Instructor Bios

With a MFA from Alfred University, Bruce Dehnert has tried numerous times to conquer the World. Instead, he has had to be satisfied with authoring Simon Leach: A Pottery Handbook, being a member of the International Academy of Ceramics, having works in many museums and private collections, winning 3 Fletcher Challenge International Ceramics awards, and heading the Ceramics Program right here at the beautiful Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts.

Chandra DeBuse makes illustrated pottery from her Kansas City studio. She received a MFA from the University of Florida and presented her work at the Utilitarian Clay Symposium, the Functional Ceramics Workshop, the Alabama Clay Conference, and others. DeBuse works in porcelain and illustrates her generous forms with stylized imagery often inspired by Nature’s underdogs; squirrels, opossums, snakes, and the stars of the show, bugs.

Coleton Lunt was raised in the red rock desert of southern Utah and received his BFA from Northern Arizona University. He was a resident artist at Pottery Northwest before earning a MFA from the University of Notre Dame. He did a residency at Belger Crane Yard Studios and was invited back to Notre Dame where he currently teaches and manages the ceramic studio. His work can be found at Culture Object (NY); Belger Crane Yard Gallery (Kansas City, MO); In Tandem Gallery, Bakersville; and Cerbera Gallery (Kansas City, MO). His work references desert landscapes and celebrates craft traditions by blending a broad range of techniques developed throughout history.

Dr. William M. Carty is Professor Emeritus of Ceramic Engineering at Alfred University. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Ceramic Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla, and his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Washington. Dr. Carty and his research group have conducted research in aspects of traditional ceramics and advanced ceramics. The author of over 80 papers, he is slowly coming to understand (and can speak eloquently, but perhaps ad nausea, about) the benefits of applying the scientific method to solve art creation problems.

Born in 1981 in Mount Kisco, Eileen Murphy received a BA from Mount Holyoke College, and MFA from Pratt Institute. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally including at Sears Peyton Gallery, DFN Projects, and through the US State Department in Algeria. Eileen has received Residencies at the renowned Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, and High Line 9. A recipient of the prestigious Individual Artist Award from the Santo Foundation, Murphy is currently the Lead Faculty in Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking in the MFA program at the Institute of Art and Design and New England College. She and her dog, Frito, live part-time in Columbia County, New York.

Gabe Brown received her BFA degree from The Cooper Union and MFA from the University of California, Davis. Brown, a 2018 recipient of a New York Foundation Fellowship in Painting, has been a Resident at The Saltonstall Foundation, Anderson Center at Tower View, and Women’s Studio Workshop.  She has exhibited in galleries and museums such as Kenise Barnes Contemporary Art, Sears-Peyton Gallery, Zinc Contemporary, Adah Rose Gallery, Dorsky Museum of Art, Saratoga Arts Center, Garrison Arts Center, John Davis Gallery, Schweinfurth Arts Center, The Horticultural Society of New York, and the Albany International Airport. A 3-time Merit Award recipient, Brown has taught at Fordham University, Marist, and SUNY New Paltz.

Gail Rutigliano is a mixed media Artist who works primarily in clay. "I find clay to be a meditative guiding force in which I also use paint and collage to express how I feel about current events." Gail has been part of the community at The Art School Old Church (NJ) for over a decade. Currently a member of the school's "Firing Squad" helping to fire the gas kilns, Gail creates porcelain jewelry, and hand built, or wheel thrown pots for home and garden.

Hiroe Hanazono, a native of Japan, is a Philadelphia-based ceramic artist who produces uniquely designed tableware in her home studio. After receiving her MFA in Ceramics from Ohio University, she participated in residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation, International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark, and The Clay Studio in Philadelphia where she was awarded the 2008-2009 Evelyn Shapiro Foundation Fellowship. Hanazono teaches art foundation and ceramic classes in the Philadelphia area.

