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DIRECTORY

Fine Arts

Faculty Directory

The faculty are professional artists and educators with many years of experience. Take advantage of their knowledge by asking questions about courses, your portfolio, art careers and advanced art programs for transfer.

Fine Arts faculty advisors are available during office hours or by appointment.
Full Time
Boehman, Jessica

Assistant Professor
C-745L
718-482-5690
jboehman@lagcc.cuny.edu
www.jessicaboehman.com

Dr. Jessica Boehman graduated summa cum laude with her B.A. in Studio Art and Art History from McDaniel College in 1999. She received her M.A. from Penn State and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, both in the History of Art. She was a Fulbright scholar to Italy in 2006-2007.

Elsayed, Dahlia

Associate Professor
C-745N
718-349-4074
delsayed@lagcc.cuny.edu
www.dahliaelsayed.com/

Professor Elsayed teaches studio courses in Drawing, Painting, and Intro to Art. She attended Bergen Community College before graduating from Barnard College, and then earned her MFA from Columbia University.

In her work, Dahlia combines text and image to make paintings, installation and books, employing visual narratives to chart an internal and external experience of place, connecting the ephemeral to the concrete. The work pulls from conceptual art, comics, cartography and landscape painting, and uses image and language to continuously modify each other.

Her work has been shown at galleries and art institutions throughout the United States and internationally, including the 12th Cairo Biennale, Guggenheim Museum, BravinLee Programs, and solo exhibitions at Aljira Center for Contemporary Art and the New Jersey State Museum. She has received awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, Headlands Center for the Arts, and The NJ State Council on the Arts.

Fernandez, Arianne

Lecturer
M223
718-482-5709
afernandez@lagcc.cuny.edu

Arianne M. Fernandez graduated with an Associate’s of Science in Fine Arts from LaGuardia Community College. Arianne also holds both a Bachelor's of Arts in Art History (with a concentration in Fine Arts), where she graduated summa cum laude with highest honors in Art History and an M.A. in Art History (with a concentration in Modern Art) from Queens College, CUNY. Arianne has been teaching Introduction to the Visual Arts, Art History Survey I & II, 20th Century Art and Art and Society, at LaGuardia Community College since 2008. Arianne has contributed to various essays for the Godwin Ternbach Museum in Queens College, including those in the exhibition catalogue, “SCHOLARS, EXPLORERS, PRIESTS: How the Renaissance Gave Us the Modern World” -G T M, Queens College, CUNY, February 2 - March 27, 2010.

Fernandez, Hugo

Associate Professor
C-745BB
718-482-6189
hufernandez@lagcc.cuny.edu
lagcc-cuny.digication.com/hugo.fernandez/Welcome/published

Hugo Fernandez was born in Miami, Florida, in 1962, the son of Cuban exiles. He began taking photographs in the early 1980’s, graduating from Miami Dade Community College in 1985 with an Associates degree in Communication and in 1989 from Florida International University with a Bachelors degree in Fine Art in Photography. In 1993 he graduated from the Yale School of Art with a Masters degree in Fine Art Photography. In 2014 he will celebrate 20 years at LaGuardia Community College, as he works towards tenure; he is currently an Assistant Professor. In New York he has continued working in photography with the panorama format, which he began working with at Yale. He has also been working on a long-term project documenting the stories and life of his father. He is married and lives in Fort Greene Brooklyn, New York. He has a 14 year-old daughter from a previous marriage.

Luskin, Fern

Lecturer
C-745TT
718-482-708
luskinfe@lagcc.cuny.edu

Fern Luskin is the author of “Unchaste Veneration in Titian’s Worship of Venus,” in New Studies on Old Masters: Essays in Renaissance Art in Honour of Colin Eisler, John Garton and Diane Wolfthal, eds., Toronto Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2011 and of the book review of Anthony Colantuono’s Titian, Colonna and the Renaissance Science of Procreation: Equicola's Seasons of Desire, published in caa.reviews in 2012. She has also presented papers at all the major Renaissance conferences and given gallery talks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her discovery that a row house on West 29th St. was an Underground Railroad Station, and her campaign to preserve it, has been the subject of documentaries (National Geographic’s “Civil Warriors; Free at Last,” Secrets of New York) as well as articles and broadcasts (The New York Times, Daily News, WSJ, Huffington Post, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, NY1, WCBS, WNYC/WQXR, etc.). She has, in addition, received various preservation awards.

