Meet Our Faculty

Ann Shafer

Bayda Asbridge

Bayda Asbridge is a local community artist who has the ability to work in a wide range of mediums. Since her arrival in the United States in 2007, Bayda has been added very strong element to the Worcester Art Museum's education department contributing a vast knowledge in painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, weaving and a wide range of other mixed media. Her work has been recognized in several local galleries, including our faculty exhibitions and at the Fitchburg Art Museum, giving her a well rounded knowledge of all stages of artistic production; from conception through to presentation. Since 2010 Bayda has placed in the top three in several art exhibitions and has also been interviewed twice on local television networks to honor her work. Bayda continues her ever-growing career as an artist and as a member of the Worcester Art Museum faculty.

C. J. Kennedy

Left-handed calligrapher, C. J. Kennedy's commissions have included family coats of arms, tattoo designs and a wedding proposal written on sand dollars. She has personalized Christmas ornaments for Macy's and has scribed the history and roll call for the Worcester Police Vice Squad. A member of several calligraphy guilds and associations, C. J. has published newsletter articles on left-handed calligraphy in the United States and Australia. She is a two time winner of The Graceful Envelope Contest. BC, before calligraphy and children, C. J. was a computer programmer.

Colleen Moore

Colorado State University, BA; University of Massachusetts. MS; Fitchburg State College, MEd

Corinne Rhodes

Corinne trained as a professional fine art printer at Tamarind Institute and has worked at several printmaking workshops. Corinne teaches traditional and new, non-toxic lithography and other printmaking techniques at her workshop, Cherry Press and elsewhere. Prior to opening Cherry Press, Corinne worked at several printmaking workshops including: Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop and the Lower Eastside Printshop in New York City, The West Yorkshire Print Workshop in Mirfield, UK (a non-toxic shop) and at the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She worked in these shops in various capacities, including as an artist-member/resident, monitor and provider of technical assistance, collaborative/contract printer for artists, outreach coordinator and teacher. She has exhibited her artwork across the U.S. and in Canada, Mexico and the U.K. Corinne is a recipient of ArtsWorcester’s Material Needs grant program, the British Arts Council’s Professional Development Grant Scheme, Brigit Skiold Memorial Trust and the Lower East Side Printshop’s Key Holder Residency Program.

Donalyn Schofield

Elaine Smollin

Pratt Institute, BFA; Pratt Institute, MFA; New York University, MFA

Elaine's workshops immerse advanced or beginning artists in the rich theory and practice of visual art to intensify technical skills while providing discussions of contemporary visual arts practice. Her courses provide guided experiments in image-making and advanced use of materials in "Life Size Figure Painting", "Painting Photography Film" and intensive life drawing in Narrative and Sequential Life Studies. Elaine lives and works in Rhode Island and New York City. A painter, she works with critical and visual theory, visual design and comparative world art history. Instructor's websites: EAS Paintings and Drawings http://elainesmollinpaintingdrawing.blogspot.com/ EAS FILM AND SOCIETY http://elainesmollinfilmandsociety.blogspot.com/

Ella Delyanis

Ella Delyanis graduated cum laude from Boston University with a Bachelor's Degree of Fine Arts in painting. She further studied art education at Suffolk University. Ella has enjoyed teaching adults at the Worcester Art Museum since the fall of 1977. Ella has been doing pastel landscapes of Worcester County for over 25 years. Her work is in many private as well as corporate collections, including Fidelity Investments and Dunn and Bradstreet. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in drawing. She has been a finalist with the Massachusetts Arts Fellowship program twice, and received the Worcester Art Museum's Kinnicutt Award for foreign travel and study in 2001. Ella's work is represented by Artana Gallery in Brookline, MA, where she had a show last October. She is having another show of her pastel landscapes there this coming September. Past one person exhibitions of her work have occurred in galleries both in Boston and New York City.

Ellen Donaldson

Hajj Wafaa

Hannah Gaucher

Haruo Shiga

Denver University, BFA; Rhode Island School of Design, MFA

Haruo Shiga, originally from Ashikaga, Tochigi, Japan, is a local artist with a rich history in Art Education. Following his BFA at the University of Denver, he continued on to the esteemed Rhode Island School of Design in order to receive his MFA. In addition to his numerous personal showings in galleries in Denver, Rhode Island, Brown University, and even local exhibits like the Fitchburg Art Museum and WAM, he has gained experience in nearly every age group involving art education. His past work as a proprietor and Art instructor as well as his ability to work with any level of student has made him an impressive addition to our staff here at the Worcester Art Museum.