Hirotsune Tashima received his MFA from Alfred University, and BFA from Osaka University of Art. He received numerous grants including Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Rotary International and Japanese Government.  Tashima has presented more than 27 solo exhibitions and has had work in 150 group exhibitions or competitions world-wide, including the Shigaraki Museum of Ceramics, Phoenix Art Museum, and “NCECA Clay National”. Private and Public Collections include Auckland Museum (NZ), Everson Museum of Art (NY), Jingdezhen Museum of Ceramics (China), The Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), and the singer, David Bowie.

John Gill earned his MFA from Alfred University in 1975 and BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1973. A member of the International Academy of Ceramics, John Gill has presented lectures and workshops in the United States and internationally for over 30 years. He presented the keynote address at the Seventh International Ceramic Biennale in Korea in 2013.  His work is held in numerous permanent collections including the Brooklyn Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Crafts Council in 2014.

Jon Puzzuoli has been a full-time ceramicist for 19 years. His life is absorbed in claywork, both creating and teaching.  His passion emanates from educating others in the art of pottery. Jon is Head of the Ceramics Department at Silvermine School of Art in New Canaan, Connecticut, and Co-Chair of its nearly 300 Guild Artists. Developing unique glazes and growing crystals on the surfaces of his wares are a particular and important focus.

Artist and educator Julia Whitney Barnes received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from Hunter College in New York City. Julia is the recipient of several New State Council on the Arts Fellowships including the Abbey Memorial Fund for Mural Painting/National Academy of Fine Arts and others. She has been prolific in her site-specific installation art creating significant works for, among others, the Gowanus Public Arts Initiative (Brooklyn, NY), the Albany International Airport/Shaker Heritage Society (Albany, NY), and the Fjellerup Bund i Bund & Grund (Fjellerup, Denmark). Julia and her family make their home in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Karen Margolis lives and works in New York City and has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Foley Gallery (NY), K. Imperial Fine Arts (San Francisco), Garish Hahn (Los Angeles), the Hunterdon Museum (NJ), Parrish Art Museum (NY), and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art (Wilmington). Her work has been included in the Paper Biennial at the Rijswijk Museum (Netherlands), and the Cut up/Cut out exhibition that toured museums throughout the United States. She was commissioned to create mosaic panels for the MTA Arts in Transit in New York. Margolis is a recipient of the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.

Karen Stern is a part-time potter and full-time clay enthusiast from northern New Jersey. She has been making pottery for 15+ years, with a focus on wheel thrown functional ceramics. She has studied at The Art School at Old Church, Penland School of Crafts, Snow Farm and, of course, Sugar Maples. Her work has been exhibited at Old Church, The Belskie Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and Noyes Arts Garage.

Karin Lowney-Seed is an award-winning artist who received both her BFA and MFA degrees from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Expressing balance and intrigue, her paintings are bold, confident, and colorful. Her exhibition credits include the Brooklyn Museum, Philadelphia Art Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, Art Basel Miami, and Art Expo New York, and many others. Lowney-Seed was featured as an Expert Artist on The Learning Channel.

Lisa Orr is a professional studio potter and filmmaker who has been a ‘student’ of ceramics for more than 40 years.  After completing her MFA at Alfred University, she received a Fulbright and an MAAA/NEA grant to continue her studies. Orr is credited with helping to lead the resurgence of clay working in Austin, Texas. Her work is shown in numerous public and private collections including the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and the permanent collection of WOCEF in Korea. Orr also teaches, lectures, and exhibits nationally and internationally. She currently lives and works in Massachusetts.

Loreen Oren graduated from Cornell University with a dual degree Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, followed by a Master of Architecture degree from Pratt Institute. Art and design as disciplines were instilled in her from a young age, and she is a third generation architect and artist. Loreen has traveled to over 40 countries, which has provided inspiration for her work. She works in various mediums, including watercolors, ink, acrylic and oil paint, but linear repetition inspired by nature is the essence.

