Presenter and Instructor Bios
Edith Beatty maintains a studio in the village of Waterbury, Vermont. An artist most all of her life, she concentrates now on painting with oil and wax, expanding her array of surfaces, pigments, and design. Edie was born in Boston and has lived predominantly in the Northeast. She earned a Doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from Indiana University, and enjoyed an extensive career designing and leading programs to promote social justice and equity. She now shifts her focus to making works of art that convey that same struggle and hope. Continuing her lifelong quest for learning through relationships and dialog with artists, cadres, and friends, Edie is part of the Yellow Chair Salon based in New York City, a proud member of New England Wax, and more informally, two exhibiting groups - Wax Women and BADASS Painters. She has studied with fiber, design, and encaustic artists over a period of more than 30 years, and has completed residencies and master classes at Haystack School of Craft, Crow Barn, Fuller Craft Museum, Schoodic Institute, Maine Coast Encaustic Retreat, and Truro Center for the Arts. She has shown her work through curated and juried shows throughout Vermont, New England, and nationally. Her work showed spring and summer of 2023 at M David & Co Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, Cove Street Arts in Portland, ME, Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester VT, and the juried show at the 16th International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, MA. Fall and winter pieces were exhibited at Axels Gallery and the Current. Now in 2024 her work hangs in the Southern Vermont Arts Center, and the Kathryn Schwartz Gallery in Cambridge MA. Edie lives with her husband, nestled into the Green Mountains of Vermont. There they enjoy inspiring views of the mountains, woods, and continual shifts in skies and weather patterns. When not painting, she cycles, kayaks, travels, cooks, and practices yoga and meditation.
Working in the abstract, Karen Bright’s painting and sculpture derive from an innate focus on the natural world and concern for the environment. The ancient method of encaustic – a fusing of beeswax and damar resin with pigment added for color – is harnessed through a process of heating and cooling the temperature. This aspect of materiality connected to each work’s intent serves not only as the control behind each work but as the driving force. Exhibiting since 1981, Karen’s work has won numerous exhibition awards and project grants from a wide variety of organizations including: Urban Coast Institute, International Encaustic Artists, and Monmouth University. Artist-in-residency appointments include: Weir Farm National Historic Site, Petrified Forest National Park, and Hot Springs National Park. Karen Bright, Professor Emerita, recently retired from Monmouth University after a 39 year career in academia teaching all levels of graphic and interactive design, typography, and traditional printmaking. Previous academic appointments include: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey; Parsons School of Design, New York, New York. Professor Bright owns and operates Studio Bright in Newtown Square (Edgmont), Pennsylvania. Academic degrees include an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and a BFA with honors, from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Debra Claffey’s paintings in oil, encaustic, and mixed media concentrate on abstracted plant and foliage forms as expressions of the human dilemma. Her experience in horticulture adds a scientific perspective to her aesthetic appreciation of the natural world. With the plant kingdom as muse, Claffey’s work employs direct observation of nature to comment on the critical relationship between humans and plants. Claffey’s paintings have been exhibited across New England and have won several awards, including the Juror’s Award at Anything But Flat at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. She holds a BFA in painting from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Tufts University and an Associate's Degree in Horticultural Technology from the University of New Hampshire. She has been Past-President of both the New Hampshire Women’s Caucus for Art and New England Wax. She exhibits with a four-artist collective named Elemental, which focusses on environmental issues. Claffey currently teaches online and in her Maine studio.
David A. Clark teaches encaustic printmaking across the United States and beyond, including classes at Zijdelings in the Netherlands, R & F Handmade Paints, the Palm Springs Art Museum and Idyllwild Arts. His work has attracted national attention for its technical innovation and soulful content and has been shown at OTA Contemporary Santa Fe, the Hunterdon Art Museum, Conrad Wilde Gallery, the Process Museum, the Cape Cod Museum of Art, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and the Palm Springs Art Museum.
Miles Conrad creates paintings, sculpture, and immersive environments exhibited nationally. His work was featured in the Whitney Biennial in 2017 and the Arizona Biennial in 2011. He received the Contemporary Art Society ’Award of Excellence’ from Tucson Museum of Art in 2011. Miles earned his MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2009. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Encaustic Artists Association. Miles serves as a private career consultant to artists nationwide.
Richard Frumess has been manufacturing artist paint commercially since 1982 when he began making encaustic paint for Torch Artists Supplies in New York City. In 1988 he founded R&F Handmade Paints to ensure the continuance of encaustic paint after Torch closed. Two years later developed Pigment Sticks. Although retired from R&F, he remains a consultant on technical issues. His color workshops grew out of an investigation into the underlying principles of R&F’s color line that had been developed intuitively over the years by him and R&F’s staff. The workshops are intended to ground color theory in the material characteristics of individual colors.
