Piecing It Together: Artist Bios

Revill, Jennifer

After spending most of my life working with words as a program manager, workshop facilitator, memoirist and poet, I have discovered the joy of visual art through collage. I love painting my own papers and curating multimedia materials for use in my collages.

Flynn Christopher

I live in Beverly. A diagnosis of scoliosis in second grade precluded my participation in sports, but I found a creative outlet in the arts, and for the past 60 years have had a love affair with all artistic endeavors. A sampling of my interests includes working in clay, linoleum, wood, gelatin prints, painting, drawing, making paper mache puppets, and taking photographs. Other interests include knitting, gourmet cooking, gardening, beekeeping, and holding the yoke of a single engine airplane. In my opinion, there is no greater feeling in this world than to create something and be happy with it.

DiBello, Lisa

Perpetual Slow River Studio student and retired engineer, exploring an expanded identity as an artist

Bradley, Maeve

I am primarily an acrylic painter.  With collage I can work with color, form and relationships with an openness that I don't always have with my painting. These two mediums compliment each other well.

Beaulieu, Beth

Slow River Studio has brought me back to creating. I am having fun collaging, printmaking, and sketchbook journaling. This work includes found and created papers using gelli plate.

Hillery, Jeanne

I retired in 2020 and began exploring collage of all styles including vintage, mixed media and now more contemporary collages at Slow River Studio.  I love making collage and collecting all types of paper, magazines and old books to use in my collages.  My Color Wheel collage was an exercise from the Slow River Studio Intro to Collage class.

Lally, Maeve 

I am a mixed media artist based in Beverly, MA. “Externalizer” comes from a place of recoil. It was a device for analyzing my familial dynamics, allowing me catharsis and separation. 

Omogrosso, Laura

I have fallen in love with collage! It feels limitless and freeing it has been a wonderful growth experience - and so much fun! My art background is oil and watercolor. I find collage freeing and a wonderful vehicle for exploration!

I have been creating since a child- with my favorite pieces being the decorative pencil holders made from cardboard toilet paper tubes lovingly made for my dad. No matter how many I made he always said he needed them!

Grosdov, Susan

In the past two years, I’ve taken 10 classes at Slow River Studio and am totally in love with - enchanted by - the studio and the wonderful teachers.   

Duff, Allison

Nature , color and mixed media are currently what I am exploring . Joy is an element I strive for in many of my pieces - some whimsy and playfulness speak to me. I made this particular piece with my late art teacher Claire, so it has special meaning to me - the peonies are made from a map she had from her first trip to Paris. She introduced me to the world of amazing papers and gauche. As she said and I concur : there is no art supply I don’t love.

Unger, Kelley Rae

For me, art is a combination of mindfulness and play. As a mixed media artist, primarily combining traditional elements of hand embroidery with the funkier elements of collage, I love to bring things together in unexpected ways. I’ve always appreciated the things that make me pause and take a closer look at the details. I hope my art makes you pause. I hope it makes you take a closer look. I hope it brings you as much joy to view it as I experienced in the making of it.

Symmes, Amanda

Amanda is a clinical social worker and school counselor who enjoys many mediums and crafts. She has enjoyed making collages since she was a little girl, and continues to enjoy using collage therapeutically for herself, and with those she serves. Her family loves making vision boards as well! Enjoy these few pieces.

Cole, Debora

Hannah, Terri

At this point in my life, I am enjoying exploring and expressing my artistic talents. Although I am experienced in printmaking, painting and illustration, Mixed Medium allows me a certain amount of freedom to incorporate past skills into a finished piece of work. The outcome is often a surprise!

This piece of work represents the journey of stepping into a new way of expression, letting go of the safe space and and being open enough to learn and create, and grow from our missteps. What is that saying?? “Be brave enough to suck at something new…”

This piece is one of my favourites. It depicts the freedom of movement and joy surrounding on of the most majestic beings in our oceans…

Shea, Anne

I am a new grandmother and fairly recent retiree finally doing what I want to do!