Lynn Loflin has owned and operated Newton Farm Collective in the Catskill Mountains for the past 20 years. The farm focuses on growing nutrient-dense vegetables and medicinal herbs that are cultivated on this 200 year-old farm. Lynn received a BA in Philosophy from Louisiana State University and a degree in Culinary Arts from the New York Restaurant School. She owned and operated two restaurants in NYC for 20 years. Lynn has been a lifelong quilter, sewer, and textile artist. She has shown her work in several galleries in New York City and in the Hudson Valley. Lynn started the Makers Collective at Newton Farm, The focus of this Collective is to create community around the idea of repurposing, reusing, and remaking existing fabric and clothing.

Currently an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska, Mallory Wetherell received her BFA from the University of South Carolina and MFA from the UMASS Dartmouth. She has taught at Tyler School of Art and was the Gallery Coordinator at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia. Wetherell was a Windgate Scholar at the Archie Bray Foundation and in 2015 was named an Emerging Artist by Ceramics Monthly. She was recently awarded the coveted Price Residency, spending six weeks working in the Ken Price Studio in Taos, New Mexico.

Mara Lehmann is a traditional landscape painter. Working exclusively in oil, she endeavors to capture the local beauty of the Mountaintop, painting plein air, as well as in her studio, Evermore, in Haines Falls. She has a M.A in Art and Education from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, New York City. Mara is currently represented by Windham Fine Arts, Windham, New York. Her paintings have appeared in galleries in New Jersey, and in New York City in venues such as Horn and Ashby, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center. Her work has also appeared in juried exhibitions held at the National Arts and Salamagundi Club.

Marilyn Katz has been studying both hand built, and wheel thrown ceramics at The Art School at Old Church in New Jersey for many years. She currently has a studio in her home where she builds sculpture and throws pots. Marilyn is a member of the “The Firing Squad” at Old Church, helping to fire the community’s gas kilns. Marilyn has taught ceramics at Gilda’s Club of Northern New Jersey.

Meredith Kunhardt received her training in ceramics while at Skidmore College. Over the past number of years, she and her husband Harry established the successful 28a Clay, a pottery studio based in West Shokan, NY. Their interest in the history and geology of the region lead them to explore the potential of local clay, stone, and wood ash as the basic materials from which their pots can be made.

Michael Kline makes utilitarian ceramics with botanical themed, painted, and stamped surfaces. For most of his career he has worked with wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware, usually with organic patterns painted on a thick white surface. In 2015 he visited the Freer Wing of the Smithsonian and was struck by 15th Century examples of the Korean Sanggam technique. Since then, he has focused on applying this technique to his own work and aesthetic, creating floral stamps and inlaying the impressions with white slips. Kline’s work is consistently identifiable in its delicate pattern system contrasted with robust forms and somewhat coarse materials. Michael’s work is in the collection of the Islip Art Museum, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, and the Gregg Museum.

In his junior year at Longwood University, Monty Montgomery launched the successful Cilli Original Designs and thus began spreading his unique word through clothing, paintings, poetry, stickers, and outsider culture. After earning his BFA, he worked as a designer for U.S. Graphics and then Musictoday.com where he double-timed projects in the music, surf, and skate industries while serving as Curator for C.O.D Gallery in “C-VILLE.” Before hitting the road as a full-time muralist, Montgomery spent time in Boston (MA), Brooklyn (NY), and Santa Fe (NM). Since 2016 he has been a partner in the Kaleidoskull Project.

Nathan Loda is a full-time artist who earned a BFA from Shepherd University and MFA from George Mason University. Loda studied at the Lamar Dodd School of Art in Cortona, Italy where he found deep inspiration in the great works of the Italian Masters. Loda also credits his teacher, contemporary realist Ridley Howard, with many of the fundamentals he practices today. He was an adjunct professor at George Mason University and has exhibited widely. He is currently represented by Adah Rose Gallery, and lives and works with his wife, three little girls, and their dog Blaze on an old family farm in Homer, NY.

