Our Artists
Art House contracts with a wide variety of artists specializing in varying media. We are proud to have some of the best printmakers, ceramicists, and mixed-media artists in Cleveland! All of the artists working with Art House have a high level of training and bring a wealth of teaching experience.
Augusto C. Bordelois graduated from the University of Havana with a major in English Language and Literature. He has also studied sculpture, ceramics, costume design for theater and cinema, classical drawing and painting. His visual artwork has been awarded much recognition in Cuba as well as competitions in the United States. He has participated in more than 120 national and international group shows and 27 solo exhibitions. Some of his works are in private collections in Cuba, the United States, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Ecuador, Japan, Greece, Germany, Chile, Switzerland, England and Norway. Augusto’s literary works have been published in magazines such as Kastello, and Hojas Literarias (Spain). He has also written and illustrated short stories for children and teacher activities’ guides. He was the founder and main teacher of “Taller de Niños” (Children’s Studio) at 23 & 12 Art Centerin Havana, and also the co-founder of the multimedia marketing company “2 Pasos.” He co-founded and co-directed “Proyecto Horizontal”, a partnership of 65 Cuban artists, in which capacity he was invited to curate and present a group show at Cleveland State University 1999. Augusto has participated as a costume and float designer at different carnivals in Cuba and also at Parade the Circle in Cleveland, Ohio. He has assisted in landscape designs of public spaces, coordinated community art programs and created many public art pieces across Ohio. Currently, he owns and directs Augusto Fine Art Studio and Art Center in Berea, Ohio.
One of Ohio’s premier stained glass artist, Sheree Ferrato is the owner of Verite Glass, Inc. in Avon, Ohio. After having worked with glass for 19 years, she opened Verite’ -- meaning "truth" -- in 1993. Her studio offers clients and students a glimpse into her work and the opportunity to learn about glass through her classes. While art is her passion, art education is her focus. Sheree has been teaching for 19 years, most recently with Young Audiences, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to “help make the arts an essential part of young people’s education.” Sheree also teaches at many local school districts within their art and science programs. Besides her studio collection, Sheree’s artwork is seen throughout the community with her donated pieces to the Avon Library, Ireland Cancer Center in Lorain, North Ridgeville Library, the South Lorain Library, as well as Parma General Hospital among others. Sheree’s credentials are extensive, covering a 39 year career. She studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art, attended seminars in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico. She apprenticed for 4 years under renowned artist Narcissus Quagliata in San Francisco. She has used these experiences and knowledge to develop her amazing work and in helping people enjoy art as much as she does.
Chris Dodson
Chris Dodson is a ceramic artist with a BFA in Ceramics from Ohio State University. Chris moved to Old Brooklyn and began working as the Ceramic Lab Tech for Art House, where he manages the clay studio and teaches classes.
Natalie Eddy
Tanya Gonzalez
Wendy Mahon
Originally from Trinidad, Wendy Mahon is a festival artist who has worked extensively on Cleveland Museum of Art projects, including the annual Parade the Circle Celebration and “I Madonnari” Chalk Festival. She has presented numerous workshops to both adults and children at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Hiram College. Wendy received her B.A. in Scientific Illustration from the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Jan McAndrew
Jan McAndrew received her BFA – Fibers/Printmaking/Art Education from Ohio University and her MA – Education from Kent State University. She has worked 13 years as an engineering drafter. She taught pre-engineering for 10 years and Visual Art for 10 years at Lakewood High School and Harding Middle School. Her creative work was shared with Ingenuity Fest, The Starwood Festival, Cleveland Steampunk Union Community, Tribe Ostara Tribal Belly Dance, and Art House and it’s outreach programming. She loves to share visual art and multiculturalism with performance and mixed media in all her classes.
Cynthia Penter
Melinda Placko earned her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and her MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with a focus in public and collaborative art. She has taught art for over seven years through the Cleveland and Akron Art Museums, Youthbuild Holyoke, and Beck Center for the Arts. A working artist and co-founder of Melk Truk Studio, she creates mixed media drawings on a variety of surfaces such as paper, sidewalks, lawns, parking lots, walls and walkways.