Richter, Ari

Richter Ari
Associate Professor
C-745V
718-349-4072
arichter@lagcc.cuny.edu
aririchter.com

Ari Richter was born in Tampa, FL in 1983. He received a BFA from Florida State University and a MFA from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Richter is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores material narratives, collaborative practice and performance. Recent projects include staging an art show for dogs at the University of Texas at Dallas, curating a comedy performance series for Arts in Bushwick, producing a how-to web video series for the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A., lecturing in a tent during the Celebrate Brooklyn! music festival, installing a modern day wunderkammer at Flux Factory, dancing Gangnam Style for Ai Weiwei, becoming a German citizen and becoming an uncle. Ari Richter lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Rodriguez, Michael

Professor
C-745JJ
718-482-5903
mirodriguez@lagcc.cuny.edu

Michael Rodriguez has been exhibiting his work since 1984 starting as an active member of the influential Artifacts Artist Group in Miami Florida. He graduated with an MFA from Brooklyn College in 1992 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the same year. He has exhibited with Feature Inc. NY, Galerie G-Module, Paris, White Columns, NY and numerous other galleries and museums internationally.

Michael Rodriguez has won a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant as well as a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NY as well as numerous private collections.

Simms, Arthur

Associate Professor/Fine Arts Program Coordinator
C-745Y
718-482-5664
asimms@lagcc.cuny.edu
arthursimms.com/home.html

Arthur Simms was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1961. He emigrated to Brooklyn, New York in 1969. He received his Masters Degree in Fine Arts in 1993 and Bachelor of Arts in 1987 from Brooklyn College.

Numerous awards have included the Rome Prize Fellowship, Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Creative Capital Grant, Guggenheim Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, Residency from the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency Fellowship, Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and Pollock-Krasner Grant.

He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including representing the country of Jamaica in the 49th Venice Biennial in 2001. Other venues have included Musée International des Arts Modestes, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Neuberger Museum, American Academy of Arts and Letters, MOMA P.S.1, American Academy in Rome, and the Queens Museum.

Vayzman, Liena

Assistant Professor
C-745T
718-482-5690
lvayzman@lagcc.cuny.edu
www.lienavayzman.com

Liena Vayzman is an art historian specializing in Modern and Contemporary Art and the Histories of Photography. Dr. Vayzman earned the BA with Honors in Art History at Vassar College and the MA and PhD in History of Art at Yale University. Her PhD dissertation analyzes the photographic self-portraits of French Surrealist photographer Claude Cahun in terms of gender, geopolitics, and the history of the Resistance during WWII. Liena Vayzman is also a photographer and curator of contemporary art.

At LaGuardia, Professor Vayzman teaches courses on Art in New York, Art and Society, Introduction to Art, and History of Photography, often incorporating visits to museums and galleries in New York as well as using technology and studio projects to enrich learning.

Liena Vayzman's writing on art has been published in X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly (Los Angeles), Art Practical (San Francisco), Huffington Post, DailyServing.com, the Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, and other publications. She curated the Crystal Palace Experimental Film and Video Festival and served as new media curator at ATA: Artists Television Access in San Francisco.

Prior to joining the LaGuardia faculty in 2014, Dr. Vayzman taught at Wesleyan University, Rutgers, the Rhode Island School of Design, San Jose (California) State University, the New School University (NY), and CUNY-York College. She also has worked as a curatorial fellow at the Yale University Art Gallery and as an educator at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Part Time
Bakalli, Emil

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
www.emilbakalli.com

Emil Bakalli was born in Elbasani-Skampa, Albania. He is an artist living and working in New York City. Bakalli received his B.A. in Fine Arts and Philosophy from Hunter College, CUNY, in 2006. He received his M.F.A. from Parsons The New School For Design in 2009. At Parsons, Bakalli majored in Fine Arts. Meanwhile, at the New School For Social Research, he studied extensively in the M.A. program of Philosophy. Therefore, Bakalli’s expertise, experience-practice is greatly related to Fine Arts and Philosophy, alike.Bakalli regularly exhibits his work both nationally and internationally. This has included exhibitions at Tirana National Gallery, Albania; the Dimotikon National Gallery, Athens, Greece; European Culture Center, Italy; PULSE Art Fair, Chelsea, New York; and The Kitchen Gallery, Chelsea, New York. Bakalli has been published and has received various honors/awards such as those in: Tricycle Magazine; Direct Art Magazine, Manifest International-Painting, Poughkeepsie Journal, Art in Vogue and Creative Genius-Masters-of-Today.www.emilbakalli.com

Blackwell, Matthew

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
mblackwell@lagcc.cuny.edu
mattblackwellstudio.com

Matt Blackwell received his BFA from the Portland School of Art, Maine, participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received his MFA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC. Blackwell received a Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2006) and his work was included in the 2013 Maine Biennial. Fellowship residencies include Yadoo; Sculpture Space in Utica, NY; Vermont Studio Center; Triangle Arts Association and Art Lot in Red Hook Brooklyn. Blackwell is represented by the Edward Thorp Gallery, New York where he has had five solo and has been included in numerous group exhibitions. In addition to a solo exhibition at Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, Blackwell’s work has been exhibited at Studio 10 and Parker’s Box in Brooklyn, Hartwick College (Oneota, NY) Savannah College of Art and Design ( Atlanta GA) and numerous group shows in New York City and Maine.

