Teacher Bios

Teacher Bios

Teacher Bios

Stephen Campanella is an illustrator, graphic designer, and art teacher based in New York. His poster design, portrait work, and book illustration work features a combination of traditional and digital mediums and techniques.  For more information on his work, visit www.stephencampanellaart.com

Zara Crowley is a painter who works in mixed media. She lives and has her studio in Upper Nyack, NY. Her interest includes layering of line, form and mark making from different mediums with color. She has been creating art for over 20 years and earned her BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design. Teaching privately over the years, she is most passionate about working with teens. She was part of the original D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festivals, showed at the Hopper House, as well as co-op galleries in Manhattan.

Sally Lipton Derringer, the winner of the Kay Murphy Poetry Prize, was a book manuscript finalist for the Tampa Review Prize, as well as for Fordham University’s Poets Out Loud Prize, the New Issues Poetry Prize, and the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize, and a semifinalist for the Brittingham/Felix Pollak Prizes, Elixir Press Poetry Award and Cider Press Review Book Award. She was a finalist for the Rita Dove Poetry Prize, Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize, Arts & Letters Prize, Phyllis Smart Young Prize, Sonora Review Fiction Contest, New Millennium Fiction Award, and Tampa Review Danahy Fiction Prize, a runner-up for the Solstice Fiction Prize, William Dickey Memorial Broadside Contest and Grolier Poetry Prize, and a semifinalist for the James Wright Poetry Award and Paumanok Poetry Award. She received honorable mention in Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize and New Millennium Writings' Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, The Los Angeles Review, Solstice, Sentence, Bellevue Literary Review, the Briar Cliff Review, The Prose-Poem Project, Memoir, SLAB, ArLiJo, The Quarterly, The New York Quarterly, Tampa Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Court Green, december, Far Out: Poems of the '60s, Writing for Life, and other journals and anthologies. She has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University and has taught in the English Department at SUNY Rockland.

Karen Edelmann, painter, received her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, her Master of Fine Arts from Syracuse University, and today is Emerita Professor of Art at St. Thomas Aquinas College. Karen is a landscape artist who brings over two decades of college level art teaching at RoCA, plus insight gained from teaching and planning painting and drawing programs in the US, France and Italy with Artists Abroad and Afield, Inc. Students have regularly named her to Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. Her work is in corporate and private collections in the US and Europe, and is shown in galleries from New York to the Gulf Coast. She is a member of New York Plein Air Painters, the National Arts Club and other art organizations in the Hudson River Valley. You can see Karen’s work at KWEdelmann.com/gallery.

Daly Flanagan is currently the Executive Director at the Rockland Center for the Arts. She has over 25 years’ experience in art education and administration including positions as Director of the Craft Students League/YWCA and Coordinator of School and Family Programs at the Museum of Art and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum). She has a Masters of Science in Education and Administration with a visual arts focus from Bank Street College of Education and Parsons School of Design and a BFA in painting and printmaking from San Diego State University.

Tjokorda Gde Arsa Artha studied all the traditional arts of his Bali homeland from an early age.  Arriving in New York in the early eighties, he attended the Arts Students League in New York City on scholarship.  Through the Asia Society of New York and other organizations, he has frequently participated in programs representing the visual and performing arts of Bali, including music and dance performances, workshops, and demonstrations of Balinese techniques in painting, carving, crafts, and dance.  He has exhibited in Bali’s Puri Lukisan Museum in Ubud, throughout NYC and the Hudson Valley region.  He has been commissioned by UNICEF to paint “The Little Cowboy” for the Flags of the United Nations.  Artha has been a grant recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, an adjunct professor at Bard College, a member of the Giri Mekar, a community gamelan orchestra in the Hudson Valley, and is the current Director of The Pomona Cultural Center in Rockland.  He resides in Pomona, NY with his family.