Pepicelli, Monica

Monica Pepicelli studied art in college and after graduating she focused on a career in marketing. Although the choice of career was a demanding one, she was able to enjoy traveling around the world. As she got older, Monica was inspired by an artist friend to begin taking art classes. She has since pursued classes from multiple artists to further explore the process of making art.

In the beginning of her artistic pursuits Monica mostly focused on landscapes to evoke the feelings of beauty, peace and serenity. She has since moved to exploring all types of media from pastel, oil, acrylic, epoxy and alcohol ink.

Casey, Jon

Jon is a son, brother, husband, father, uncle, grandpa, g-pa, papa, dog father, grand-dog father, friend, maker and aspiring artist.

Condakes, Crystal 

While I consider myself a poet first, I’ve been gluing things to paper for as long as I can remember. This particular piece came about as a result of a conversation I had with my son about the intersection of intentionality and worth in art. I hope this piece helps answer the question: Can accidental art be meaningful

As a writer I like to challenge my readers’ expectations using syntax and word choice. This piece started as a challenge to myself to employ imagery and placement to transform a flat photocopy into something compelling.

Smith, Suzi

After spending my first four decades in Northern California, I abandoned my corporate job to be a shepherd for two years in Western Massachusetts. Since then, I have been managing my partner’s practice, including developing graphics to educate about the new field of metabolic psychiatry. I now live in Newburyport. Since studying architecture in college, I have explored various mediums, but always return to collage. I am constantly reimaging my surroundings, asking: What else could that be? or How could I recreate that to capture the essence but with something unexpected? or, much to my partner’s chagrin, What could I turn this piece of trash I found on the street into… I’d better save that. I love to repurpose, reinterpret, recompose. Lauterbrunnen is a village in Switzerland nicknamed The Valley of 72 Waterfalls. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Although I began the collage with the idea to reimagine a landscape, by completion, the association I made with Lauterbrunnen added personal meaning to the piece. By proposing alternative possibilities for everyday objects, I hope to inspire others to view the world around them with greater curiosity and playfulness.

Walker, Amy

I took up collage a year ago and fell in love with the process of creating original papers and using those papers to create images inspired by other artists, my travels, everyday life or my imagination.

Feron, Jill

I am an artist living in Hamilton with my husband and three sons. For as long as I can remember I’ve been drawn to creating. As a young lass I enjoyed drawing the most, but was always up for just about any type of crafting, creating, or building. As an adult, I've enjoyed so many different genres of art making from sewing, woodworking, oil & acrylic painting, abstract art and collage. 

Ellison, Donna 

I was an art major in college. I was a commercial interior designer as a profession. Now that I’m retired I’m going back to my roots and rediscovering me as an artist.

Richardson, Amy

Recently retired, I started thinking about moving along life's pathways, and this collage is the result. In another class, we were asked to create an image of a fruit or vegetable, using a different color from the real vegetable, focusing on the shadows. This piqued my imagination, so in this study of analogous color schemes, I used tomatoes.

Gambino, Carol

I am a retired teacher and spend my time creating art, playing with my 3 dogs, and 4 grandchildren. “Woody” is a collage created using the bread pictures from a Zingermans catalogue. “Blue Pears” is an exploration on the color wheel using complementary colors.

Karlberg, Elene

I am a sailor and outdoor enthusiast, always inspired by the ocean. My usual medium is embroidery, but I also enjoy more paper-based crafts. This piece is called Ships Passing in the Night. I was hoping to capture the look of the night sky while sailing.

Whittaker, Fay 

I’m a 64 yr old African American woman. As a little girl, I was enchanted by the vibrant blues, purples, greens and yellows that swirled on the oil slicks left in the street after a rain. I would sit enthralled at a window watching the sun glinting on sides of the towering buildings of the Colombia Point Housing project where my family lived until I was eight and my parents were able to move us into a house near Franklin Park in Boston’s inner city. The house on Wolcott St would become my home for the next fifty two yrs. My most vivid memory of the move is of the first time that I saw a Red Winged Blackbird clinging to the golden reeds that surrounded the little pond in the park- I’d never seen such a wonder. My father’s death the summer that I graduated high-school made it necessary for me to get work to help my family keep the home my parents sacrifice so much for. It derailed my plan of attending Massachusetts College of Art and Design . It’s taken more than 30yrs, but I am finally able to immerse myself in the colors that I love so much.

