INSTRUCTOR BIOS

Marc Barreda

Marc Baredda is a sculptor working in glass and mixed media. He is currently working on developing his own studio in Vermont as well as assisting in the development of the glass facilities at Salem Art Works and the Vrij Glas Foundation in the Netherlands. He has been a student and teaching assistant at the Corning Museum of Glass, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Pilchuck Glass School, Pittsburgh School of Glass and the Penland School of Crafts. Marc has also been the resident artist and instructor at Fundacion Centro Nacional de Vidrio in Segovia, Spain and will be the artist in residence at the Creative Glass Center of America in the Fall of 2008. Marc is a graduate of Williams College and a member of the board at Salem Art Works.

Fred X. Brownstein

Fred X. Brownstein is a professional sculptor who worked in Italy for sixteen years. He trained as an apprentice for four years in Querceta, Italy in the studio of Enzo Pasquini.

Grayson Currin

Grayson Currin has spent the last quarter-century growing up across the street from his family's farm in a small town in North Carolina, moving to the big state capital 30 miles north to attend a Morrill Land-Grant university, and hunting and pecking his way into newspapers, web sites, magazines and books from a desk in Durham. Grayson graduated from North Carolina State University with a degree in Biological Sciences and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. One of the South's most revered alternative weekly newspapers, The Independent Weekly, asked Grayson to write about local music two years into college, and he joined the newspaper's staff full-time two months before graduation. Grayson is the only staff member of the Independent Weekly to be born after the paper was first published. Now the Music Editor of the Independent Weekly, Grayson is on staff at Pitchfork Media and also contributes to Harp, Signal to Noise, Paper Thin Walls, Stop Smiling, The Nashville Scene and Copper Press. His interests include American Primitivism as a social and cultural escape and how his dog, Ayler, continues to be so soft to the touch.

Stella Erlich

Stella Erlich is a figurative realist painter whose work includes many paintings of adolescent women as well as portraits and landscapes. She studied at the Banff Center School of Fine Arts in Alberta, Canada, at the University of Michigan and at the Memphis Academy of Art where she received her B.F.A. in painting in 1974. She lived in Italy for sixteen years and studied drawing and painting in Florence with Nerina Simi for seven years. In 1991 she moved with her family to North Bennington,Vermont. She received her M.F.A. from Bennington College in 2000 and has continued to teach there as an instructor of life drawing and an assistant in the printmaking department. She has also taught for the Community College of Vermont; the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, Old Lyme,CT; Brookhaven College, Dallas,TX; and Williams College,Williamstown,MA.

James D. Gallagher

James Gallagher spent three years working in production glass shops learning traditional team glass-making processes. In 1995 he founded Glass Design Group in Saratoga Springs, NY, that designed and manufactured glass for wholesale and retail markets throughout the U.S. and Japan. After moving the studio to Porter Corners, NY and renaming it Gallagher Glass, he taught at the National Bottle Museum in Ballston Spa, NY and the Contemporary Museum of Crafts in Houston, TX. He is a graduate of Alfred University.

Felicia Glidden

Felicia Glidden is a Minnesota-based sculptor who works primarily in cast-iron. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, Diluth with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1989. She spent many years painting abstract paintings and studying modern dance. She was introduced to cast iron in 2001, and has been attending and organizing residencies ever since. The process of casting iron in cooperation with artists reminds her of improvisational dance. She is a member of Common Language, an artist run non-profit, based in Northern Minnesota, where she operates a cupolette named "Aurora." She spends her summers traveling to iron pours and has a studio in St.Paul,MN where she runs bronze, copper,and aluminum workshops.

Leif Inge

Leif Inge will be in residence at SAW to present all 24 hours of his work, 9 Beet Stretch. It is Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony augmented to last 24 hours, with the pitch kept. The full-length 24 hour concert was premiered at Kupfer Ironworks in Madison. The work has been performed at venues ranging from the 11th-century Bergen Cathedral to the futon and beansack-furnitured 964 Natoma. "Timpani blows rumble like tremolos. The screech of sopranos rasps slowly against your eardrum. Every oboe tone is put under a microscope, not always with beautiful results, but you learn a lot about the infinitesimal realities of sound production." A version of 9 Beet Stretch has been initiated in cooperation with architects, furniture designers and choreographers to make a joint project around a concert, to emphasize the short term community often created by these events.