Helen Downey

James Beschta

Jim Beschta was born and raised in southeastern Wisconsin, graduated from Dominican College and did graduate work in the University of Wisconsin system before moving to Massachusetts in 1970. He received his Masters Degree in English from Assumption College and won several awards while teaching English and Creative Writing at Quabbin Regional High School. He has published over 200 book reviews for various literary magazines and has published award-winning poetry in over a dozen journals, most recently in Sahara. He is a co-author of Bone Cages, an anthology of poetry by five central Massachusetts writers and his book Cutting the Cemetary Lawn was acknowledged nationally for its merit by the American Academy of American Poets. He has been teaching at WAM since 1998.

James Welu

Loras College, BA; University of Notre Dame, MA, MFA; Boston University, PhD

In 1966, Dr. Welu received his MA and MFA from the University of Notre Dame and his Ph.D. in art history from Boston University. He received honorary degrees from the College of Holy Cross, Loras College, and Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Dr. Welu taught at Clark and at the Worcester Art Museum for several years before joining the museum staff as an assistant curator in 1974. He served as the chief curator from 1980 to 1986 before becoming the director. He served in this position for twenty-five years. Welu retained oversight of Old Master paintings and taught on a continuous basis. A specialist in 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting and cartography, Welu organized many exhibitions including Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, the first show of the most famous woman artist from Holland’s Golden Age. In 2007 Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague, 1500-1800 was the first exhibition in North America to examine the response of the visual arts to the plague. He lectured widely and wrote such books as 17th Century Dutch Painting: Raising the Curtain on New England, Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World, The Collector's Cabinet: Flemish Paintings from New England, and Mask of Mirror. Welu served as president of the Association of Art Museum Directors and chaired the Accreditation Commission of the American Association of Museums. He was also a member of the advisory council for the art museum at Princeton University and the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame. --- Source: "Museum to Host Director," Telegraph Herald, January 17, 2012

Jenn Falcon

Jenn Falcon loves color, nature, animals, and patterns, integrating them in her work. She received a Worcester Cultural Commission grant in 2009 and recently completed an Artist in Residence program at Petrified Forest National Park. She was born and raised in Worcester but has career experience spanning the country, including positions at Shemer Art Center in Arizona and Randall Children's Museum in California. Jenn proudly served two years in AmeriCorps, helping children to read and speak English. She also worked in Worcester Public Schools as a preschool and elementary educator.

Jennifer Swan

Rhode Island School of Design, BFA Jennifer Swan received her BFA in Painting from RISD and has studied bookmaking, ceramics, photography, and bronze-casting, completing an apprenticeship in the lost-wax casting method in 2000. Swan teaches youth and adult programs for the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester Center for Crafts, and for the Town of Shrewsbury. In addition to teaching, she paints murals and exhibits work in local galleries. In 2001, Swan received a Kinnicutt grant and traveled to India where she completed a series of illustrations on Tibetan medicinal plants for publication in the Trans-Himalayan Journal.

Jessica Harris

Jill Pottle

Katie Doyle

Keenan Cassidy

Laurel King

Pennsylvania State University, BA; Emerson College, MFA

Laurel Dile King is a fiction writer and has taught writing at the Worcester Art Museum since 2005. She has led writing retreats in Maine, Rocky Neck Art Colony, and Tuscany. Laurel is the founding publisher and editor at Garland Press, Her awards include a Massachusetts Cultural Council artist grant and a first place prize for the Worcester Magazine Short Story Contest. With the exception of that greasy summer she worked as a cook at Perkins Pancake House, each of her jobs—beginning as a counselor at Camp-Dig-a-Book—has dealt with serving up words in a more palatable way.

Lisa Montanaro

Lisa Montanaro has taught on the Faculty of Worcester Art Museum and MassArt. She holds a B.F.A. from Paier College of Art and has studied color theory and printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design. Ms. Montanaro has worked as a freelance illustrator in Washington, D.C. Clients include: U.S. News and World Report; Mondadori Publishing, Italy; The Los Angeles Times News Syndicate; The Washington Times; The Chronicle of Higher Education; The Weekly Reader Corporation. Lisa established and ran a successful illustration business through self-representation with clients in the editorial and publishing fields in national and international markets on a freelance basis. Working in mixed-media incorporating oil painting, photography and collage, she has exhibited and won national juried competitions in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. She gained international and national recognition for excellence in educational journalism for work on social issues such as teen pregnancy, gang violence and AIDS education. Lisa has now begun to work in the printmaking field. Most recently producing monoprints. These monoprints are achieved by painting on a piece of plexi-glass and then running it through a press for a single print in simple terms. The process is immediate and a departure from the more labor intensive and technique heavy illustration work of the past. Because of the immediacy of the printmaking process, her work is freer with an active line quality that she welcomes. She tends to work from life using the figure, found objects or the natural world. These are subjects that have a special quality that speak to her in a way other objects may not. The results have a graphic quality that Ms. Montanaro has embraced over the last five years and continues to explore today in her painting and printmaking. Group Shows include Bromfield Gallery, Boston, MA; The Visual Club, New York, N. Y.; The Arts Club, Washington, D.C. and The Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.

