instructors
Bonnie Ashmore-Davis
M.F.A.: American University, Painting with Printmaking concentration B.A. and Post-Baccalaureate Certificate: Brandeis University, Art with French and Secondary Education Minor.
Bonnie Ashmore-Davis is a certified teacher in Massachusetts of Art K-12, and previously, of French 7-12. She has a decade of experience teaching students of all ages; from Kindergarten through graduate students. Currently she teaches art to grades 3-66K-5 during the school year and works at various institutions in Massachusetts on an adjunct basis. In addition to being an educator, she is also a practicing and exhibiting artist. Her artwork has been included in shows on The North Shore, in the Boston area, New York, Florida, Maryland and Washington, DC. She is looking forward to her second yearyearsummer of teaching inindrawing at the Montserrat Pre-College Program.
Jason Asselin
Master’s degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art, BFA from Montserrat
Jason Asselin has been making artwork on the North Shore for eight years. He received his BFA from Montserrat in 2001. He holds a Master’s degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has concentrated his intentions towards interactive work in a variety of mediums. Jason is the artist behind the Highway Heart, a heart sign that was hung on Route 128 North in Danvers. The artwork raised interest from Salem News and Fox 25; it has turned into a charity to raise donations for the United Way of Massachusetts Bay. Jason’s website is www.highwayheart.org.
Christine Bobek
MFA, Goddard College
MFA, Goddard College. She has instructed at the Boston Center for Adult Education, Phillips Academy Andover, Fitchburg State College and Northern Essex Community College.
Ned Delaney
Art Institute, Boston Museum School, Tufts University
Ned Delaney has published nearly 30 books. Half of the titles are books he's written and illustrated, the others, illustrated for other authors. He's worked for magazines, textbooks, TV and advirtising. He attended The Art Institute of Boston and graduated from the Boston Museum School and Tufts University.
James Durrett
Education: B.A., Art Education/Art Studio, University of Kentucky, Lexington; M.F.A., Vermont College, Montpellier, Vermont
James received a B.A. in art education/art studio from the University of Kentucky and an M.F.A. from the Vermont College of Art. He teaches workshops on stone and glass at The Carving Studio in West Rutland, Vermont, and has shown work at The Carving Studio, as well as Sculpture Fest, Woodstock, Vermont, and the North Bennington, (Vermont) Sculpure Fest.
Jim Falck
Yetti Frankel
Mary W. Hart
A graduate of the Design Program at Carnegie Mellon University, Mary has extensive experience in the fields of Graphic Design, Illustration, and Calligraphy. Dividing her time between teaching and freelance design work, Mary specializes in hand lettering and its many applications. Her work is exhibited locally and nationally and has appeared in a variety of publications.
Blyth Hazen
BA, Austin College
MFA, Massachusetts College of Art
Blyth Hazen received her B.A. from Austin College, Sherman, Texas and her M.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art. She is an Associate Professor at Montserrat College of Art. In addition, she serves as the Education Coordinator at Do While Studio, a Boston-based non-profit organization working with art, technology and community-based projects. She has a background in painting and has been working with digital media since the mid 1980s. Ms. Hazen collaborates with Jennifer Hall on large-scale art/robotics installations, some of which have been installed at the DeCordova Museum, Keene State College and Phillips Exeter Academy. In 2003, she was a recipient of the St. Botolph Club Grants-in Aid award and co-authored a chapter in the book Women in Technology recently published by MIT. More of Blyth Hazen's work can be seen at www.dowhile.org/physical/people/hazenb.html.
Masako Kamiya
Education: B.F.A. and Diploma, Fine Arts, Montserrat College of Art; M.F.A., Painting, Massachusetts College of Art.
"My goal as an instructor is not to simply tell students what may make their art work better, but to demonstrate how to think and work as an artist."