 

Leif Johnson

Leif Johnson creates minimalist nouveau sculpture of forged iron and blown glass. He has been instrumental in the development of the infrastructure of Salem Art Works, including GLO, the new glass facility. Johnson has sculpture and glass degrees from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. His work has been exhibited across the country in galleries in Seattle, Portland, Boston, Cleveland, Washington,D.C., and Los Angeles. He lives with his wife and daughter in Hebron, NY.

Neptune

Neptune trace their origins to 1994 as a student art project by sculptor/musician Jason Sanford, who, in order to create a new music medium while simultaneously destroying the posture of five young men, forged heavy, menacing-looking guitars and drums out of circular saw blades, gas tanks, oil drums, bike parts, VCR casings and miscellaneous scrap metal found in the trash. Neptune was assembled to showcase these contraptions in the winter of the same year and has evolved into a full time band that has traversed the US and Europe several times. The early guitars were haphazard and untunable, resulting in the atonal garage clamor of the early recordings. With several different members and collaborators over the years, the music has evolved with instruments blending the traditional sounds of rock & roll with what sounds like mistake day at the ball bearing factory. The current three-piece lineup relies as heavily on home-made electronics as it does its signature scrap metal instruments.

Harry Orlyk

Harry Orlyk was born in Troy, New York in 1947. In 1971 after graduating college, he went on to graduate school at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Over the next nine years, he was influenced by several Nebraskan artists. "Still-life painter Robin Smith taught me how to use paint without turpentine - to paint from the tube." He also admits the influence of photographer Lawrence McFarland who taught him what spiritual space was, and how to emphasize it. Lastly he credits well-known Lincoln painter Keith Jacobshagen with having impressed on him the importance of routine. He currently lives with his family in Salem, New York, near the Vermont border.

Ruth Sauer

Ruth Sauer, Salem resident since 1991, has been making art all her life. Born in New Haven, CT, she graduated from Connecticut College with a BA in Studio Art. After working briefly at the Fogg Museum, she became one of ten participants in the master teacher apprenticeship program at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, MA. Working with teachers who had been involved in progressive education in the US and in England, she specialized in teaching studio art, with an emphasis on interaction and exploration of materials, subject matter, and skills acquisition. Ruth has also studied printmaking at the Boston Museum School, figure drawing at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, and etching at the Atelier of Jean DelPeche. While living in NYC for 25 years, she studied figure drawing and printmaking and made art from her home and studio. Since moving to Salem, Ruth has taught children and adults. In 1999, she founded ARTS 220 Gallery & Studio, where students of all ages make art using a variety of materials. In October, 2004, she joined the artists at the Old Troy Shirt Factory Building in Glens Falls where she has a studio for printmaking "unique and rather experimental" work. She continues to show her work around the region and locally.

McIrvin Field Sloan

McIrvin Field-Sloan has studied under Joe Wood, Heather White, Donna Veverka and Deb Todd-Wheeler. He holds a BFA in 3-D Fine Arts Metal from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. His most current work is featured in 500 Bracelets, published by Lark Books in 2005.

Theresa Smith

Theresa Smith has had extensive teaching experience in the media of clay and cast metal through the upper midwest and in the UK. She has been a principle figure in numerous capacities, as an iron pour leader, assistant and teacher. Her work explores elements of transformation, division, union, containment and space. She has been granted fellowships and grants to produce her own work at Franconia Sculpture Park and Forecast Public Art. She attended the University of Minnesota for graduate school, undergraduate school at Michigan State University and the University of Colorado in Boulder.

mi Chelle Vara

mi Chelle Vara teaches painting, airbrush, sculpture and ornamental iron. mi Chelle has worked as a sculptor for Noel Studios in North Carolina, NJ Interiors/Painted Finishes, ASI Scenic in New York, Adirondack Airbrush Cross Country and SWB Construction Cross Country, as well as others.