Seth Baron graduated from MECA&D in 2020 with a BFA in Illustration. He is an energetic digital artist who demonstrates skills developed over the past 10 years. After earning his BFA degree, Seth has investigated what it takes to create traditional fine art and enjoys sharing some of that knowledge as a student teacher. As a lifelong learner, Seth firmly believes through pencil and paper we can accomplish any artistic endeavor.
Sophie Olmsted (she/her/hers) received her BA in studio art at Bates College in 2018 and spent time living in New Hampshire and Utah before returning to the wonderful state of Maine in 2019. Her creative practice takes place mostly in the ceramics studio where she makes functional pottery, but she also enjoys knitting, geometric ink drawings, basic carpentry, and keeping up with her visual journal on Instagram (@sky_scapes). Outside of art, her passions include eating local fruits and vegetables, adventuring on the weekends, picking flowers, reading good books, and laughing with friends and family.
Lauren graduated from Maine College of Art & Design in 2020 with a BFA in Ceramics. Her practice focuses on using the accumulation of many small pieces to create larger immersive spaces through installation. She is curious about the way in which humans interact with the space and world around them, as well as color theory and the expression of emotions and concepts through color. She aims to evoke curiosity and to teach children at a young age how truly powerful colors are in terms of expression. Lauren inspires children to create art and believes that art is a vital core curriculum subject and is crucial to a child’s cognitive development. She has a strong passion for the visual world and shares this passion with her students, creating a safe space for her them to put their minds at ease and make their day better.
Madison is from Charlotte, North Carolina, and now lives in Portland, Maine. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from the University of Vermont, where she focused on painting and graphic design. Her current studio practice involves painting with acrylic on wood panel and her work explores the relationship between color and portraiture. She combines elements of Japanese ukiyo-e art with bold colors and shapes found in contemporary art.
Sean is an artist, storyteller, and teacher from Northern New Jersey. While he dabbles in all forms of medium and style, his main body of work consists of comics and illustration that tell a narrative. Visual storytelling has captured his imagination since he was a child. By way of comics, cartoons, and movies, he found not just a means of escapism, but also a way to explore human experiences outside of his own. He says, "To this day, I pour myself into visual art that tells meaningful stories about life and human emotion. As a teacher, I try to instill in my students the spirit of inspiration and mindfulness of the self and others."
Shelby is a multimedia artist whose main focus is ceramics, having graduated from MECA&D in 2020 with a BFA in Ceramics. She has worked with the tile designer Paul Spaulding at Timeless Tile & Designs, a handmade production ceramic tile company operating for more than 20 years, as well as volunteering and working with children at summer camps. Shelby works to exude playfulness through sculpted animal figures, as well as a variety of pastries and sweets. Her methods of making is an experimental strategy to help transpose and embody her lighthearted and colorful personality within every object.
Audrey (she/her/hers) graduated from MECA&D with a BFA in Painting and a Minor in Art History. Her artistic practice revolves around creating realistic paper flowers, as well as watercolor paintings with elements of paper sculpture, focusing primarily on nature and our connection to it. Growing up in rural Maine, she has a deep connection to the natural landscape around us, and spends most of her free time outside, doing nature walks and river floats, and collecting imagery. Outside of school and her practice, her main interests are fiber arts, baking, and reading.
Philippa Grace Adam (she/they) earned her BFA in Sculpture at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Philippa has lived in the occupied Wabanaki territory we call “Maine” since 2016, working as a boat building apprentice, a soup kitchen manager, and a labor rights organizer. All of these life adventures have been tied together with Philippa’s love of art and community building. Outside of the art classroom, Philippa is likely to be found knitting, tending their plants, or making bagels.
Trent Redmon is a 26-year-old art educator from Burlington, Kentucky who has a BA in Studio Art from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. As an artist, Trent specializes in drawing and painting, often utilizing a combination of oil-based paint marker and acrylic paint to create zany, colorful, and chaotic compositions of cartoon imagery. He has always been very in touch with his own imagination and intuition, and he feels this gives him a major advantage when it comes to teaching kids. Trent believes the key to encouraging artistic motivation and growth in kids is to make art as fun for them as humanly possible.
Cooper was born and raised in Derry, New Hampshire, and took to art in his sophomore year of high school as a tool to deal with trauma. Since then, he has enveloped himself in a rich world of art history, which has helped shape his practice into what it is today. He combines his interest in traditional techniques and Italian Renaissance influences to try and answer a very specific question: can you capture the ephemerality of life? Cooper was recently hired as an intern at Biddeford Intermediate School and has had received accolades from the principal and his mentor there. He says, "I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. I come from a long line of teachers on my mom's side of the family. In high school, my art teacher really changed my life for the better. Ever since then I wanted to be that person for other kids like me." He hopes to stay in the area and continue teaching.