A 1997 graduate of Montserrat, Masako joined the full-time faculty at Montserrat teaching in the Painting and Foundation Departments in the fall of 2002. Her solo show at Kingston Gallery in 2002 was featured in Art in America. Now represented by Gallery NAGA, her solo show there in February 2003 was praised in The Boston Globe and ArtsMedia Magazine and her work is included in the publication, New American Painting. She has been featured in other venues in Boston including HallSpace and a show titled Boston Abstraction Now: Selections from New American Paintings edition #44, at the OSP Gallery in Boston, spring 2003.
Education: B.F.A. and Diploma, Fine Arts, Montserrat College of Art; M.F.A., Painting, Massachusetts College of Art.
Maria Malatesta
Maria Malatesta is adjunct faculty at Montserrat College of Art. She has assisted teaching international programs in Umbria, Italy and in Tortola, BVI. She also teaches privately. Maria has the Diploma and 5th Year Certificate from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and a BS degree from Lesley College. She also studied at the University of California at Davis, summer programs in Tuscany and Venice Italy. She received a grant to the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been accepted twice into the national prize show at the Cambridge Art Association and has been included in numerous group shows throughout the Boston area. Maria’s work can be seen at the Chameleon Gallery in Newburyport, MA.
Jules Means
After studying ceramics in college Jules Means studied jewelry making in classes from Montserrat to Metalwerx to Sharon Arts and Sturbridge Village. For many years her focus was on fiber arts. She taught sewing and quilting classes at several local fabric stores including Stretch n Sew in Danvers and Cranberry Fiber Arts in Hamilton. She has taught and demonstrated wool spinning, knitting, embroidery and felting. Largely self-taught she loves to think of new designs and inspire students with ideas and encouragement. Making jewelry with simple tools, wire and beads is her latest passion.
Joe Quinones
B.A. Illustration from Rhode Island School of Design
After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor's degree in Illustration, Joe sought out to work in the fields or both art and education. Since then he as worked steadily as a freelance artist, with clients including Soup2Nuts (Scholastic), Discovery Kids, and DC Comics. His most recent work has been within the realm of comic book illustration, consisting of a combination of work for DC Comics and self-published material.
Joe's job as an educator has lead him to develop and teach courses including digital illustration, character design, and comic book story telling. His experience with a variety of media - from pen and ink to digital painting to airbrush - contribute to his teaching skills, as well as his illustration work. That and well, along with being a total nerd...
If you're looking to see some examples of his work, they can be found online at joequinones.blogspot.com and in print in the 14th edition of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy publication Spectrum, as well as in upcoming issues of DC comics' Teen Titans Go!
Rhoda Rosenberg
B.A., Temple University; M.F.A., Tufts University; Certificate, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Rhoda has exhibited in Massachusetts and throughout the U.S. In the summer of 2002, with money from a grant from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a faculty enrichment grant from Montserrat, she traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa to visit and teach at Artist Proof, a print collaborative. The trip led to two exhibitions in the Montserrat Galleries in the spring of 2003, in addition to a fundraising campaign in the aftermath of a devastating fire that destroyed Artist Proof earlier that year. Her work was also in a show at the River Gallery in Ipswich with other Montserrat Printmaking faculty in early spring of 2003 titled Printmaking on the North Shore. Rhoda also teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Robin Samiljan
Robin's work is inspired by nature, but strongly displays her personal interpretation and complexity through the vibrant use of color. Spattered paint with contrasts creates key visual elements in her work. Her artistic motivation is to transfer the calm and inner peace of nature by using simplicity in shape and color combinations.
Ms. Samiljan is involved in various art organizations in New England. She continues to submit work to local, regional, and national juried shows and was the recipient of the Canson, Inc. award at the Northeast Watercolor Society International juried show October 2005. In April 2006 Childrens Hospital in Boston purchased two of her works for their permanent collection. She teaches watercolor workshops in the continuing education department at Montserrat as well as for the recreation department in the town of Swampscott, MA. She is a regular exhibitor at the Paradise City fine arts and craft shows in both Marlborough, MA and Northampton, MA. and her work can be seen at L’Attitude gallery in Boston, Serenity Now in Chester, Vt., and the Picklepot gallery in Salem.