Angelica Pozo, a New York City native, born of Cuban and Puerto Rican parents, has lived in Cleveland since 1984. She moved there from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she received her Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. Her Bachelor of Fine Arts is from SUNY College of Ceramics in Alfred, NY. As a full-time, self-employed artist, Angelica divides her time between her widely exhibited sculptural studio work, her major public art commissions, and artist residencies involving large ceramic tile/mosaic projects primarily in arts-in-education programs. 24 of these projects have been through the Ohio Arts Council, but she has done numerous residencies with other organizations, nationally, as well as internationally. She has been awarded an OAC Individual Artist Fellowship, as well as an Arts Midwest/NEA Regional Individual Artist Fellowship
Multi-media artist and director of his nonprofit organization, High Art Fridays, Ron
Shelton, will bring his experience working with youth in CMSD to engage the
importance of creating art out of plastic. He has worked with Dennison
Elementary, John Marshall High School, Rhodes School of Environmental Studies,
and Rainey Institute and OH Perry.
The students will create several plastic art projects. One of the projects will be
weaving strips of plastic bags onto handmade looms to create plastic mats.
Another project will be transforming plastic water bottles into hanging sculptures.
Many CMSD schools are using plastic bottles as a substitute for water fountains
due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This project will divert hundreds of plastic bottles and bags from the waste
stream. These projects will exemplify the essence of creating a Circular Economy
in CMSD. Ron recently displayed the works created by students at the 2022 "Earth
day is Everyday" at Cleveland City Hall rotunda.
Ron, in 2021, was selected by Cleveland's Office of Sustainability as one of
Cleveland's Black Sustainability Leaders. Ron also is a Recycling Ambassadors
through the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District. Ron has recently made several
local media appearances regarding his role as a circular ambassador and
environmental artist: in an article in The Land on December 14, 2022, and in Plain
Press, February 2022 edition. He was also a guest on 90.3 WCPN, The Sound of
Ideas, on Monday 12.20.2021, talking about his artwork in plastic and his role as
one of Cleveland's Circular Ambassadors.
Meri Ruble
Meri Ruble has worked with Art House in multiple capacities and currently serves as a teaching artist. Until schools closed because of COVID-19, Meri was the art teacher at Luther Memorial School through an AH partnership. The community connection is what continues to draw Meri to this role and she enjoys working with learners of all ages. She views the new online and socially distanced teaching platforms as both a challenge and an opportunity to grow as an artist and educator. She has also been a museum educator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (moCa), casually for several years. Ms. Ruble has worked as an artist-in-residence with a variety of nonprofit organizations in partnership with Cleveland Metropolitan School District K-8 schools through Young Audiences (now Center for Arts Inspired Learning), International House of Blues Foundation, Kulture Kids, and Progressive Arts Alliance. She was previously the Program Coordinator with the International House of Blues Foundation (Cleveland, OH) and Outreach Coordinator for BSMA, with whom she also teaches currently. She holds a BA in Fine Arts, with a Studio Art concentration, from Kent State University. Ms. Ruble has served as a teaching artist with Art House since 2010. Her personal art practice examines the spatial relationships between nature and memory. She finds watercolor, printmaking, and the reimagining of found objects most compelling.
Jude Strandquist
Jude Strandquist discovered his love for art when he was a young child growing up in Washington, DC. Art has taken him to many exciting places since then. Jude studied animation and illustration at universities in the UK and Norway and interned with the Academy Award nominated animation studio, Cartoon Saloon in Ireland. Jude is happy to be back home in the States again, sharing what he loves best.
Lisa is an artist and designer based in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated in 2017 from the Cleveland Institute of Art with a BFA in animation. During her undergraduate career, she developed a versatile skill set in the 3D animation pipeline, becoming proficient in modeling, texture mapping, rigging, and animation. She had the opportunity while in school to apply these skills to numerous internships, including a position with Universal Creative making 3D animatics for theme park design and with American Greetings developing 3D animated shorts. Additionally, she has created two short films: Wisteria, a collaborative film that premiered on a planetarium dome at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and High Hedges, her thesis film which was on exhibit at the Cleveland Institute of Art's 2017 Student Summer Show. Lisa currently works as a freelance designer and multimedia artist and continues to pursue character art on independent and collaborative projects.
Susie Underwood is a multimedia, installation and performance artist with 10 years of experience as an art museum educator and teaching artist. Her work is often participatory, allowing others in the community to engage creatively. For performances, she will concoct wacky characters, such as a game show host or lounge singer from outer space. Humor is key, and she loves to bring this into her workshops, to create a fun and playful atmosphere.
