Aziza Afzal is a queer, multi-racial artist residing in Maryland. She creates art in many mediums, such as performance, adaptation, script-writing, painting (murals), linocut and intaglio printmaking, drawing, jewelry-making, design, collage, and puppetry.
The First Latino Olympic Artist for the USA Jesse Raudales
Eric K. Lerner is a self-taught artist. In the mid-1990’s he began creating votive pieces employing mixed media, acrylic, and digital manipulation. Soon, he began working as a graphic designer and illustrator. His clients included the BBC, Science Magazine, IBM, Marriott Corporation and Right Hemisphere. He also produced posters, t-shirts and publications for a number of AIDS service providers and advocacy organizations, including: AIDS Research Information Center, Health Education Resource Organization, Maryland State Health Department, ACTUP, and the American Indian Center.
Sarah Clough is a visual artist, writer, teacher, and curator who grew up in Oklahoma and Nebraska. Her work is about semiotics, the poetic, the physics of light, and the connections between them. She has received awards in screenwriting, journalism, and the visual arts. She has exhibited in Oklahoma, New Mexico, New York, Maryland, Virginia, and the United Kingdom. While a graduate student at the Maryland Institute College of Art, she was awarded a GradEX solo show and her paintings were also featured in the annual First Year Juried Show.
Baltimore Native, I fell in love with art at a young age of 5. I attended the Baltimore School for the Arts class of 1987. Fresh out of high school I started working for Penn Advertising painting billboard where I was able to develope my skills even more. After 14 years I decided to try another form of art in the form of culinary arts.
Shanelle Harrison is a visual artist, educator, and author primarily working in printmaking, drawing, and mixed-media art. She was born in Columbia, MD, and received her B.A. from Morgan State University in 2019. As an artist, Shanelle explores sociological and psychological conditions to convey a story and begin a dialogue. As an educator, Shanelle teaches art for elementary school children, hosts art lessons for beginning artists, and creates art videos on YouTube for people who cannot afford art lessons.
Lesley Riley never intended to be a full-time, professional artist. She just followed her passion in the small blocks of time she carved out while raising six children. Now, as an internationally known instructor and multi-media artist, Lesley works in botanical printing, mixed and digital media, paint and of course, fabric. In 1999 she turned her initial passion for fabric, photos, color and the written word into a dream occupassion that continues to delight and inspire creatives and art lovers everywhere.
Robin M. Gilliam is a mixed media abstract collage artist in Annapolis, Maryland, who specializes in creating to get her zen on. She paints and weaves found objects into mixed media collages and journals and is a teaching artist at Maryland Hall.
Robin achieved her BA in art and psychology from Goucher College in 1984. She has spent the past 30+ years creating to heal from life’s challenges, such as sexual assault, addiction, spouse battling opioids and stage 3 head/neck cancer, and aging parents with cancer and dementia (both passed now).
I was born and raised in Maryland, and in 2016 I graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art earning a BFA in animation. Though I came in with a background in 3D animation and modeling, I ended my program focused on cut paper stop motion. I fell in love with both working with my hands and the meticulous act of making the puppets and moving them bit by bit. This experience has come to influence my work through to today. I take my fascination with the feel and pattern of paper and use it to create paper-craft illustrations and the occasional animation.