WILLOW HEATH (she/her)
WILLOW HEATH has been exhibiting her paintings in galleries for fifteen years. Her visual art is composed mostly of vivid portraiture pieces, each displaying a keen eye for detail and love of saturated color. She is currently working on illustrating and writing her childhood tales and teaching illustration and painting courses at Gage Academy of Art, Coyote, and many Seattle public schools. She has been teaching for over a decade. www.willowheath.com
AARON POZOS (She/THEY)
AARON POZOS is a non-binary artist, printmaker, photographer, fibers artist, and whichever new process intrigues them at the moment. Currently they are located in Seattle, WA though they are originally from San Antonio, TX and hold a BFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of North Texas (go mean green). Major themes in their artworks include material aspects of contemporary political culture from a leftist perspective and the anxieties of our unstable present and future. Their quilts explore ideas and thoughts that bring us comfort in these troubling times. In addition to teaching and creating art they work at a frame shop as a woodworker where they make fine art walnut frames. www.pozosprints.com
AVA WADLEIGH (she/her)
AVA WADLEIGH has been illustrating, painting, and participating in general artistic tomfoolery in the Tacoma Seattle area her whole life and teaching since 2018. Ava enjoys working in any medium she can get her hands on, as well as playing piano and acting. She is a firm believer in creative practices fueling growth and developing problem-solving skills, and aims to impart all the knowledge she has collected to her students. Ava has worked on several creative projects for institutions like the Tacoma School of the Arts and Lemay Car Museum and is currently studying at Western Washington University to receive her BFA and a minor in music.
ELOISA AGUIRRE (they/she/elle/ella)
ELOISA AGUIRRE is a community organizer, artist, and educator. As a gender queer, Brown immigrant from Mexico, they are committed to the abolition of all systems of oppression. Their academic work centers Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples and their curricula are based on the teachings of bell hooks and Paulo Freire. They recently presented their pedagogical reflections at the Inaugural bell hooks Symposium and joined the Latin American Philosophy of Education Society as an Editorial Collective. Eloisa is also starting their Master's Degree in Social & Cultural Foundations program at the University of Washington College of Education, Autumn 2023. Drawing from thorough Social Emotional training, they facilitate robotics, digital art and philosophical learning spaces with youth in Seattle, and work towards building community everywhere they go with anti-racist and intersectionality frameworks. Check-out her work here: https://aguirreelote.wixsite.com/website
ZORN TAYLOR (he/him)
ZORN B. TAYLOR is a portrait photogapher. As an artist, his attention is focused on how community is created and nurtured and grown. His work describes the beautiful, expanding community in which he finds himself and imagines how it could become even richer. He is a believer in the beloved community and imagines a community that manifests through the actions we take to love, the words we use to describe that love, and the narratives we weave about these relationships. https://zornimages.com/
CATHERINE PALPALLATOC (she/they)
CATHERINE PALPALLATOC is a born and raised Seattleite. After years on the retail floor and an education in arts and design from UW, she returned to school to study apparel design at Seattle Central College. She has worked in many aspects of the industry- from apparel appraisal and merchandising at Goodwill, to production sewing, to costuming, and most recently fashion designer. Her objective as a teaching artist is to inspire kids to find their creative voice in fashion, whether it's a simple hobby, or a serious vocation. When she's not designing, she finds creative inspiration in vintage and thrift stores, out in nature, and people watching while enjoying a coffee/boba in the city. Her spare creative moments are spent in the kitchen, as she's a bonafide foodie.
SARAH LAVIN (she/her)
SARAH FANSLER-LAVIN is energized by the spirited exchange of expression and ideas. She is a metal worker, sculptor and installation artist and has always worked with her hands; gardening, farming, fabricating. She took her first metal working class at Pratt Fine Art Center nearly 25 years ago and went on to get a certificate in Welding/Fabrication at South Seattle Community College specializing in non-ferrous metals and blacksmithing. She has been a metalworker in various industrial and artistic capacities ever since. Sara has taught art programs in SE Seattle high school and middle schools and recently returned to Pratt to teach forging and welding. She maintains a shop/art practice on her family farm amongst the goats in Woodinville, Wa.
JAMES COFFIN (he/him)
JAMES COFFIN is a multidisciplinary artist obsessed with visual art, design, and music. He strives to find the link between different creative practices to strengthen one another, and tries to balance as many disciplines as he can! James has worked in comics, entertainment design, and illustration; he has also played drums in many different musical settings. When not sketching at zoos and museums, he spends free time reading comics, rehearsing music, and playing 6-hour geeky board games.
TESSA HULLS (she/her)
TESSA HULLS is a multidisciplinary chef, artist, writer, and adventurer whose cooking exploits have carried her from science research stations in Antarctica, to boats in remote Alaska, to wilderness lodges deep in the backcountry of national parks. She has cooked for artist residencies, dinner theaters, and various social experiments, and her artistic career has received grants from The Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4Culture, and the Robert B. McMillen Foundation. She is the recipient of the Washington Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award, and after spending almost a decade finishing her debut graphic novel, Feeding Ghosts, she is thrilled to get back in the kitchen!
