Visual Arts
Angela Baker
A native of Philadelphia, Angela Baker received her art education in Columbus, OH, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Columbus College of Art and Design in 1993 with an emphasis in painting and drawing. Since 2002 Angela has been teaching both in-school and after school visual art classes with established San Francisco arts organizations. In 2008-2009 she worked with the students, teachers and staff of Sunnyside Elementary in San Francisco to created a large, ceramic Peace Wall mural.
Angela strives to spark imaginations and critical thinking skills by helping students to explore a variety of art mediums such as painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture and when appropriate make connections to art history as well.
Angela is also an exhibiting painter whose work has been showcased in both group and solo shows in the U.S. and Hungary at the George Lawson Gallery in San Francisco, Alpan Gallery in New York, and Vizivarosi Gallery in Budapest, Hungary.
Programs Offered: Bookmaking, Ceramics, Colograph Printing, Drawing, Mixed Media Unleashed, Mural Design and Creation, paper Exploration, Painting, Portraiture, Printmaking
Katy Bernheim
Katy holds a BA in Religion and Art from Duke University, and is currently working on her CA teaching credentials through Dominican University. Before arriving in California, Katy began her teaching career in the public schools of Durham NC, with a course she co-taught with a storyteller entitled “Creating Characters & Costumes From Many Cultures”.
Katy is a figure painter working in oils who has exhibited her work throughout Northern California. Exhibits include: Emerging Jewish Artists, Isaacs Art Gallery; Marin Arts Council Members’ Exhibition; Artists’ Alliance of California Competition Exhibition, San Luis Obispo Art Center; and SomARTS Gallery, San Francisco, CA. She has also worn many other hats, working as a Park Ranger, Sign Painter and Floral Designer.
Katy believes art reflects our stories and mirrors how we see the world. Using arts from various cultures as a jumping off point, Katy guides students to see and feel those cultures from the stories told by their craft. With emphasis on process, students use a variety of media to explore their interpretations of each culture’s arts.
Programs Offered: Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Mixed Media, Portraiture, Maskmaking, Collage and Assemblage, World Folk Art
Evan Bissell
Evan graduated from Wesleyan University in 2005 with a BA in Ethnic Studies and Painting and is a long time participant of Youth in Arts’ Italian Street Painting Festival. Evan has facilitated projects throughout the Bay Area, focusing on community building and individually inspired art-making. Evan is proficient in many mediums but specializes in painting and drawing as public art. He has received grants and awards for his work from organizations including the Puffin Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Tam High Foundation, and the Marin Arts Council.
Evan’s newest public work, on exhibition at SOMArts, is entitled “What Cannot Be Taken Away”, and is a collaborative public project involving the creation of original public portraits by and of youth with incarcerated family members, and men in the San Francisco Jail. The works were made through 4 months of workshops and focus on intergenerational dialogue and the impact of the prison system on families.
Evan is an artist educator who focuses on community-built and individually inspired art making. Often, projects result in a public display, either in the form of mural making or public exhibition/celebration. The classes, as extensions of relevant subjects to the students and teachers, strive to foster an environment of self-expression, positivity and critical reflection.
Programs Offered: Collage & Assemblage, Drawing, Mural Design & Creation, Painting, Italian Street Painting
Rebecca Burgess
Rebecca Burgess is an author, professional textile artist, and educator. She infuses restoration ecology into the art making process, using local natural resources to create art projects that build an awareness of place. Focusing on the ancient arts of natural dying, weaving, papermaking, and natural building, she has scaled all of her projects for children as young as three years of age, and expanded the work to teach to other artists and teachers.
Her work weaves through science, math, and social science curricula, and creates bridges for children to move out of the classroom and onto their school sites. Students design and plant their own native plant dye gardens, creating art mediums in perpetuity, while creating habitat for native birds, restoring hydrology patterns, and creating carbon sinks. Her work gives children the ability to learn how to grow their own art mediums, while supporting the ecosystem.