www.fineartbyrobin.com
Lisa Sawlit
BFA Tufts University, 1983,
MFA Tufts University, 2007 (forthcoming)
Currently studies privately with Graydon Parish
As a mid career artist Ms. Sawlit has worked within multiple mediums. Her current focus is in representational drawing and painting. She works as a fine artist in Boston and teaches painting and drawing part time at Montserrat College of Art where she has taught for the last twelve years. Her most recent exhibitions include a solo show of drawings at MacPhail Gallery in Belmont, MA, 2003, a solo show of drawings and paintings at Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA, 2004, and a group show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 2005. She is also an original signatory of the "Slow Art Manifesto" signed in NYC in 2005 and now studies classical painting exclusively under renowned painter Graydon Parish.
Prior to this, Ms. Sawlit had a remarkable career in book and web publishing. Between 1997 and 2000, she held the position of Creative Director at Fidelity Investments (Fidelity.com). Ms. Sawlit’s pioneering innovations in web design won the prestigious #1 rating by J. D. Powers in both 2000 and 2001, and were rated “Favorite Brokerage Website” by Forbes.com in both 2000 and 2001, along with #1 rankings from Gomez, Dalbar and Money Magazine again in both 2000 and 2001. Her efforts have also received positive reviews by Forrester Research, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
Prior to Fidelity, Ms. Sawlit was the Art Director and Director of Production at Wisdom Publications (1990-1997), a leading publisher of trade and scholarly books on Buddhism. There she designed and produced books by many recognized authors including Nobel Laureate, the Dalai Lama. Under Ms. Sawlit's art direction, Publishers Weekly rated Wisdom as one of top ten fastest-growing publishers in the United States.
Ms. Sawlit continues making contributions in online media, as she is Chairman and Founder for National College Radio. She also serves as an Online Advisory Board Member of The Boston Classical Orchestra and has a seat on the Planning Committee at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Sarah Smith
MFA in Bookarts/Printmaking at the University of the Arts.
"I try to expose my students to as many basic skills, processes, techniques, visiting artists and field trips as possible, while also teaching them the history of the arts of the book, including type, design, printing and binding, with the aim to give them a better understanding (and inspiration from) the visual, technical and intellectual world around them."
Sarah began bookbinding, making pop-up books of her illustrations and cartoons at Umass Amherst, with the guidance of Northampton bookbinder, Bill Streeter. She then went on to get an MFA in Bookarts/Printmaking at the University of the Arts (formally Philadelphia College of Art), where obfuscatory writing and letterpress printing loomed large in her work.
She also is a book conservator at the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, MA. Her teaching at Montserrat includes graphic design, letterpress and bookbinding.
Aside from producing letterpress printed broadsides and books, Sarah also paints odd oil paintings and has written articles for published and proposed issues of Art Journal. She wrote the Introduction to Richard Purdy's book, Revisiting Late Ba Pe: Perambulations in Reverse Archeology, published in the Fall of 2003.
Sarah's teaching experience includes typography, letterpress, binding and bookarts at Penland School in North Carolina and the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore. Her absurdity can be found in collections at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, The Boston Public Library, Printed Matter in New York City, Special Collections of Georgia Southern University and the Greenfield Library in Philadelphia.
Gary Tardiff
Bachelor's Degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,New England School of Photography
Gary Tardiff is a Boston based advertising photographer with over 28 years of experience in the field. After receiving his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Gary completed the Professional Photography program at the New England School of Photography in 1978. In addition to his commercial photography, Gary has taught at the New England School of Photography and has lectured on the subject at area colleges.
Well versed in traditional film based photography, Gary has worked exclusively in the digital medium since 2001. Gary is an enthusiastic instructor and believes that the latest digital technology offers photographers unparalleled creative opportunities.
Gary's special interest is in food photography, and his work is currently used by national restaurant chains, magazines and food manufacturers. Examples of his work can be seen at culinaryphoto.com.
Anna Vojtech
