Summer Arts Workshops

Randy Brodnax, a life-long potter and educator, creates everything from functional dinnerware to large, decorative vessels to clay sculptures. A Louisiana native, Randy has retained much of the Cajun joie de vivre with which he was raised and has spent a career building bridges among clay artists of all levels of experience. In workshops, Randy entertains as he shares his knowledge with participant and helps individuals seeking a refined focus, new direction, or simple camaraderie among clay artists. He has conducted workshops in every state, as well as Canada and Mexico, for major corporations, small businesses and special-interest groups. "It would take countless pages to trace all the activities over the years." Randy states, "It has been fun." Many of Randy's creations exhibit images of nature, animals and fish.

Based in the Lake Tahoe area, Erik has been the owner and operator of Saber Laser Works LLC since 2018. There he designs, fabricates and assembles intricate laser-cut sculptures and lighting fixtures. His designs are inspired by the play between light and shadow both in nature and in the manufactured world. Erik utilizes a workflow that blends digital art and technology with more traditional woodworking and sculptural practices.

Currently a professor and a Fine Arts Department Chair at San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico and has been a Ceramics educator since 1986. He is known as a master of Raku and copper matte glazes and has spent over 20 years mastering his special techniques. His work is featured in Alternative Kilns and Firing and Mastering Raku.

Arthur González is an internationally exhibiting artist with over fifty one-person shows in the last forty years, including eight in Manhattan, New York. He has received many awards including the Virginia Groot Foundation twice and is an unprecedented four-time recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship within a ten-year period. He is in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art in Gifu, Japan, the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, the Oakland Museum of California, the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, New York, and most recently at the Holter Museum in Helena, Montana. He is also the author of “The Art of Rejection”, an autobiography of a career through reaction drawings on rejection letters. He is a tenured Professor at the California College of the Arts. González has been an artist-in- residence in many places including University of Georgia, Athens, Penland School of Craft, North Carolina, University of Akron in Ohio, Tainan National University in Taiwan, Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, Washington and The Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana.

Visit Arthur González's website

Susannah Israel is an artist and educator known for her expressive clay sculpture. She is passionate about teaching and has inspired many ceramic artists with her innovative approach.
Israel is a frequent visiting artist at schools and universities and has taught workshops throughout the Western states Her artwork is held in public and private collections worldwide, from the
Archie Bray Foundation to the Yinge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan.

Susannah Israel has a gritty yet passionate view of humanity, drawn from city life. Her expressive work is widely exhibited, appearing in collections around the world. Career distinctions include residencies at Archie Bray, Doelger Center, Jentel Foundation, and the Mendocino Art Center; the prestigious Fletcher Challenge Premier Award, Virginia Groot Foundation Award, MFA in Ceramics SF State University, and writing on contemporary clay artists. Israel has given many workshops, and worked in factory sites in California and Kansas, sculpting massive industrial clay pipe.

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Mary Kenny is an artist/educator living in Chico, CA. She received an MFA in Printmaking from Kent State University in Ohio and a B.A. in Studio Arts from Baldwin-Wallace University. She has taught courses for twenty-plus years in printmaking, painting, design, and color theory at universities, museums, and art centers. Her work is in several collections and exhibits both nationally and internationally. She is a lecturer at Chico State. You can find her on Instagram @marykennyart.

Chris Lanier is an artist with a background in both traditional and digital media, and a demonstrated interest in hybrid forms, having worked in multimedia performance, digital animation, web production, and comics. His animation has screened at Sundance and won awards at several international festivals, including the Grand Prize for Internet Animation at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. A constant in his work has been a fascination with visual communication and the way visual information constitutes a language of its own, one that can both clarify and distort reality. He holds an MFA in Studio Art from UC Davis and is currently a Teaching Professor of Digital Art at the University of Nevada, Reno, at Lake Tahoe.

