Art Instructors

Propose an Arts Class

Are you an artist or an arts teacher with a great idea for a class? Propose it to us. Download our class proposal guidelines, proposal form, and sample teacher contract here.

• Class Proposal Guidelines
• PAC Course Proposal Form
• Instructor Contract

Painting, Drawing, Collage and Printmaking

Lee Michael Altman (collage and printmaking) is a printmaker and painter. He recently exhibited his prints at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.

William Eaken (painting) is a fine artist and computer game designer. He has created illustrations for clients like Lucasfilm, Saga and Paramount Pictures. He has taught painting and advanced art techniques throughout his career, most recently at Sienna Ranch in Lafayette.

Marilee Ford (collage) is an adjunct faculty member of Dominican University and teaches classes on the use of Expressive Arts for Healing. She is also an exhibiting artist, currently featured at the Riverfront Art Gallery in Petaluma.

Carol Henderson (silk painting) has been teaching grades 4-6 for the Old Adobe School District for the past 19 years. An accomplished artist and silk painter, she has taught silk painting to both children and adults. She is a teacher/trainer with the California Arts Project, a teacher leader for the Visual and performing Arts in her district, and a member of the California Arts Educator Association.

William O’Keeffe (monoprints for kids) is an international abstract painter and designer who has taught in England and Sonoma County.

Virginia May (painting with abandon) is an artist with 30 years experience with expressive arts and recreating the permissive environment where she first learned to trust her natural impulse to create.

Katherine Plank (pastels) has been painting and teaching art for the past 25 years.

Catherine Richardson (print making) is an award-winning artist, currently adjunct faculty at Santa Rosa Junior College. She was awarded the Sonoma County Emerging Artist Award in 2006.

Emily Marks (paper arts and bookbinding) is a bookbinding and paper art teacher. Her work has been in exhibits throughout the country as well as internationally.

Susan St. Thomas (watercolor painting) teaches painting classes at art centers and colleges throughout the Bay Area. Her watercolors have been widely published and exhibited internationally.

Lindsay Whiting (collage) is the author of Living into Art: Journeys Through Collage. Whiting was inspired to write the book through her own experience of collaging at the Sonoma Collage Studio over a period of six years.

Photography

Tim Fleming (web design, Photoshop, photography) is a fine art photographer and adjunct instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College as well as an Adobe Certified Instructor and Adobe Certified Expert. He is also a freelance web designer and graphic artist.

Lance Kuehne (photography) is an avid explorer of wine country’s back roads and coastal vistas, now the subjects of his fine art photographs and the “classrooms” for his landscape photography classes. Lance’s work has won several awards, appeared in numerous publications and hangs in private collections in more than 30 states and internationally. He is a co-founder of the Riverfront Art Gallery in Petaluma.

Frederic Larson (photography) has been an award-winning photojournalist for the San Francisco Chronicle for more than 30 years. He currently teaches in the master program at the Academy of Art in San Francisco.

Murray Rockowitz (photography) is well known among collectors of fine art portrait photography. He brings his years of experience in photography and life into the classroom to inspire, teach and learn along with his students.

Sculpture

Paula Bailey Brent (metal jewelry and sculpture), a professional jeweler for more than 30 years, has taught art and jewelry making to children and adults at Harmony School and SSU Excel programs for many years. She was the designer and consultant for the Wire Artists Jewelry Studio kit for the HearthSong catalog.

Lynda Cochran (doll and collage) is a practicing mixed media and doll artist. She is also a credentialed teacher with more than 25 years of experience. She believes art is the universal and intergenerational language of the world. She currently teaches private mixed media and art doll classes at her Petaluma studio.

Kat Lilith (giant puppet and mask making) apprenticed with the Wise Fool Puppet Intervention in 2001 and has been teaching community giant puppet construction workshops ever since.

Kristine McFarland (nichos and sculpture) a.k.a. Bella la Vida is an artist who by day works in the world of auto racing and by night creates colorful shrines in her studio to help others honor the memory of their loved ones. Kristine will be a featured artist in a book on Day of the Dead by Renee Mallett to be published in 2011 by Schiffer Publishing.

Ceramics and Glass

Candace Birchfield (cceramics)has been teaching ceramics for 20 years. She loves creating and sharing her skills with others.

Gerald Hong (ceramics) has been a potter for 30 years. His distinctive raku-fired sculptural vessels and wall pieces have been exhibited in galleries nationally. He has taught workshops across the country and internationally.

Jane McDonald (ceramics for kids and adults) is a professional ceramic artist and has been teaching ceramics to children and adults for more than 20 years. She has worked with schools throughout Petaluma, teaches private classes in her studio and currently teaches ceramics at San Francisco State University.

Sueann Bettison Sher (ceramics and mosaics for all ages) has been a clay and mosaic artist for more than 20 years. She has taught ceramics at Petaluma Montessori School and the Sonoma State Excel program. Her work has been shown throughout California.

Patti Wessman (fused glass) has spent more than 30 years working in clay and the last decade working in glass. She has received a number of public art commissions and has both glasswork and ceramic tile murals in public spaces.

Literary Arts

Sue Capella (writing for artists) is a writer, photographer and mixed media artist who has written about creative people for more than 25 years. She writes for newspapers, magazines and the Web and serves as a writing coach to local artists.

Vlatka Herzberg (story-telling, writing and art for kids) has performed and taught story telling to children in Canada and Northern California.

Ransom Stephens (writing) has written more than 200 articles, essays and anthology contributions and has produced events for San Francisco’s Litquake. He is the author of the sensational hit, The God Patent, one of the top ten most-read e-novels at scribd.com.

Patti Trimble (poetry and writing) is a published poet and co-founder of the Tuolumne Meadows Poetry Festival. Her poetry has been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize.

Performance and Theater

Hilary Moore (improv comedy) has been acting, teaching and directing improv in Sonoma County for many years. She currently performs and directs with Petaluma Readers Theater.

Business and Administration

Carol Larson (business of art) is an award-winning textile artist whose work is exhibited in museums, galleries and private collections worldwide.

Other Arts

Suzanne Pequignot (art for teens) is an artist passionate about inspiring people to feel the joy of creative expression. Her work has been exhibited in Italy and throughout the Bay Area.

Jackie Yurth (art for kids and teens) has been teaching art in the Waugh School District for 10 years.

Ane Carla Rovetta (sustainable art) is a renowned illustrator and storyteller who has produced artwork for five books and countless scientific and educational periodicals. She has participated in many one-woman and group shows at the Coyote Point Museum, the Randal Museum, Point Reyes National Seashore, California Academy of Sciences, the San Francisco Bay Model and the Bolinas Museum. Like the artisans of the European Renaissance, she is committed to the practice of art and science as kindred disciplines.

Mark Edwards (art and cartooning for kids) has been teaching art in the Bay Area for 20 years and currently teaches cartooning for Youth in Arts in Marin County and for the Excel Program at Sonoma State University. He attended the Academy of Art in San Francisco and is the author of three children’s books.

Stephen Rustad (cartooning for adults) has taught graphic design and editorial cartooning since 1971.

Nicolas Van Krijdt (encaustic) has been an exhibit preparer at the California Academy of Sciences and a dimensional artist, balancing fine art with commercial sculpture and lighting. Nic focuses on large sculpture and the encaustic techniques taught in his workshop. He is represented by the Hang Art Gallery in San Francisco.