Isabelle Gaborit, a professional visual artist, holds a BA (Hons) and hails originally from La Rochelle in the southwest of France. Currently residing on Ireland’s west coast, her artistic journey began at l’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Poitiers, France, where she honed her skills in sculpture, drawing, and painting. In 2006, Isabelle graduated with an honours degree in fine arts in Ireland. Since then, her creative endeavours have taken her on a dynamic path, showcasing her work in national and international exhibitions across locations such as the USA, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Germany, China, and France. Isabelle describes herself as a contemporary artist, although her preferred medium of encaustic has ancient roots. In her studio, nestled between the sea and the lake on Ireland’s west coast, she immerses herself in the raw beauty of the natural environment. The rugged shores, dramatic skies, deep cracks, and rugged stones inspire her process-driven practice. Each painting undergoes a series of stages, mirroring the forces that shape landscapes: construction, destruction, growth, and decay. Much like an archaeological process, her paintings evolve through the physicality of layering pigmented beeswax, scraping it back while cooled, scoring, and shaping. This intricate technique results in highly tactile surfaces that invite viewers to explore the nuanced history embedded within each work.
Artist, Milisa Galazzi, is best known for her three dimensional hand sewn shadow drawings, her printed works on paper, and her richly layered abstract drawing and paintings - all of which explore the very nature of being human. Her work is held in private international collections as well as public institutions in the United States and her work is represented by, Miller White Fine Arts gallery on Cape Cod. She is an adjunct professor at Clark University - in addition she mentors artists internationally and teaches online courses with a worldwide following. Galazzi was 'boat schooled' as a child while she and her family traveled and lived aboard their thirty-one foot trimaran sail boat hand built by her father. She attended and graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, followed by Brown University where she also studied art in Florence Italy and she holds a master’s degree with Honors in education from Rhode Island School of Design. Galazzi works full time in her studio near Providence, Rhode Island.
Stephanie Hargrave has been painting and working in clay since college, where she studied ceramics, color theory, sculpture, drawing, painting and writing. She has shown her work in Seattle, Minneapolis, San Luis Obispo, Santa Fe, Brooklyn, NY, Manhattan, Truro, MA, Atlanta and Stockholm Sweden. Her paintings are in several corporate collections including Seattle’s University House, Swedish Hospital and the University of Washington Medical Center, Barclays International in Texas, the Abri Hotel in San Francisco, the Woodmark Hotel in Kirkland, and Kaiser Permanente in Baltimore. She has had 21 solo shows, participated in over 100 group shows, donates to auctions annually and has taught for 17 years. In early 2020 she moved to Brooklyn, NY to work for celebrated encaustic artist Michael David. Just after the pandemic shut-down, they co-founded The Yellow Chair Salon, an online critical thinking-based education series. She was instrumental in facilitating discussions and mentoring artists and served as his director of virtual programming which included producing online exhibitions and running residency programs, all the while making and showing new work. After 3 years, she moved back to Seattle to focus on sculpture and reunite with her own kiln. She has a studio in Pioneer Square’s Art District in the Tashiro Kaplan Building where she makes encaustic paintings, clay/encaustic sculpture and works on paper, all inspired, essentially, by biology. Her 25-year studio practice is her very nucleus.
Susan Lasch Krevitt received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she majored in Sculpture and Material Studies. Susan uses new and upcycled textiles, rubber, cardboard, metal, leather and whatever it takes to build abstract, free standing and wall hung sculptural paintings. She is passionate about materials, always looking to incorporate something new. Her organic, process driven work explores themes of structure, connection, transformation and memory. She finds inspiration in observations of the natural world, including growth and decay. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally and throughout the United States since 1985. Susan has shown work at the Cape Cod Museum of Art and The Provincetown Art Association and Museum on Cape Cod. On the other side of the country she’s shown at The Chaffey Community Museum and The Riverside Art Museum in California. Her work was included in a group show at The Painting Center in NYC. Susan teaches workshops and works one on one with artists in her Thousand Oaks, California studio.
In her almost five-decade career, Joanne Mattera has had 35 solo shows and participated in about 10 group shows annually, both national and international. Her most recent solo, From Dawn to Dusk, took place at Odetta Gallery in Manhattan in late 2019. Joanne’s curatorial projects include Textility in 2012 at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit; A Few Conversations About Color at DM Contemporary in Manhattan in 2015; and Depth Perception in 2017 at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, Massachusetts, which she curated with Cherie Mittenthal. Joanne’s work is in the New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut; Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; Connecticut College Print Department; University Collections at the University of Albany; the U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C.; and numerous institutional and private collections. Joanne is founder and director emerita of the International Encaustic Conference and author of The Art of Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax. Her memoir, Vita: Growing Up Italian, Coming Out, and Making a Life in Art, was published in 2019 by Well-Fed Artist Press in Manhattan.