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Sheri Leigh earned a B.F.A. in ceramics from the CU Boulder where she studied with Betty Woodman, and an M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University, studying with Paul Soldner. She has taught ceramics since 1988; first at Aims Community College, in Greeley, Colorado, and from 1997 to 2021, she taught at Sierra Nevada College/University, at Lake Tahoe, (now UNR). She chaired the Fine Arts Department and directed the Summer Visiting Artist Workshops and taught all levels of ceramics. Her work has been featured in Ceramics Monthly, Clay Times, Black Pearl and Other Saturated Metallic Glazes, by John Conrad, and Ceramic Sculpture: Inspiring Techniques, American Ceramics Society to mention a few. Her work has also been included in local and national exhibitions, including NCECA’s 50 Women for their 50th anniversary. She created “A New Decade of Clay: 2010”, a national ceramics exhibition juried by Richard Shaw, and curated “The Soldner Society” an exhibition at NCECA, the national ceramics conference, in Tampa, FL.

Since 2013, Sheri Leigh has been organizing travel trips to Japan and is currently very busy with her new company, Trip2Japan LLC, and is taking people on ARTsome tours of Japan year-round. She’s very excited to be creating a soon to be art center at her new property in Ayabe, located in the Kyoto Prefecture of Japan, where she will offer workshops and artist residencies; bringing creative American and Japanese artists together to create relaxed, contemporary art dialogues. For more information, please visit Trip2Japan.com.

Visit Sheri Leigh O'Connor's website 

Rick Parsons received his BFA from Stephen F. Austin State University and an MFA in Sculptural Ceramics from the University of Dallas. Rick's artwork focuses on the effects of environmental pollutants on the body. He uses materials as metaphor to address the looming impact of a culture dependent on diminishing resources. Rick has been teaching at Sierra Nevada College for five years and was named the 2012/2013 Faculty Member of the Year by the SNC student body and awarded the Ansari Excellence in Teaching Award. He was also awarded a ten thousand dollar NEA grant for his artwork in collaboration the Carson City Arts Initiative. “It is my objective as an artist and educator to create lifelong learners. My ultimate goal is to create an environment that generates questioning and discovery, for within this framework of learning and expression, a shift in perception can take place, and a new understanding of life can be revealed.” He has also served as Sculpture Program Coordinator at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO. Rick's sculpture was the focus of an article in Sculpture magazine and published in the book Confrontational Ceramics: The Artist as Social Critic by Judith S. Schwartz and was featured in the documentary film "Questions of Art," by Zach Jankovic.

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Amanda Salov’s work examines the qualities of a moment, or the idea of a moment in physical form: temporal, fragile and fleeting. With her porcelain sculptures, installations, and paintings, she uses natural phenomena as metaphors and anchors for the transitions we all face. Raised in rural Wisconsin, she received her BFA from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater and her MFA from the University of Missouri - Columbia. She has shown work throughout the United States and has earned a number of awards, including the Oregon Art Commission Grant (2013, 2016, 2017), Ford Family Foundation Grant (2016, 2017), a Washington State Artist Trust Grant (2018), and an Allied Arts Grant (2022). Salov has received residencies and teaching opportunities around the globe including at the Reykjavik School of Visual Arts in Iceland, Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan, the Archie Bray Foundation, the University of Washington, and the University of Arkansas. She is currently a studio artist in Seattle, Washington.

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Originally from upstate New York, Phyllis Shafer received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the State University of New York at Potsdam. After a three-year stint on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Shafer moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1984. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Shafer moved to South Lake Tahoe in 1994 to accept a full-time teaching position at Lake Tahoe Community College, a position from which she has recently retired. Her move to the Sierra Nevada Mountains deepened her interest in landscape painting and initiated her most mature body of artwork: plein air landscape paintings of the Sierra Nevada and the American West.

As a practicing artist, Shafer has exhibited her work nationally and internationally since 1984. She is currently represented by Stremmel Gallery in Reno, NV, where she has had seven solo exhibitions. Her artwork is in many private and public collections throughout the western United States. Currently, Shafer is preparing for her eighth solo exhibition at the Stremmel Gallery, slated for May 2023.

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Sharon Virtue is a painter, dancer, and ceramic artist currently living in Fairfax, California. She has a strong social practice and has worked internationally on creative development projects in Mozambique, Uganda, Brazil, Haiti, America and England. She believes artists are agents of transformation. Her mission is to inspire, encourage and provide access to the greater community in the creation of art.

Visit Sharon Virtue's website.