Programs Offered: Ecological Arts
Louis Chinn
Louis earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fine Art, from the University of Washington. In 2004, he was awarded first place in the Art for Peace and Justice Competition (Public Art Installation) of the University of Washington. In 2003 he was awarded second place for his Public Mural Design. His public works include murals for: the Friends of the Burke Gilman Trail, completed in with help of at-risk, high school youth; the City of Kent’s Economic Development Department; the YMCA Mural for the Union Gospel Mission; and the Children’s Museum, Seattle.
Louis has spent the last 15 years working as a mural artist and teaching artist for multiple schools, organizations and city parks & recreation departments. He has experience developing and creating programs for children ranging in age from preschool to high school seniors. His primary focus is teaching art fundamentals (drawing, painting, and 3-D sculpture) to elementary aged youth, as well as community mural programs with junior high and high school students. Louis spent two years as an art educator and art studio manager for the Children's Museum in Seattle, where he designed art curriculum and taught workshops for children up to age ten. Louis’s mural programs typically involve at-risk, underprivileged or adjudicated youth. They focus on art fundamentals and art history, (including mural and street art history) a study of community and cultural identity and then a final collaborative mural piece.
Programs Offered: Mural Design and Creation, Mixed Media Unleashed
Sophia Cooper
Sophia holds a BA with honors in Film and Social Change from UC Berkeley, and has completed the certification program at the Academy of Film Arts in Prague, the Czech republic.
Sophie’s undergraduate studies were interrupted in 1999 when she joined her brother as a volunteer for a small organization in Kosovo called Balkan Sunflowers. Arriving only three months after Kosovo’s one million refugees returned to their destroyed homes, she began organizing cultural activities with the community’s youth. In 2001, together with a network of artists from Kosovo, she participated in the formation of the Crossing Bridges Collective to organize an annual trans-Balkan music and arts festival. Inspired to document these vibrant cultural events, Sophie began working as a video artist and then went on to refine her skills at the Film Academy of Prague, Czech Republic (FAMU). She then received a dynamic degree at the University of California at Berkeley combining both visual arts and critical social theory.
As writer/Director, Sophie has worked on many documentaries and independent feature films in the US, Colombia and Kosovo. In her teaching, Sophia uses theater and photography as a tool to explore community and conflict resolution: with children in America and in Kosovo.
Sophie’s work as an artist has developed hand-in-hand with her work as a community organizer. She has found that her favorite form of activism is that of visually celebrating the beauty of nature and the beauty of culture.
Programs Offered: New Media, Videography, Photography, Digital Storytelling
Ascha Kells Drake
Ascha has her Masters in Printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art and her Bachelors in Studio Art and Arts Education from Skidmore. Her solo work has been exhibited in many New York Galleries including: Atlantic Gallery, Art 101, The Catskill Center, ERPF Gallery and Projekt30.
Ascha has experience as both a classroom teacher and a studio art teacher in Chicago. For over ten years she lived in New York City teaching art to students of all ages. Some of the institutions where she has been an artist in residence include: The Joan Mitchell Foundation, Pratt Institute, Fresh Art, The Noguchi Museum, Studio in a School and the Guggenheim Learning Through Art program where she developed and lead arts integration projects in public schools.
Ascha’s publications include: New Visions: A Guide to Interpreting American Art - Past, Present, and Future a curricula for The National Academy Museum, and The Joseph Cornell Box: Found Objects, Magical Worlds Co-authored with Joan Sommers. Published by Cider Mill Press.
Awards include: a Full Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center, the Hilla Rebay Teaching Artist Award, Guggenheim Museum and the Pamela Weidenman Memorial Prize in Printmaking.
Programs Offered: Printmaking, Collage & Assemblage, Drawing, Painting, Sculpture
Roni Hoffman Duncan
Roni earned her BFA from Hunter College in New York, and is a member of the College of Marin’s Emeritus Program. She has exhibited in numerous shows in both New York and Los Angeles, including the Jacqueline Anhalt Gallery (LA), Just Above Midtown Gallery (NY), and the Arsenal Gallery (NY). Roni was awarded an RIAA Gold Record for design of a record abum cover. In 1997, she was the Artist in Residence for the town of Fairfax.