Kelly Milukas is an instructor, speaker, and art & science residency collaborator, an award-winning artist whose practice began as a sculptor and has expanded to multi-media painting including pastel and encaustic painting. Milukas’ solo exhibitions have been hosted at the Ronald Reagan International Forum, Washington, DC, the Museum at Palm Beach Photographic Centre, FL, and the Regenerative Medicine Forum in Berkeley, CA. Her artwork is in national museums, international private and corporate collections, and been visible at international art fairs such as Red Dot Miami, and Boston International Art Fairs. Her story and artwork have been featured in IAPS Globe 2021, ArtScope, Newport Life Magazine, Palm Beach Times, and The Pastel Journal, and in several books: “100 New England Artists”; ”Best of American Pastel Vol. 2”; “Artists Homes and Studios”, “A Woman’s Shed”; “The History of Little Compton, First Light: Sakonnet, 1660-1820”; and The Cortland Review. She’s served as a curator and juror, and her ability to communicate ideas has established her as a respected and sought-after instructor and speaker in, arts and science forums, universities, and corporate leadership programs. She is a juried artist member of the Salmagundi Club, NYC, the Connecticut Pastel Society & the RI Watercolor Society, she’s the founding President Emerita of the South Coast Artists, RI & MA, and a past President of the Providence Art Club, the 3rd oldest art club in the United States founded in 1880.
Patricia Miranda is an artist, curator, educator, and founder of the artist-run orgs The Crit Lab and MAPSpace, where she developed residencies in Port Chester, Peekskill, and Italy. In 2021 she founded the Lace Archive, an historical community archive of thousands of donated lace works and family histories. She has received grants from the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation (2022);Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (2021); two artist grants from ArtsWestchester/New York State Council on the Arts (2014/21); an Anonymous Was a Woman Covid19 Relief Grant (2021), and was part of a year-long NEA grant working with homeless youth (2004-5). She has been awarded residencies at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, I-Park, Weir Farm, Vermont Studio Center, and Julio Valdez Printmaking Studio, and been Visiting Artist at Vermont Studio Center, the Heckscher Museum, and University of Utah. Miranda has developed education programs for K-12, museums, and institutions, including Franklin Furnace, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Institution. She is a noted expert on the history and use of natural dyes and pigments, and teaches about environmentally sustainable art practices. As faculty at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts (2005-19) she led the first study abroad program in Prato, Italy (2017). Recent solo exhibitions include: the Olin Fine Art Center (Washington PA), 3S Artspace (Portsmouth, NH), Jane Street Art Center, Garrison Art Center (Hudson Valley, NY), ODETTA Gallery, and Maine Window DUMBO (NYC). Group exhibitions include Spartanburg Art Museum (Spartanburg, SC); Dunedin Fine Art Center (Dunedin FL); HV MOCA (Peekskill NY), The Lyman Allyn Museum (New London, CT), Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NoMAA), Williamsburg Art+Historical Center, The Clemente Center (NYC), The Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at UConn Avery Point, (Groton, CT). Her recent work has been featured in Art New England (2022), Hudson Valley One (2022) and Brooklyn Rail, (2021).
Cherie Mittenthal, Director and Producer of the International Encaustic Conference. She’s been working predominately in wax or encaustic paint while integrating tar, marble dust, pigment sticks, dry materials, graphite, collage and miscellaneous mediums. She has her MFA from the State University of New York at Purchase and her BFA from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. She’s the Executive Artistic Director of Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill since 2002. She serves on the board of Campus Provincetown, Provincetown Cultural Council, OCARC - the Outer Cape Artist Residency Coalition and is partners with Highlands Center & the National Seashore for the only Wood-Fired Kiln on Cape Cod. She won the 2019 Artist Fellowship award from the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.
