Instructors : Art Academy of San Diego

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CONNIE ATHENS holds a BA in fine art with an emphasis in painting from George Washington University, Washington, DC, where her program was affiliated with the Corcoran School of Art. She later attended the Art Students League of New York. Connie has taught classes privately to both children and adults, emphasizing freedom of expression based on theories of balance and structure. She’s participated in solo as well as group and juried exhibitions, and her painting has been featured on the award-winning label of Meadow Glen Wine, Sonoma County, California. Connie’s artwork is collected both locally and nationally. She has taught at the Art Academy of San Diego since 1999.
STUART BURTON www.stuartburtonart.com received his BA in painting and printmaking from San Diego State University in 1977. Since that time, he has had over 30 one-person shows and participated in over 60 group and juried exhibitions. From 1980 to 1992, Stuart owned Rogue Graphics and Stiff Springer Gallery in North Park. He is a founder and the Director of the Art Academy. Galleries in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Florida represent him. Memberships include the CA Art Club, Oil Painters of America and the Impressionist Society of America.
REED CARDWELL www.reedcardwell.com received his BFA from Cal State University, Long Beach with further studies at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Reed also studied drawing and painting with Los Angeles artist Harold Kramer and later studied painting with Nathan Oliveira in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Reed worked as an animation artist for Walt Disney Feature Animation. His work is exhibited locally and nationally and is part of many private collections. Reed has taught at the Athenaeum School of Fine Art and at UCSD Extension.
LAURA CROUCH earned her MFA from San Diego State University in painting and drawing, her BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA from Hendrix College in Arkansas along with her K-12 teaching certificate. Laura began working with children, but discovered her true joy of teaching at Palomar College where she has remained for 20 years. She has also has been teaching at Design Institute for the last 9 years. Laura works in several mediums. In 2005 she began a series of small water-based oil portraits of friends that led her to the psychological double portraits of her family, which she is still developing. She is currently experimenting with some transitional drawings in conjunction with these paintings where collage-like imagery is appearing. This breaks from her past collage work when the images were strictly appropriated collage. She has been showing since 1980, mainly in group shows.
STEPHEN CURRY earned a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1990. He was given his first show at Doug Simay's Java Cafe/ Gallery in 1992. Stephen has been represented by the Thomas Babeor Gallery and is now represented by Quint Contemporary Art in La Jolla and Koplin del Rio in Los Angeles. He has been included in three shows at the California Center for the Arts Gallery, Escondido. Stephen has also shown at the Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco, Saddleback College, Claremont College, Grossmont College and The Cannon Arts Gallery in Carlsbad. His work is included in many private collections and also in the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego and the California Center for the Arts Collections. Stephen also teaches at Palomar Community College, San Marcos.
HAROLD DONNENBERG www.hauntingcreations.com received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and is a practicing sculptor and jeweler. Harold was born in New York and lived in Long Island and Astoria Queens before moving to California in 2008. Sculpting in wax and clay is second nature to him. Using fire to melt metal and cast it into works of art has been a life long passion. Harold sells his work on-line and at specialty shows.
JACQUELINE GORE earned her BA from San Diego State University’s School of Art and Design, studying under the tutelage of world-renowned professor and author, Arline Fisch. She has also studied at Haystack Mountain School of Arts and USCD Craft Center. A native of California, Jacqueline finds ample inspiration in nature here. One can readily see the waves of the sea in her fluid shapes. In addition to creating jewelry, she also teaches art to children.
DEANNA LEA JACOBSEN is a silversmith who has been designing and making jewelry since 1990. She attended Grossmont College to study jewelry design and fabrication. Born and raised in San Diego, and after several trips to Mexico, she became interested and influenced by vintage Mexican jewelry design and technique. This influence can be seen in her current work. Her one-of-a-kind and limited edition jewelry pieces can be found in galleries, shops and at art shows throughout Southern California. Deanna began as a stained glass artist in 1973 and made stained glass windows for 15 years. She studied glass blowing at Palomar College and eventually opened a hot glass studio in La Mesa where she produced blown pieces and flat glass, held seminars and taught classes in stained glass and glass blowing. Deanna lived in Amsterdam from 1984-1988 and worked with a well-known Dutch glass artist making windows and lampshades. All of her skills and experiences led to her passion of designing and making jewelry and the joys of teaching.
LORETTA KRAMER received her MFA in Printmaking in 1994 from CA State University, Long Beach. She won a Printmaking Fellowship at the Kala Print Institute, Berkeley, in 1996. While earning her BA at UC, Davis, during the 1980s, Loretta studied printmaking with Roland Peterson and painting with Wayne Thiebaud. She taught printmaking at Palomar College for five years. Her recent work has focused on Monoprints. She has exhibited her work internationally and is included in many collections. She is currently a member of North County Printmakers of San Diego, Los Angeles Printmakers Society, San Diego Artists Guild and the San Diego Art Institute.
LISA MAYWOOD www.verredesigns.com is a highly trained, classical stained glass artist. She is a diplomat of the Ecole de Vitrail et de Creation, Monthey, Switzerland. There, after a 3 year intensive program, she mastered all aspects of drawing, painting, design, and all aspects of the stained glass process. Her work has been in several European exhibitions including the Swiss Museum of Stained Glass. Lisa’s professional stained glass studio is called Verre Designs where her specialty is in-home designs.
