Dr. Deb Greer Currier is the Theatre Education and Outreach Director and a professor at Western Washington University. Deb has 25 years’ experience designing and delivering youth theatre camps, and is thrilled to be joining the CCA this summer to PLAY!
Stephanie Delgado is a native of the Pacific Northwest and a resident of the beautiful Columbia River Gorge. She has a passion for artistic creation and a true fascination with the natural world. As a little girl she enjoyed anything that she could make myself, curiously beginning to forge her path as an artist. Her interests expand into multiple mediums wherein she explores the world through color, shape, texture, movement, stillness and beauty. Her work is a celebration of nature, she marvels at creation. She loves any opportunity to learn and teach and delights in connecting with community.
Erin Erickson, owner of Blowfish Design, is a textile artist and fashion designer. In a past life she was a skateboarding punk rocker in Los Angeles but this time around she calls White Salmon home. She loves to garden, play in the river, be with her incredible large circle of amazing friends and family.
Jess Graff is a mixed-media artist and educator who has participated in numerous gallery shows and residency programs at schools, art centers, and museums across the country. She is passionate about creating equitable shared spaces and artworks that invite people of all ages and backgrounds to collaborate and communicate together. As an artist with both Western European and Middle Eastern heritage, Jess draws inspiration for her artwork from her personal history, the natural world, and from moments of shared creative exploration with the families she teaches.
Amy Gray has a background in Museum Education and loves to introduce kids to Visual Thinking using works of art in galleries and art around the community, setting up space for dialogue and letting the ideas flow collectively. She is amazed at the ideas kids come up with and will help kids bring their “wonderings” about professional art making to life in their own artwork.
Molly Holmlund is an artist living in White Salmon, Washington. With nature as her muse she collaborates with and incorporates natural materials every chance she gets, from making ink from plants and minerals she forages to simply observing the natural world. Molly enjoys sharing this love of nature and art as a way for kids to describe and learn about the world around them, and as a way to creatively problem solve through art. Molly has done several murals around the Gorge, involving kids and community members if the project allows. Her natural ink paintings can be seen at the following venues. The Remains Gallery (Hood River) , Arrowleaf Workshop (White Salmon), Tokki Art Supply (Hood River), etsy@ForagedInk, and ForagedInk.art
Amy Jarvis
Amy Jarvis brings to the art table a combined background as a Clinical Social Worker, Child Development Specialist, and art educator. Students will feel warmly welcomed and supported from the minute they step foot in class to the moment they carry off their own unique creation. Creating delightful works of art is of course the goal, but the imperative to Amy is that individual students know they have important contributions to make to the group and each one experiences the magic of self-discovery, self-confidence, and self-love.
Joy Kloman
Joy has taught students of all ages. Her experience includes teaching art at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, where she was a tenured associate professor of painting and drawing. She currently teaches art through Arts in Education of the Gorge and Joy’s Art Studio.
Lise Larsen
Lise taught art at Early Childhood, Elementary and High School levels before teaching art at TDMS – this is her 3rd year. She taught art in Honduras and The Marshall Islands. Teaching Art online has been a difficult task as she really enjoys getting to know the students, working with them in the classroom daily and seeing their art skills and self esteem increase. She’s looking forward to teaching art in-person to students again.
Marwan Nahle is a Lebanese-born painter and multi-media artist who has lived and worked internationally since 1988. Now living in Oregon he has exhibited his work in Lebanon as well as France, and all over the United States. One of the main mediums and themes in his work is the use of recycled materials, creating playful and imaginative collages and sculptures from discarded toys, metal scraps, plastic debris, roots, fossils, branches and images. His work asks you to look beyond the ordinary and create a new and radical mythology existing outside of any timeline. He is a father of three, living and working in The Dalles.
Tim Snyder is a local musician and founder of Underground Music in Hood River Oregon. His teaching artist experience has placed him in every school in the gorge and regionally around the state. Kids love learning to drum from Tim, because his inner child is fully intact!
Rod Stuart
Making things provides Rod with a way to impact people both through teaching and by being a creative person. He has lived and worked in 5 countries in the past 20 years and taught in k-12 international schools.
Peg Wooten is a local mosaic artist having studied in Ravenna, Italy. She has brought her art to the Columbia Gorge, teaching in schools and the Columbia Art Gallery. Her mission is to introduce mosaic art to as many young artists as possible, so their creativity can blossom.
