate learning art techniques in a self directed manner. Elizabeth facilitates projects based upon the response she receives when presenting materials or potential projects to the children. Upon observation of the interaction between the children and the materials, Elizabeth may improvise her instruction to allow greater enjoyment for the students as they learn a new technique.
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Jill Gray Milenski
Jill received a B.A. in English from Oberlin College but has been pursuing her real love, art, since then. She has studied art in Paris, France, New York City (Cooper Union, Pratt Institute), Cleveland (Cleveland Institute of Art) and Michigan (Ox-Bow Summer Arts Program).
Using the mediums of oil paint and oil pastel, Jill uses a bold, bright palette to capture the intensity of the outdoor landscapes you see here. Influences include Van Gogh, Matisse, the Spanish painter Sorolla, John Singer Sargeant, and the California landscape group, The Society of Six.
Jill has shown work in various sites around Cleveland, including Lorain County Community College, Local Girl Gallery in Lakewood, Pentagon Gallery in Cleveland Heights, FAVA in Oberlin, and Artstown and Studio Esprit in Avon Lake, to name a few. She also works in fiber and collage as well as printmaking. She lives in Lakewood with her family and works in University Circle, where many of these paintings were created.
Using the mediums of oil paint and oil pastel, Jill uses a bold, bright palette to capture the intensity of the outdoor landscapes you see here. Influences include Van Gogh, Matisse, the Spanish painter Sorolla, John Singer Sargeant, and the California landscape group, The Society of Six.
Jill has shown work in various sites around Cleveland, including Lorain County Community College, Local Girl Gallery in Lakewood, Pentagon Gallery in Cleveland Heights, FAVA in Oberlin, and Artstown and Studio Esprit in Avon Lake, to name a few. She also works in fiber and collage as well as printmaking. She lives in Lakewood with her family and works in University Circle, where many of these paintings were created.
Trina Parrish
Trina Parrish is a certified K-12 Visual Arts and Drama teacher from Oberlin, Ohio. She holds a BA from Oberlin College, where she graduated in 2008 after studying studio art, theatre, and psychology. In 2010, she earned a Master's Degree from Goddard College in Sustainable Business & Communities, and currently works in the Oberlin City Schools. Trina loves connecting the arts to other disciplines, and is thrilled to share and connect with eager, young art students.
James Peake
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James earned his BA at Oberlin College with a background in education, visual arts, and environmental studies. He is an artist of many flavors, but also has a particular fondness for origami, the ancient art of paper folding. James plays an active role in the organization of several different Oberlin arts events including the Big Parade, the Oberlin Chalk Walk, and the FAVA Folding Festival. He is also a founder and resident artist of 3 Door Studios.
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Cara Romano
Bio coming soon
Carol Spiros
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Carol A Spiros received her B.A. in Studio Art in 1988 from Cleveland State University, concentrating in ceramics and printmaking. She also took classes at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Penland School of Crafts.
She has taught pottery at community art centers since the mid-90s - in Cleveland Heights, Euclid, and has taught both pottery and Art Camp at FAVA. |
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Jean Kondo Weigl
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Jean Kondo Weigl was born in Berkeley, California, and earned a BA in art from Scripps College, an MA in studio art from Oberlin College, and an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Utah. Weigl’s work has been shown in museums such as the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Art, and the Chrysler Museum, as well as at galleries in Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, D.C. Previously, she has taught at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Old Dominion University, Pennsylvania State University, and Oberlin College. She currenty lives in Oberlin with her family and teaches at Lorain County Community College.
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Emily Highkin
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Emily Highkin is a second-year student at Oberlin College studying economics and politics. Originally from Portland, Oregon she grew up sewing and dancing ballet. She began sewing sock monkeys when she was eleven, and after selling a few to teachers, she created the business EmilySockMonkies. She sold her entirely handmade, vibrantly colored creations both online and at craft fairs in Oregon. While she has not been selling sock monkeys for a few years, she is excited to spread the joys of monkey-making at FAVA. |
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