Guy-Vincent is an internationally exhibited and collected multidisciplinary artist who is always on the edge of experimental frontiers. His work manages to balance new explorations while retaining strong roots in the traditions of art and cultural histories. Most recently, he was awarded the Ohio Arts Council, Individual Artist Excellence Fellowship in 2017. Established mediums like painting, drawing, and photography mix with materials like steel, plastic, wood, and in recent years, explorations within the digital realm. Always fascinated with mark-making, the primal modes of expression going back over 40,000 years, Guy-Vincent is pioneering new texts and images of communication. Digital technologies have provided opportunities to develop a unique visual language that references and redefines cultural-linguistic traditions. These net-based projects are shared via social media platforms such as Twitter and often serve as a catalyst for new conceptual directions. His work has been exhibited, collected, and critically acclaimed in Italy, Germany, France, Croatia, Mexico, South America, and throughout the United States. Collections include; Museo Civico d'Arte Contemporanea (Spoleto, Italy) Eaton Corporation Headquarters (Cleveland, Ohio) Hotel Giardino (Pisa, Italy) Key Bank Headquarters (Cleveland, OH) SAP America - Philadelphia, PA.
Gina Washington was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio and graduated with an MFA in Photography from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Washington considers herself “a child of the Universe” and have traveled to many places collecting images and connecting artists. She has exhibited her work nationally and has won awards for portraiture as she creates art “by any means necessary”. As a master collaborator, she co-created an exhibition at the Ingenuity Fest Cleveland in 2010 that showcased poetry, storytelling, music and visual arts. As a teacher, she travels to many different spaces connecting children to a myriad of artists and mediums. Gina’s photography is currently on view at the Governor's residence and she has been commissioned by the Massillon Museum, along with nine other artists, to create a piece for their 2016 Readapt show. Her goal as an artist is to bring clarity and solutions to the chaos around us and to make art accessible to all people, especially the disenfranchised in this global community.
Eileen Whitacre
Eileen Whitacre currently lives and works in North Royalton, Ohio, where she owns and operates a small art restoration & design business named, The Painter’s Studio. Once, Eileen graduated from Kent State University with a B.A. degree, in Art Education (2002), and a B.A. in Fine Art- Painting (2003), she began an unconventional art career that would lead to many creative opportunities. One of those opportunities, was working as an assistant to the (future) director of Art House, Laila Voss: creator of avant-garde installations and curious happenings, of which Eileen adores. Though, Eileen’s self described “comfort zone” is, painting. Color, shape, and 2D multi-layering of symbolic objects are foundational elements within Eileen’s artwork. She illustrates ironic stories within a painting, or a space. As an artist, “I can celebrate life’s oddest parts of nature, in space and time, that are seen as, ‘surreal’ in the natural world.” Usual subjects in her work are: hieroglyphs, fractals, micro vs. macro organisms and galaxies. Yet, Eileen admits, “I am at peace most when teaching art; guiding students to express themselves through the visual arts, establishing a students success gives me more than what painting can, purpose.”
Meng-Hsuan Wu
My art is not only a way to record my insights into life, but also a means for me to observe other people’s perspectives about life. To explore one’s identity in one's specific living context, time and place lie at the core of my artistic practice. I like to combine different artistic methods, including site-specific, interactive performance, and time-based video installation to investigate one’s sense of existence. These methods are deeply related to the context of time, space, and place. Over the last few years, my work has been strongly focused on community-engagement to further look into the identity of a specific group of people. By actively engaging the viewers’ participation, I get to explore the status of their physical and mental existence.
Clay captured Mark Yasenchack’s imagination when he was 6 years old. Fascinated by the grey oil-based modelling clay that never dries out, he built buildings with miniature people, spaceships with miniature aliens, or sharks eating miniature scuba divers. Later, referring to the clear overlapping pages of an encyclopedia, he made cadavers complete with organs (floating them in a vinegar and baking soda froth). He is grateful for the influence of his Aunt Dee, a creative do-it-yourself teacher/artist, and grandfather Pete, a work-aholic who could do anything. Of course he rebelled against all of it, frustrated by Dee’s perfectionism and Pete who had little time for anything but work. But with the realization that the work he does differs very little from the work they did; crafting things for people and wanting the work to be excellent like Dee and finding the same peacefulness in working as Pete did, he now recognizes their creative energy in all he does. At Baldwin-Wallace College, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology, and started his career as a ceramic artist in his senior year, taking his first ceramics course with David Williamson. Focusing on glazed wheel-thrown shapes which gradually evolved into hand-built vessels with small details of glaze he started his pursuit of form and texture. Currently he is intrigued with new materials and subjects and seeks the challenge of mastering new materials and grappling with emotional content and prose in his collage and encaustics. The ability to overlap images, thereby linking them visually and relating their meanings is compelling. Working with words and text fragments from old books, he addresses some of the more personal themes and ideas he has had a need to express.