Roni has brought children and the elderly of Marin County the gift of art for many years. Roni loves to show students how they can transform everyday found objects into beautiful works of art. She provides a nurturing environment where students can make decisions, try new things and overcome their fears. Roni’s work enables students to make individual decisions and grow and mature in ways they had not had the opportunity to do previously.
Programs Offered: Collage & Assemblage, Sculpture, Drawing, Painting, Paper Exploration
Mark Edwards
Mark has been teaching art in the Bay Area from kindergarten to college level for more than 15 years, and has been an artist with the Italian Street Painting Festival since 2004. Mark attended the Academy of Arts in San Francisco and is the illustrator of three children’s books. Mark has gained success creating logos and product designs for many Bay Area companies. His hand-painted sculptures are sold in San Francisco and Las Vegas.
Mark finds that teaching cartooning through fun games engages students in learning new art skills, providing the building blocks for more advanced projects. He uses math concepts to teach children to draw the Mona Lisa.
Programs Offered: Drawing, Painting, Illustration, Cartooning
Gabrielle Gamboa
Gabrielle is a California-born visual artist. For over a decade she has been teaching in diverse Bay Area schools and working as a professional artist from her studio in San Francisco’s Mission District. She has taught Visual Art, Digital Art, and Computer Technology to all K-12 grade levels in schools in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Mission, and Richmond Districts, and at Marin School of the Arts. Her own works have hung in galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area, the U.K., and beyond. Her comics and illustrations have been published in various weekly newspapers, magazines, and books.
Gabrielle received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Painting and subsequent teaching credentials in Art and English from San Francisco State University. Before that, she attended the California College of Arts and Crafts as a film and painting major. During her formative high school years, Gabrielle earned a scholarship to the California State Summer School of the Arts at Mills College, and was a California State Arts Scholar.
Gabrielle loves figurative drawing, and painting in oils and encaustics. She also works in cartooning, experimental film, and assemblage. Some of her other passions are cinema, roller derby, and travel, and writing about herself in the third person!
Programs Offered: Cartooning & Illustration, Drawing, Portraiture, Scientific Illustration, Mixed Media Unleashed, Painting, Printmaking Without a Press, Italian Street Painting, Sculpture, Collographs, Bookmaking
Nadine Gay
Nadine is a French born professional painter, sculptor and ceramist. Her work has been shown extensively in France and the United States. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in New York and has taught art to adults and children for more than 15 years in various community programs. She was an adjunct professor at the New College in San Francisco, and has worked extensively to bring art-making opportunities to the elderly as well as to children.
Nadine recently completed a 100-foot long mural of broken glass and drawings for the St. Isabella School in San Rafael, where every student contributed a drawing. Nadine believes in nurturing the individual's creative expression alongside the mastery of technique.
Programs Offered: Ceramics, Glass Tile Mural, Collage & Assemblage, Mixed Media, Mural Design & Creation, Paper Exploration, Sculpture
*Elle parle le Francais
Zachary Gilmour
Zachary Gilmour was born in 1973 and grew up in Mill Valley, California. He is a third generation artist with both parents as well as grandparents, on both sides of his family, being artists in one or more mediums.
After some thrashing about after high school, getting a certificate in cooking from the California Culinary Academy and working as a baker for a short time, he came to the conclusion that whether he liked it or not, Art with a capital A was too important to be a hobby. So in the fall of 1995 he enrolled in the printmaking department of the San Francisco Art Institute. After three semesters there, he transferred to the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of Art) and graduated with a BFA in printmaking. Since then he has tried to find a way to make art the core of his life.
Zach received his teaching credential in Art from Sonoma State University in December 2007 and now teaches art in the Bay Area. He lives with his wife and son in Forest Knolls, California.
Programs Offered: Printmaking, Drawing, Sculpture, Ceramics
Michelle Gutierrez
Michelle has studied photography and journalism at the SF Art Institute, SF State, and CCSF. She is currently working toward a degree in Art Therapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is a photographer based in San Francisco, and has traveled extensively and worked in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Venezuela, and the US. Michelle is currently teaching photography to ninth graders at June Jordan High School for Equity in San Francisco, where students use photography to explore the issues of personal identity, community, and social justice.