Nick DeFord is an artist, educator, and arts administrator who resides in Knoxville, TN. He received his MFA from Arizona State University, and a MS and BFA from the University of Tennessee. Nick has exhibited at the Bascom Center for Visual Arts, The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the Knoxville Museum of Art, and East Tennessee State University. His works and writing have been published in Surface Design Journal, Elephant Magazine, Hayden Ferry Review, and Willow Springs. In 2018 he was a Resident at the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida. DeFord was a reviewer for the Ohio Arts Council and the juror for the American Tapestry Biennial 13. Nick is the Chief Programs Officer at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, as well as a board member for the National Basketry Organization.

Patricia Miranda is the founder of The Crit Lab and MAPSpace (New York and Italy). The recipient of numerous grants from the NEA, Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, and the New York State Council of the Arts, Miranda has been awarded residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Weir Farm, I-Park, and Julio Valdez Studio among others. She has been a curator and has developed education programs for K-12 and notable institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Institution. Miranda currently teaches Curatorial Studies in the Graduate Program at Western Colorado University.

Russell Wrankle is an Associate Professor of Art at Southern Utah University. He is the Founder of shapetheorycollective.com, an online gallery dedicated to helping free the 40,000 non-violent cannabis prisoners caught up in the war on drugs. He is a ceramics artist who lives and works in Southern Utah and seeks solace and meaning in the red rock desert as often as possible.

Sara Patterson’s interest in Cone 6 salt firing marries her love of salt surfaces with the midrange reality of urban studios. Former owner/director of Earthworks NYC, she has been teaching classes in the New York area for more than 25 years. An Art History degree led her to New York, but the many clay studios made the city “home”. Oxidation firing at Earthworks, glaze chemistry at Greenwich House Pottery, gas reduction at the 92nd St Y, wood firing with Susan Beecher and salt firing with Mikhail Zakin- so many opportunities! Sara’s work is included in several of the “500” collections published by Lark Books.

Steve Cook pursues an aesthetic life’s “sweet spot” of beauty, experience, value and meaning from his current home in San Diego. Steve earned a BA in Sculpture (figure and installation) from Penn State, studying abroad in Taipei at Fu Ren University and National Taiwan University. He earned an MFA in Film (essayistic experimental documentary filmic installation) from CalArts. Steve has worked and taught in a wide variety of media and for surprisingly diverse industries, in the US, Asia and Africa, for the past 40 years, earning both awards and condemnation.

Susan Beecher is a nationally recognized studio potter whose work has appeared in more than 80 national juried shows over the past 30 years. She has taught workshops and weekly classes at art centers throughout the Northeast, Florida and California. Her work has appeared in many articles and eight books. A book exploring her life in clay and her work was published by Catskill Press: Susan Beecher: Wood Fired Pottery.

Taylor Sijan is a full-time studio artist from Ohio who is known for her richly decorated porcelain pottery. She holds a BFA from Bowling Green State University and MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2020, Taylor was named one of Ceramics Monthly’s Emerging Artists. These days, she enjoys traveling to teach techniques to students and has demonstrated at institutions including Pocosin Arts School of Fine Craft, Peters Valley School of Craft, Wooten Clayworks, Gasworks NYC, and Saratoga Clay Arts Center. When she’s not in the studio, she is usually gardening, hiking, or spending time with her two cats.

Tina Harp is an accomplished fiber artist and educator who has been weaving for 27 years. Drawing from age-old techniques to reflect contemporary life, she loves to provide inspiration to those she teaches and enjoys sharing her knowledge. Tina lives on a small farm in Shandaken NY with a large fiber arts studio. When not working with the animals on her farm, she spends hours weaving textures and playing with colors that bring pleasure to her days!

Wendy G. Jensen is an award-winning professional basket maker living in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. She has been a professional basket maker for over 30 years, and studied with makers from England, Latvia, Denmark, and the United States. In 2006 she traveled to Ireland to study with Joe Hogan, noted artist and author who works primarily with willow. Jensen’s work was most recently published in 500 Baskets by Lark Books.