The works that I am submitting are two of my mixed media left handed self-portraits. These pieces were created by placing a pencil in my non-dominant hand and in one continuous movement, not lifting the pencil, drawing my face guided only my reflection in a mirror. Once the face is completed, again looking away from the drawing I pencil in random marks. My feelings at that moment determine the direction and intensity of each line.

Each self-portrait was completed over several weeks by allowing my mood at each sitting to guide the medium used to fill the created spaces. The wood used to craft the frames for ‘Intransigent Joy’ and ‘Recalcitrant Dreams’ was salvaged from the home that embraced and sheltered my family and I through times of triumph and times of heartache for more than half a century. As the house on Wolcott Street will always be a part of me, the frames that surround and protect these pieces are part of them.

These self-portraits are reflections of my journey. Reflections from my deepest self.The works that I am submitting are two of my mixed media 'left handed' self-portraits. These pieces were created by placing a pencil in my non-dominant hand and in one continuous movement, not lifting the pencil, drawing my face guided only my reflection in a mirror. Once the face is completed, again looking away from the drawing I pencil in random marks. My feelings at that moment determine the direction and intensity of each line.

Titus, Gail

I have always enjoyed taking candid photographs of people and colorful images found in nature, revealing a range of emotions. As I began art classes at Slow River Studio, I have been able to incorporate this vision into my new found experiences in collage, water colors and sketching.

Noonan, Jean

I enjoy learning about different styles of collage and using different kinds of source material. My collages tend to be about my memories, experiences, dreams, feelings or values. Images that I find are often the starting point, but I also like using my own images. This collage uses my photos of Zion national park and is inspired by the style of artist David Hockney and his technique of “joiners”, deconstructing the photos and putting the pieces together in new ways.

Collins, Dennis

Dennis Collins is a 27 year old multi-media artist born and raised in Hopewell Junction, New York. He received his BFA from Montserrat College of Art with a concentration in painting and illustration. His work primarily consists of portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and non-objective collages. The collages submitted were made in response to his habit of collecting and listening to old vinyl records. Much of the ephemera within these works are recycled from records he acquired over the years. His considerations to sizes, shape, edges, juxtaposed material, and color are rooted in a pattern of repetition, aesthetic preference, feelings evoked by music, and stream of consciousness. These collages came to fruition with no predetermined outcome or idea, but instead a willingness to be open to inspiration in the moment and responding.

Fenton, Edith

During my 86 years I have always enjoyed paper and glue, scissors and shape making. I have that I'd rather be in Jonti's collage class than on any cruise.

Gagne, Kathy

Kathy is a frequent student at Slow River Studio where she is continually pushed out of her comfort zone!

Leven, Martha

I am a pianist who enjoys both collage and musical arrangements

Louaillier, Kelle

Since she was a kid, one of Kelle Louaillier’s mottos has been, “Have glue stick, will travel.”  Kelle is president emeritus of the progressive NGO Corporate Accountability, currently providing strategic consulting and coaching to organizations, consortiums, leaders, and on key issues. Residing on Cape Ann, MA she is also an avid collagist, and insatiable creative. 

Rosin, Ryan

A recently new and passionate student to Slow River interested in mixed media, surreal and abstract art.

Stone, Susan

Since my first Slow River Studio class last winter, I have discovered a creative side of myself which I never knew was there! I’m attracted to collage because it opens up a world of possibilities. As Vivaldi captured the seasons of the year through music, I have tapped into my emotional reflections of the yearly flow of time.

Dickson, Betsy

I have always loved exploring crafts, and have tried a wide range, from knitting, to soft sculpture, to puppet making to decoupage. In my later years I have taken up painting working, in acrylics, oils and pastels. My main interest is in the human figure and portraiture.