When living in South America Michelle worked on long-term photography projects about children, women, indigenous communities, culture, and those affected by exploitation of their land. Home again in San Francisco, she is currently working with independent community journalism, women, children, culture, and exposing discrimination of any type. Michelle is grateful to be turning her attention towards teaching photography and asking students to express their identities and culture.
Programs Offered: New Media, Videography, Photography, Digital Storytelling
*Se Habla Español
Julia James
Julia earned her BA in jewelry and design from London, and recently received her teaching credentials from Sonoma State University. has been an Exhibited artist and Art teacher for over 20 years. Her work has been featured in exhibits by Artisans in Marin, an organization founded over 30 years ago by a group of local artists. Julia enjoys capturing landscapes, using watercolor or etching as her medium.
Julia encourages students to use their imagination and to find their creative voice, using a variety of media. Julia teaches students basic art skills through lessons aligned with the California art content standards. Julia loves to share the knowledge of art and the creative spirit, believing that art is a wonderful process, which opens the door to many types of learning.
Programs Offered: Bookmaking, Drawing, Painting, Paper Exploration, Portraiture, Printmaking, Mixed Media
Lisa Jones
Lisa received her BFA from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco and has been a professional illustrator and fine art painter for 20 years. In 1998, she began to participate in chalk art festivals. Best known for her architectural pieces and reproductions of early Renaissance still life paintings, Lisa has created street paintings in several locations in California including San Rafael, as well as Provo Utah and the renowned Grazie da Cortatone, Italy. A lifetime student of the masters, Lisa founded Masterworks Children's Art Studio in 1996 to encourage children and their parents to explore the universal experience of communicating ideas through visual media. Lisa has been teaching children art in Marin County for 10 years using an educationally based, hands-on program teaching children about the Masters, as well as following school curricula, fundamentals of art and cultural art.
Children learn art history, culture and geography as they explore various artistic mediums in a nurturing, supportive environment. Lisa’s goal in teaching children art is to enhance their learning and curiosity by linking projects to established curriculum. Creativity is fostered in a well-organized easy to understand, step by step process for all projects.
Programs Offered: Bookmaking, Drawing, Painting, Paper Exploration, Portraiture, Printmaking, Mixed Media
June Li
June Li received her BA in studio art from Sonoma State University, and a BA in applied art from South China Teaching University where she was professionally trained in the traditional technique of Chinese Brush Painting. June has participated in the Youth in Arts Italian Street Painting Festival for many years.
June believes in presenting children with exciting lessons that actively engage them to reach their potential talents using creative expression and high-quality tools.
Programs Offered: Chinese Brush Painting
Sharon Locke
Sharon Locke is currently an MFA/PhD candidate through the Saybrook Graduate School. She holds MFAs in Interdisciplinary Art and Sculpture. She has more than 20 years of experience as an art teacher of sculpture, watercolor, acrylic, ink, collage/multi-media, photography, installations, and poetry. She has been an exhibiting artist as well, working in the areas of sculpture (bronze, copper, brass, wood, cement, ceramics), metal fabrication/forging (steel, bronze, copper, brass), photography, painting, drawing, masks, and installations.Sharon is also a creativity coach. She was the Director of Beyond Creative Boundaries from 1982 to present, where she engaged adults from a wide range of professions in hands-on participatory exercises designed to broaden their creative perspectives. She has designed and continues to teach an approach to investigating the creative process. She has experience teaching figure sculpture, figure drawing, glass blowing, wood carving, plaster mold-making, bronze casting, steel forging and fabrication.
Programs Offered: Community Installation Art; Sculpted Portraits
Laurie Marshall
Laurie Marshall has been making portable murals for the last 25 years. She engages young people to make bold visual statements reaching outside the classroom to bring the fresh vision of youth to a challenged world. The content of the murals ranges from academic subjects (math, science, health, social studies, literature) to the steps of conflict resolution. She has used the power of story, visualization and painting to foster team building and unity with NASA, the Department of Interior, the Army Corps of Engineers, hospices, hospitals, prisons, and foster homes. As a certified art teacher, she recently spent three years as a multiple subject elementary teacher at a Waldorf-methods charter school. Her oil portraits and nature-based/spiritual paintings are in public and private collections around the world. She studied at the Art Students' League in New York City and moved to California four years ago from her native Pittsburgh, PA.