Marlene Krumm-Sanders has been a ceramic artist for over fifteen years.Marlene achieved her BFA from Parsons and The New School in NYC and studied in Paris France. She worked as a commercial illustrator for several years before switching to clay in 2003.  Predominantly a self-taught ceramic artist, Marlene set up her own ceramic studio in Piermont NY, where she lives and works. Continual exploration and experimentation has been her focus as a sculptural ceramic artist, producing contemporary clay sculptures that have a home in many venues throughout the Hudson Valley. Marlene has exhibited in LA, NYC, and Boston, MA and is represented by L’Attitude Gallery (Boston), Outside In (Piermont), and the Piermont Straus Gallery (Piermont).

Paula Madawick  CPSA Artist.  Apprentice to Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, studied at the School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union and SUNY where she received her BA. She has exhibited her colored pencil drawings at Castelli Gallery, Matthew Marks, The National Arts Club, Silvermine, Blue Hill Corp., and the Hopper House; is in the collection of Chase Manhattan Bank, NA, Rutgers University and the Bergen Museum. Madawick has received numerous awards and was an invitational instructor for the Color Pencil Society of America’s National Convention. She was also the former Executive Director, Edward Hopper Art Center, Nyack, NY and former Gallery Director of Center Gallery, Demarest, NJ.

Stephanie Maddalena has a BA in Fine Arts, St. Thomas Aquinas College; also studied at Peters Valley Craft Center, Brookfield Craft Center, Old Church Cultural Center, taught for Syracuse University and the Craft Students League; exhibits throughout the region; owns and operates Foxcroft Beads in Haverstraw, NY.

Eleanor Miller is a classically trained artist, Eleanor Grace Miller received her BA from Monmouth University, where she studied under Eleanore Mikus, a vanguard Minimalist, and Bernard Aptekar, one of the original SOHO Ten Downtown, and continued her studies at the National Academy School of Fine Arts. Miller has exhibited extensively throughout the East Coast, both in fine art galleries and corporate venues, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including Best of Show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA, the Anna Hyatt Huntington Award from the National Arts Club, and the Gamblin Artists Award from the Salmagundi Club. Her work is in both private and corporate collections. She is currently on the faculty at RoCA and the Pelham Art Center.  Eleanorgracemiller.com

Wendy Morris is an artist, teacher, & founder of potterypeace.com. She creates art in clay (favoring thrown and altered forms), and paints plein air (using watercolors and acrylics). Teaching pottery, sculpture, painting, & drawing has been her passion for over twenty years. Wendy is a resident of Rockland County, NY with a fine arts degree from Pitzer College in California. She studied under renowned ceramicists Paul Soldner, Rudy Autio, and Peter Voulkus. Wendy has sold her artwork through galleries, art shows, & retail stores.

Kanitra Perrault studied at Cooper Union and Pratt Institute, majoring in film/animation. For the past ten years she has taught multicultural arts at Martin Luther King Center in Spring Valley, NY. In 2005, her passion for film/animation led her to develop a media arts program which currently includes video/animation and claymation production for students of all ages.

Kate Poland Hetman is currently a full-time visual arts teacher at Fort Lee High School. She has taught various levels of ceramics for more than 20 years, and has been making ceramic work since she was fifteen years old. Kate received her Bachelors of Arts in Studio Art degree from St. Olaf College, a Master’s of Education in Art Ed. from the University of St. Catherine, and a Master’s of Professional Studies in Humanistic and Multicultural Issues from SUNY New Paltz. Kate enjoys teaching clay as it allows her to try new methods and techniques of working with clay, as well as share her love of clay with others. Kate is a member of the NJ Potters’ Guild and Hudson River Potters. Her work has been exhibited and sold nationally.

Barbara Pollitt Designer has won a Drama Desk Nomination for her design of Caucasian Chalk Circle and an Obie Award for her performance in Epidog. Her masks have been seen on Broadway in The Tempest and Jelly’s Last Jam. She recently exhibited her masks at the Carter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford, CT. Her work was exhibited at Lincoln Center as well as other venues in New York City. She was an artist-in-residence for the past two years at Nyack High School and has also taught at Manhattanville College.