Lauren Pearlman Sugita (she/her/hers) has been a paper researcher, provider, educator,and maker for more than 30 years. In 1995, she founded Paper Connection International, LLC, a Providence, RI -based distributor of specialty art papers. Paper Connection has become an essential paper resource in North America- stocking mainly papers made from sustainable fibers made by traditional craftspeople. In addition to assisting artists find the ideal paper for their projects, writing and lecturing about paper, and facilitating handmade paper events, in 2023, Lauren realized a long-time dream of opening a paper, fiber and book arts educational space called the Art Annex
Lisa Pressman, an American abstract painter, was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1958. She earned a BA in Art from Douglass College of Rutgers University and an MFA from Bard College. Recent exhibitions include Susan Eley Fine Arts in New York, NY; Addington Gallery in Chicago, IL; and Circa Gallery in Minneapolis. Others include: The Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton NJ; The Cape Cod Museum of Fine Arts in Dennis, MA; and OTA Contemporary in Santa Fe, NM. In 2020 Lisa will be having a solo show at the Mulvane Art Museum in Topeka, KS. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and abroad. Numerous private and public collections feature her paintings. In addition to teaching hundreds of independent workshops and private mentoring programs, Lisa’s credentials include: R&F Handmade Paints Core Teaching Artist and instructor for Gamblin Artists Colors. She is an annual presenter and educator at the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, MA. Her teaching goal is to cultivate the visual voice of each student in the mediums of encaustic, oil and cold wax throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Jodi Reeb received a BFA degree in Fine Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, MCAD, where she instructed printmaking for over 9 years. Jodi has been a full-time working artist creating paintings and sculpture and a teacher in Minneapolis for over 28 years. She has taught printmaking, acrylic and encaustic painting as well as book arts classes/workshops at colleges and art centers regionally and internationally. She has taught encaustic workshops at the Essence of Mulranny in Ireland, Zijidelings in Netherlands, Kunstfreiraum in Basel, Switzerland, and San Miguel De Allende. Nationally, she has taught workshops at Arrowmont School of Craft, Penland School of Art, Tubac Center for the Arts, Wild Rice Retreat and Haystack School of Art. She has been an online video instructor with Painting with Fire for 4 years and has taught workshops at the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, Massachusets for the past 7 years. She teaches monthly workshops in her NE Minneapolis studio and offers art study coaching to artists for professional development. She is a CORE teaching Artist for R&F Handmade Encaustic Paints, an Ambassador artist for Ampersand Art, Artist Educator for Silverbrush Ltd., and a GOLDEN Acrylic Paint Artist educator.
For more information, available artwork and workshops please contact Jodi at www.jodireeb.com
Gabriela Sánchez Apodaca is a visual artist from Mexico City, born in 1972, specializing in encaustic and mixed media techniques. With a background in Textile Design and a master’s in Visual Communication, her work is deeply rooted in the exploration of texture, layering, and personal narratives, often weaving in family letters, documents, and memories into her pieces.
Since 2002, Gabriela has built a solid career with solo and collective exhibitions, recognized for her technical mastery and emotional expression. Her teaching practice extends beyond the studio, offering workshops on encaustic painting and mixed media techniques in both Mexico and internationally, inspiring others through her creative process.
Bettina Egli Sennhauser’s passion centers on developing her abstract vocabulary through the exploration of natural materials and an intuitive, process-oriented approach. She is deeply engaged in the contemporary interpretation of ancient techniques of encaustic and fresco. Since 2019, she has served as a freelance lecturer at different Art Academies in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Ireland and in the USA. She is a speaker at the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown and has published her first book on Cold Wax Techniques in 2023. Her work has been showcased in exhibitions across Switzerland, Italy, and was selected for juried exhibitions in Provincetown, Palo Alto and New York in the USA. In 2024 she won the Director^s award at the International Encaustic Conference. She is represented by the Soderbergh Gallery in Wellfleet, MA. Bettina works and lives in Switzerland, near Basel, where she leads her art teaching studio `kunstfreiraum` (www.kunstfreiraum.ch).
Artist, Explorer, Maker and Educator, Patricia Russotti is passionate about examinations of nature, the alchemical magic that occurs within natural phenomena and the creative process. Russotti’s current work is focused on entropy, negentropy, nature, and the small things she stumbles upon within the existing world. Russotti has been training and presenting on Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom since the first versions of the applications and employs these tools in the creation of her work. Her work has been consistently showcased through solo, group, and juried exhibitions. Her practice reflects a breadth and depth of experience and skill in image-making (including analog, digital, alternative, and historic processes), workflow, as well as digital output to a variety of substrates, such as fabric and washi. Currently, she is creating and offering workshops online and in person to provide emerging and established artists with acquiring digital tools to expand their art practice and to clarify their intent. She is the co-author of Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow Handbook, A Guide to Staying Ahead of the Workflow Curve © 2010, published by Elsevier Inc, Focal Press. Her evolving methodology is continually featured at national and international conferences. She has been a regular presenter at national and international imaging and education conferences since the 1980s. Patti holds M.S. and Ed.S. Degrees from Indiana University, and spent four decades as a Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology – most recently in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences.
Tracy Spadafora is a professional artist and art teacher who received a BFA from Boston Univ. (89’) and MFA from SUNY New Paltz (95’). She has been a recipient of a Frances Kinnicutt Award, Blanche Coleman Award, St. Botolph Foundation Grant, and a couple of Somerville Arts Council artist grants. Her work has been exhibited across the country and is in many private and public collections, including Harvard University, the Danforth Museum, and Bank of America. Her work has also been featured in many publications, including Artist’s Magazine, Art Scope Magazine, and the Boston Globe.