In addition to doing collaborative murals with young people, Laurie teaches narrative portraiture inspired by Renaissance Art; drawing; painting integrating 3-D elements; collage; and recycled materials sculptures. She has an undergraduate history degree, and loves to include local history, ecology and elders in projects.
Programs Offered: Portable Murals, Drawing, Sculpture, Painting, Portraiture
Marty Meade
Marty is a long time instructor of glass art and watercolor at the College of Marin and was honored as the 2006 Teacher of the Year. She is the first recipient of the Youth in Arts' Pamela Levine Arts Education Leadership Award. Marty studied Expressive Arts Therapy at John F. Kennedy University, and is certified in Art Therapy. She has worked with young people in recovery from substance abuse since 1987. Marty works in glass bead making, advanced lampworked glass bead making. She studied traditional stained glass, dalle glass, sculpure, acid etching, painting on glass with Roger Darricarrere, in Chartres, France. Marty apprenticed for many years with Judy Raffael (North) in the design and creation of stained glass panels, painting on glass, sand blasting and kiln work. Marty has also worked with students at several Marin elementary schools to create stained glass “murals” for their schools.
Marty offers students a unique opportunity to create fine art through painting and collage as well as small fused glass pieces. Students are encouraged to express their emotions through their artwork and in most cases, cannot wait to show their glass artwork off to family and friends. Marty is bilingual, with Spanish as her second language.
Programs Offered: Collage & Assemblage, Glass Art, Painting
*Se Habla Español
Margaret Niles
Margaret Niles is a credentialed art teacher with extensive experience in preschool through high school art education. She has taught in public and private schools throughout the Bay Area, as well as in art centers and museums, including Habitot Children’s Museum and the Oakland Museum of California.
Margaret especially enjoys helping students develop their creativity and make new discoveries. She has a BA in Studio Art and is currently completing an MA in Education from San Francisco State University.
Programs Offered: Mixed-Media Unleashed, Painting, Scientific Illustration, Sculpture, Printmaking without a Press, Drawing, World Folk Art
Donna Ozawa
Donna Keiko Ozawa is a visual artist and musician, native San Franciscan, Sansei (third generation Japanese American) and the second daughter of Nisei (second generation) parents.
Ozawa received her BA degree in Latin American Studies and Spanish from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts in 1985. After college and work and travel in four Latin American countries, she returned to San Francisco and worked for over 7 years as a social service provider and community activist. In 1988, she co-founded LYRIC, the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center (San Francisco), now the largest gay youth organization in the United States.
Ozawa earned her Master of Fine Art degree in 1997 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is primarily sculpture and installation, which include kinetic and viewer-activated sculpture, politically-inspired work and art with recycled materials. Ozawa maintains a studio in Oakland, CA, and has shown her artwork in Northern California, Chicago, Baltimore, and Tokyo, Japan. She is also an active drummer and electric bassist.
Programs Offered: Site Specific Installations, Scribble Monsters
Genna Panzarella
Genna Panzarella is a Mill Valley artist whose creative talents have led her in many directions. She attended Washington State University, with a major in art and a minor in English literature. She is a master at a variety of art-forms including jewelry, lampworking glass beads, stained glass, photography, bronze sculpture, painting, portraiture, and wearable art. Her work has appeared in many magazines including Equine Images, Equine Vision Magazine, and People Magazine. Genna has been a Featured Artist at the Youth in Arts Italian Street Painting Festival and her street paintings have been awarded highest honors both nationally and internationally. Her chalk drawing has taken her to Florida, Canada, China, Italy, the Netherlands and twice to Mexico. In 2002, Genna earned the highest title of Maestro in the international street painting competition at Grazie di Curtatone in Italy, earning international recognition.