DANIEL “POSE 2” HOPKINS www.posetwo.com Pose 2 is currently an international muralist and arts educator for non-profit organizations and advertising agencies within New York, Philadelphia, Mexico and California. This role includes the responsibility for mural development and execution, curriculum writing and workshop instructing, within schools, prisons and after school programs. Powerful images of color and stylishly formed letters flowing through New York City, synchronized with the movement of subway steel evoked in him a calling to claim this art form called “graffiti” as his own. He has a passion to introduce others to its beauty, depth and strength.
OLDRICH ROKYTA studied sculpture and restoration in the School of Applied and Fine Arts, in Uherske Hradiste, Czech Republic (1970 – 1974). Worked for four years in the restoration of the Prague Castle, in Prague (1976 – 1980). Oldrich has extensive stone carving experience, including a variety of projects from different periods (Romanesque Basilica, Gothic Cathedral, Baroque Church, Renaissance Palace, etc.). Oldrich has worked on numerous art commissions and collaborations with other artists as well. A notable restoration project in San Diego was the Mission Beach Plunge (1987), which included restoration of the façade to its original condition and making negative molds. Since 1974, Oldrich has received several awards and honors, participated in public/private exhibitions, and created many portraits and abstract works that have been commissioned for both public and private collections (in the United States, England, Germany, Hungry, and Czech Republic).
NEIL SHIGLEY www.neilshigley.com is a painter and designer who lives in San Diego. In addition to teaching at the Art Academy of San Diego Neil has been teaching drawing and illustration at San Diego State University since 1999. He taught at the Academy of Art in San Francisco prior to that. His art education began at San Diego State where he studied painting and printmaking. He then went on to earn his degree in illustration from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Neil provides illustration and design to many Fortune 500 companies. Neil lived and worked in New York City and San Francisco before returning to San Diego in 1990. Along with his design and illustration, he also exhibits his paintings and woodcuts in San Diego, Santa Barbara and throughout Europe.
ROBERT TREAT www.roberttreat.com is a California artist whose work is exhibited and collected nationally. He began working abstractly with primitive materials early in his career. Robert’s formal training is in Architecture and in Fine Arts from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After graduation, his interests expanded to include large format photography and film animation. Over the years, he has had the opportunity to study and teach with a variety of creative individuals including Robert Wolfe Jr., Ansel Adams and Chuck Jones. Along with his painting career, he has been involved in the Hollywood animation industry for over twenty years.
MARY CARIN earned her MFA at SDSU in 1994 in sculpture. Her interest is in the human body and its language, especially when the gestures of that language imply protection of ones past or disclosure. Mary uses a multitude of materials in each sculpture and is as adept at using paper as she is at using clay, formed metals, wood, stone and a variety of cast materials. She often mixes the classic realistic figure with an abstracted form and believes that a strong classical training in figure study is important when using the figure in an abstracted way. Her familiarity with the human body and use in an abstracted form links her with ancient imagery and language to contemporary psychological situations. Mary has been teaching the craft of sculpture and mold making of the human figure since 1989.
CHRISTINA SNELL Holds a California Teaching Credential in Art. She earned a BA in Fine Art/Art Education from Kean University in New Jersey. She later attended UCSD, where she earned a Professional Certificate in Art & the Creative Process. Currently, Christina is completing a Graduate Degree in Cross-Cultural Teaching. She is an experienced and devoted educator of young people, dedicated to fostering creative thinking and positive self-esteem through art. Her art lessons are art history based, and designed to meet the diverse needs of all students. Her students’ work has been featured in local art shows, as well as in local newspapers. Prior to moving to San Diego, Christina worked as an assistant to the director of the Bergen Museum of Art & Science and in the Department of Education at the Newark Museum of Art.
SARAH WARTELL Sarah Wartell earned her Fine Arts BA from SUNY Fredonia in 2003. She is a figurative sculptor, whose work is based on the human form, and inspired by the motion of music and dance. Working primarily in clay, her hand built forms range from super-realism to abstracted fragments. Sarah's career also includes arts administrator positions at notable non-profit organizations in New York including ArtsWestchester and The Clay Art Center. Currently, and newly relocated to California, she continues to teach children's sculpture incorporating multi-media and free imagination.
TRACY BROOKS Is a classically trained fine artist from the Savannah College of Art & Design with an emphasis in Painting and Photography. In addition to teaching at the Art Academy of San Diego, Tracy is also a visiting Artist teacher at the Jamul Middle School. Tracy has exhibited in San Diego and at the Cleveland Museum of Art as well as Savannah GA. Tracy now combines her many years of traveling to places such as Europe, Central America, South America and Alaska and now has instilled the fundamental classics of each and every region into her teaching. This exposure has afforded her insight into the various cultures and Master Artists of our time.
MARJORIE TAYLOR www.taylorpaintings.com graduated with a BA in Art and spent 14 years as a graphic designer/illustrator. In 1992 she began to study oil painting and in 1998 she embarked upon her career as a Fine Artist. Painting from life, whether en plein air or from a live model, enables her to capture the atmosphere of a place, or the mood of a person. She then strives to translate the information and energy gained during these sessions to her studio painting. Marjorie’s work is represented in galleries throughout the United States. Her award-winning work has been exhibited in shows and collected nationally and internationally. In addition to teaching private classes at her North Park Studio, Marjorie has also taught plein air painting in Tuscany.