Lyn Slade

Lyn Slade is one of the Northeast’s premier needle felting artist-authors. Her work has appeared in numerous national periodicals, in group & solo art exhibitions, and in her book “Creative Needle Felting, wool art with a painterly style.” Lyn has taught

Martha Chiarchiaro

Anna Maria College, BA, MBA; Williams College, MA

Nan Hass Feldman

Nan is an optimistic, energetic person whose works are stylized, yet recognizable, vibrantly colorful, often intricate, playful, enlivening, and upbeat focusing on the subjects of Interiors and Landscapes. Nan grew up in Brooklyn, New York where she took art classes at the Brooklyn Museum for 10 years. She received a B.F.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo, an M.A. degree from Goddard College, and an M.F.A. degree from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Since 1982, Nan has continuously taught at the Worcester Art Museum. She has taught over 25 different art courses for all ages there and has kept up close contacts with her students over these years. Nan has also led Foreign Art Workshops for WAM in Cortona, Italy and Skopelos, Greece. Nan is one of the founders of the Danforth Museum of Art, where she has been teaching on and off since 1974 as well as an an art instructor at the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA and in the Framingham Public Schools and at Framingham State University. From 1999-2007, Nan ran a painting program in France. Nan has had over 45 one-person exhibits, been included in 29 museum exhibits, and has been in over 55 group exhibits in her 40 year career as an artist. Her work is in over 30 different hospital, corporate, and university collections, as well as in the collections of the Danforth Museum and in private collections in France, England, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Sweden.

Patricia Kelly

Massachusetts College of Art, BFA

Randy LeSage

Rebecca Duffy

Pratt Institute, BFA

Richard Hoyer

Southern Connecticut University, New Haven, BA; Fairfield University, MA

Richard Paul Hoyer is a photographer and educator who works with fine art photography in gelatin silver prints as well as the latest digital media. He currently teaches classes at the Worcester Art Museum in digital photography and Photoshop. In addition, Richard is a member of the fine arts faculty at Manchester Community College in Connecticut, where he teaches photography and digital photography. He exhibits his fine art photographs at galleries in New York and New England on a regular basis.

Ryan Jarvis

Sally Lividini

Scott Nelson

Freelance artist, author, and illustrator; clients include Hallmark and Goldenbooks for Children; Worcester Technical Institute, Certificate Since early 1987, Scott Nelson has been one of the nation’s top freelance juvenile and humorous greeting card artist/writers. He has done freelance assignments for all the major card publishers and has written and drawn numerous children's books for many well known manufacturers including Golden Books for Children/Random House. In 2006 he won The Mom's Choice Award for his book titled "Mulch the Lawnmower" published by KRBY Creations. After studying illustration and landscape art under the late great Alex Gazonas in the mid 1980's, Scott has continued developing his mentors teachings to this day. He enjoys plein air painting in his central MA community and the shores of ME. Working in either watercolor or acrylic, Scott can often be found on the side of the road or next to the ocean painting in his expressionistic style.

Sharon Smith Viles

Susan Dion

Susan Slepetz

Susan Swinand

Sue Swinand is a visual artist, originally from the Philadelphia area who h

Susmita Bando

Tom Grady

William Griffiths

Bill Griffiths graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA and began teaching at the Worcester Art Museum over 30 years ago. He teaches over 5 classes per semester and has developed a following of students who study with him semester after semester to continually absorb the wealth of knowledge he possesses. Bill's knowledge about a wide variety of painting media (watercolor, acrylic, oils, pastel, and colored pencil) is enhanced by his extraordinary expertise in the use of color, shared each class in both group and individual critiques. The courses he has taught include: Watercolor for Travelers; Color and Light I & II; Color and Light Extended; Watercolor classes at all levels; Introduction to Watercolor for Adults and Teens; Putting it All Together: Demystifying Old Master Techniques of Final Glazes and Scumbles; and Acrylic Painting. Bill's own work—in watercolor, acrylic, and oils—show his truly deep understanding of media, color and light, and the artist's touch!