Genna’s students learn many techniques for street painting including gridding, blending, composition, collaboration, and image design.
Programs Offered: Italian Street Painting
Kiki Rostad
Kiki Rostad has a Bachelor's Degree in Art from SFSU, an Early Childhood Education certificate, and is a Certified Art therapist. Kiki has 27 years of teaching experience at the Oakland Museum, Head Royce School, Montclair Recreation Center, the Richmond Art Center, Albany Recreation Center, and in other programs around the Bay Area. Kiki has also been teaching clay and art classes to children for many years through the El Cerrito Recreation Department.
Kiki designs a wide variety of multi-media projects for even the youngest artists. She brings joy and whimsy into all of her classes, and fosters a true love of the creative process in all of her students.
Programs Offered: Bookmaking, Drawing, Painting, Paper Exploration, Portraiture, Printmaking, Portraiture, Mixed Media, Sculpture
Elisabeth Setten
Raised in San Francisco, Elisabeth Setten holds a BA with honors in Political Science from University of Massachusetts, Boston, an MS in Mass Communications from Boston University, and a post-Baccalaureate awarded with distinction in Art Studio from UC Berkeley continuing education. Elisabeth is a nationally exhibited artist and was showcased in Kennedy publication’s Best of California Artists and Artisans. Her paintings are represented by Xanadu, a contemporary art gallery in Scottsdale, AZ. Along with her studio arts and education background, Elisabeth has worked in the media industry as a journalist, photographer, and videographer.Elisabeth has traveled and worked extensively in Mexico. In 2010, she lived in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico. While there, she created a two-month self directed artist residency with Zapotec Indian women to learn their age-old dyeing techniques used to color the wools for their colorful weavings.
Elisabeth believes strongly in the power of the arts and the creative process to guide a young person to becoming an actively engaged lifelong learner. As an arts educator, she strives to present interesting, high quality, hands on, learning experiences that integrate history, cultural studies, ecology, and science.
Programs Offered: Mexican Arts, World Folk Art
*Se Habla Español
Harry Simpson
Harry Simpson is a practicing painter as well as being a long-time artist of YIA's Italian Street Painting Festival. He has a BA in Art History from UC Berkeley, as well as teaching credentials from Dominican University. Harry has more than 14 years of experience teaching art to children in the Bay Area. Harry uses art to develop children's creative writing skills, and knowledge of ancient cultures.
Harry believes in guiding students to their vision, rather than imposing one on them.
Programs Offered: Cartooning, Drawing, Painting, Arts Integration
Keith “K-Dub” Williams
K-Dub is an artist, art educator, muralist and community youth arts organizer. K-Dub holds a BA in Art, Cal-State Univ. Long Beach. In 2008, he was elected to the Board of Directors of Mocha Museum of Children’s Art Oakland. From 2000 to 2008 K-Dub was the Co-Director of the Oakland High School- Visual Art Academy. K-Dub has worked with students in northern and southern California to create community Murals in over 40 Schools, Parks, Neighborhoods and Art Centers. K-Dub has been presented with “Visual Art Teacher of the Year”- 2006/07 & 2003/04 by Art Is; “Artist of the Year” presented by City of Long Beach. He was also chosen as “Artist of the Year” by the Pan African Film Festival, Los Angeles, and was nominated for the Eureka Fellowship by the Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco.
K-Dub’s personal work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Galleries and Museums including: Oakland Museum; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Cal State Long Beach University Museum; and Steel Life Gallery in Chicago, IL. K-Dub is Founder and Creative Director of Hood Games, an urban Skateboard Jam and Youth Arts Festival that blends skateboarding with live art, music, dance and fashion performances. K-Dub has also produced over 10 Hood Games skateboard themed Art exhibitions in museums, galleries, public art spaces and three Skateboard film festivals in Oakland, Napa and American Canyon, Ca.
Currently, K-Dub is the Co Curator of the exhibition “How We Roll” at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, on show through January 2011. “How We Roll” showcases African American/Latino contributions in Skateboard history& culture. The exhibit features collections, photography, video and original artwork from pro skaters and invited artists.