John Rosis Painter, has a MFA from Hunter College New York, as well as a BFA, from School of Visual Arts, New York. Teaching experience includes Westchester Community College, Art Students League and Rockland Center for the Arts. Exhibitions include Hopper House Art Center, Vermont Center for the Arts, Berkshire Art Museum, Holter Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Paul Sharpe Gallery and Rockland Center for the Arts. Grants include the Pollock Krasner Foundation and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Residency Program. Work in public, private and corporate collections. John is represented by the Gerald Bland Gallery in New York City. Website: www.johnrosis.webs.com

Lauren Rudolph currently lives in Nyack, NY where she works as a portrait artist and instructor. From a very early age Lauren was drawn to portraiture. She has always had a fascination with the face and the essence of what it means to be human. Connection is the main inspiration behind her art and the basis for the visual stories she shares. Early in her creative life, pastels were her medium of choice, but she was deeply inspired by paint which she has explored through both acrylics and oils. She feels that there is a life and energy in painting that is full of depth and that there is so much to yet uncover. Lauren began her college education at the School of Visual Arts in NYC and received her BA in art from the University at Albany. 

Jim Shaughnessy is a self-taught potter making ceramic vessels and sculpture for more than a decade. He has studied with local, as well as nationally known clay artists. His work can be found in a number of galleries in the surrounding area. In 1999 and in 2001 his work was selected to serve as the Rockland County Executive Awards given to artists and supporters of the arts. In 2002, one of his pieces was used as an award given to Nobel laureate author Toni Morrison. In 2003, his work was featured in silent auctions to benefit the American Cancer Society and the Nuyoricans Poets Café. In 2004, the Human Rights Commission selected to use one of Jim’s sculptures in their annual fundraiser event held at the Waldorf Astoria in NYC. Also in 2004, Jim’s work was selected to serve as awards for Rockland County Congresswoman Sue Kelly and Nita Lowey, as well as for New York State Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Margery Theroux BA, New York University. Also studied: Montserrat College of Art, MA; NY Studio School; private study with Sam Feinstein, NYC. Former gallery committee member & curator at Hopper House, NY & Center Gallery at TASOC. Exhibited at various locations in the tri-state area & New England; included in private collections nationwide. Workshop presenter & art teacher for 20 years.

Poramit Thantapalit is a native of Thailand with a degree in journalism and a master’s in computer graphics from New York Institute of Technology.  He has over 15 years experience as a graphic designer, artist and photographer with global marketing organizations.  His installations and artworks have been exhibited at the Arcadia Earth Museum, National Academy Museum, the James Rose Center, IPCNY Print Fest at Robert Miller Gallery, the Jersey City Theater, and the Sodertalje Arts Gallery in Sweden.  His installation “Masked Arts” that he created during the pandemic was featured in the New York Times Sunday edition in May 2021.  Poramit currently lives in New Jersey.

Colleen Vanderhoef started her career with an Associate's Degree in Graphic Arts from Rockland Community College. She then received her Bachelor's in Art Education, K-12 & Elementary Education, N-6 from Saint Thomas Aquinas College. In 1988, Colleen received her Master's in Art Administration with a concentration in museums, galleries & education from New York University (Paris & Venice). She currently has tenure teaching art full time at the East Ramapo School District in Spring Valley, NY. She was the co-chair to the Cultural Arts Committee & Environmental Club 2000-2011. She is also a Cultural Arts Teacher for a multi-age classroom at the Art Alliance of Haverstraw, Haverstraw, NY. Colleen has a variety of experience ranging from being Vice President of the Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center to many years teaching art to children as well as the Rockland Conservatory of Music's mural painting on the outside of their building. She has been a curator as well as owner/director of Colleen Greco Gallery, Inc. She won Artist of the Year in 2011 for her outstanding work in the community.