DIANE NGUYEN (SHE/HER)
Diane Nguyen is a multidisciplinary artist With a B. Mus. From Cornish College of the Arts practicing music, writing, design, and photography. As an experienced software developer, she explores integrating technology and art to find new pathways for artistic expression and storytelling. Her past artworks focus on introspective, personal narratives reflecting on identity, and creating representation for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ individuals.
ANDREW BELL (he/him)
ANDREW BELL is a filmmaker, writer, and educator from the Pacific Northwest. His latest short film, Wellness Check, is on its festival run and his past work can be found streaming on CryptTV, ShortsTV, and screening at festivals around the world. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and is currently filming his first feature film in Upstate New York.
GENE KEMPER (he/they)
GENE KEMPER is a lifelong artist who has been passionate about metal sculpture from a young age. He is inspired every day by the innovations of the natural world in creating solutions to every problem, and the human ingenuity of craftsmanship through the ages to do the same. They have lived all over the country but have spent the last 7 years working in and building makerspaces around the Sound and he hopes one day to run his own. At his home in Tacoma he collects tools and scraps that might come in handy for their creative and practical projects in metals, wood, ceramics, leather, and any other media useful at the time.
NIKKI JABBORA-BARBER (she/her)
NIKKI JABBORA-BARBER, queer Seattle-based printmaker and teaching artist, was born in Bellingham, WA to an Anglo-Swedish father and Lebanese-German mother. She focuses on the way people communicate feelings, culture cues, and emotional safety through botanical symbols and depictions of flora and fauna. She graduated from the University of Washington with an Interdisciplinary Visual Arts degree with a focus in printmaking and a separate Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Sciences. She primarily teaches printmaking at Pratt Fine Art Center, Seattle Artist League, Pilchuck Glass School, and other art schools in the Seattle area. She is represented by MESH Fine Art in Chicago, IL. Nikki regularly leads community engagement projects, including with the Seattle Art Museum and Bellevue Art Museum. She sits on the advisory board for Seattle Print Arts and coordinates juried shows, in partnership with Davidson Galleries. Nikki balances making and selling her hand-pulled fine art prints; photographing works on paper for Davidson Galleries; and teaching community art classes. https://www.nikkibarberart.com
FELISHA BARNES (she/her)
Bio coming soon!
COLTON SAMPSON (he/they)
COLTON SAMPSON is a new media artist, creating work in the space between art and technology. Well-versed in 3D modeling, projection mapping, 3D printing, augmented reality, and sculpting. he is always looking for new tools to better connect people to each other. His work distinguishes itself by connecting the disparate relationship between the built environment and the natural world. Earning a Studio Art BFA from Western Washington in 2022 in his short career he has been awarded an international residency and shown his work in regional festivals and galleries. https://coltonjsampson.myportfolio.com
KELLI PERLETTI (she/they)
KELLI M PERLETTI is a photographer and photographic educator originating from the Pacific Northwest. Her bodies of work utilize a variety of analogical, experimental, and alternative processes, often fusing together processes to explore the fragility of existence, humanity, and identity. Kelli began her photographic education in secondary school, graduating in 2012 from Central Washington University with a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Arts and receiving her Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Studio Arts College International, Florence, Italy, 2020. In between her undergraduate and graduate studies, Kelli lived, volunteered, and worked in Central America. She continues to stay actively involved with Maya Q’eqchi’ communities in rural Guatemala both personally and as the Vice President of Next Step Equal Education (a Non-Profit Organization that works collaboratively with indigenous communities to improve education locally). Since 2020, Kelli has resided on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People, teaching both Photography and Graphic Design at the High School level and workshops internationally during breaks. Their curriculum is a hybrid of digital, analog and experimental methods and focuses on teaching ethics and best practices in both subjects. Her students have gone on to place in State Photo competitions, win scholarships and have their photographs printed on Jones Soda bottles.
ROBBIN CLEMENTE (he/him)
ROBBIN CLEMENTE, aka DJ Neebor, has been creating music since a he was very young, inspired by his grandfather, a jazz band leader that migrated his family from the Philippines. Robbin started as a bell boy at 5 and picked up various instruments along the way. His musical journey is as colorful as his professional experiences, having spun for a dance troop in Boston that won the Best of Boston Award, to working professionally in night clubs in NY, CA, and MA. He is currently the DJ for Lone Wolf and Kub, a father son rap duo, sWordsCool, a rap trio consisting of Julie-C, Suntonio Bandanaz, and Ready Ron Beats. He was the touring DJ for Black Stax in 2011. He currently is the live sound engineer and Tech Manager for 206 Zulu in the famous Washington Hall, and Technical Manager for Washington Asian Pacific Islander Community in Service, a non-profit dedicated to promoting healthy after school music programs in King County. He enjoys sharing knowledge with youth when he gets the chance.
GUEST ARTISTS
Coming soon…
*All teaching artists + staff are required to complete a background check prior to employment.