Chin, Lili

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
lichin@lagcc.cuny.edu
lilichin.org

Lili Chin is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and holds an MFA from the University of California, San Diego. In 2013, she was an Artist in Residence at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai. She spent her summer in a cabin in the Catskill mountains at the Platte Clove Artist Residency. In 2012 she was a resident at the Weir Art Farm and produced a site-specific installation on a Nature Preserve.

Her films and installations have been exhibited at numerous venues including All Thing Projects in New York, the New York Underground Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Millennium and more. Her work has been shown internationally in Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin TX, San Francisco, Edinburgh, Equador, Beijing, Shanghai, Mexico City, New York and more. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at Central Connecticut State University and LaGuardia Community College.

Cristofaro, Cris

Adjunct Associate Professor
M223
718-482-6037
ccristofaro@lagcc.cuny.edu

Cris Cristofaro has been teaching Sculpture, 3-D Design, and Introduction to Design, at LaGuardia for the past 27 years. He is also the director of the LaGuardia Gallery of Fine Arts, and is responsible for the exhibitions of artwork throughout the college including the Atrium Gallery Showcases, and the 4th and 5th Floor E building galleries. He has an extensive exhibition record, and his work is represented in the Queens Museum, and many other public and private collections, and is a two-time winner of the Adolph & Ester Gottlieb foundation grant.

Frederick, Jeff

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
jfrederick@lagcc.cuny.edu

Jeff Frederick is an artist and writer who lives and works in New York City. He received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from Brooklyn College (CUNY). He has taught at LaGuardia Community College since Spring 2012.

Harmon, Joan

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
jharmon@lagcc.cuny.edu
www.joanharmon.com

Joan Harmon is a sculptor and installation artist who earned her MFA from Rutgers University and her BFA from the Californis College of Art. Harmon uses a variety of media from cast cement, fired clay, wax and mixed media and incorporates sound and light in her sculptural installations. Her work explores psychological journeys created by merging architecture, landscape and references to the human body. Joam has taught at various Universities and has been teaching at La Guardia since 2001. She exhibits nationally and internationally and is President of the Phoenix Gallery in Chelsea, NY.

Jefferson, Kristin Marie

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
kjefferson@lagcc.cuny.edu

Professor Jefferson’s background is Visual-Culture: combining the Anthropology of Art and Video-Ethnography. She originally began teaching art at CUNY while earning her first Masters (1975). Mentored by Conceptual Artist Robert Morris, Kris began doing performance art and installations using video as her medium of choice. Initial graduate work concluded, Kris traveled the world for years as an ethnographic art dealer often returning to CUNY as a guest-lecturer before again contracting to teach – this time at La Guardia.
As educator, curator and documentarian, Kris grounds her knowledge of visual cultures in a global and intercultural context. She is an international art dealer, curator and consultant who has helped build major public and private collections in the Americas and abroad.
As a conceptual artist, Kris sources original and re-purposed video (2nd Masters 1999) to explore, dissect, and cross-reference culturally specific aesthetics. Her work is in public and private collections throughout the world.

Jerard, John

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
JJerard@lagcc.cuny.edu
www.jerardstudio.com

Sculptor/Painter, Designer/Fabricator: Owner Jerard Studio Inc., Custom Design and Fabrication For Theater, Interior Design, Print and Film Industries. Problem solving for the Arts.Selected Exhibitions: Fountain Gallery, Portland Ore, Seattle Arts Commission, Mermaid Show, Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY, Hallwalls Gallery Buffalo, NY, Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn NY, Cooper Union Gallery, NY ,NY.

Lozano, Elysa

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
elysalozano@yahoo.com

Trained at the Rhode Island School of Design and Goldsmiths College, Elysa Lozano’s art practice emulates a not-for-profit, called Autonomous Organization, which has produced proposals for Socialist colonies in a high-rise building in Houston, Texas, re-branded an exhibition space in London as a construction site, and created a web archive of project space survival strategies.

Pizzarello, Dina

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
dpizzarello@lagcc.cuny.edu
http://dinapizzarello.com

Dina Pizzarello is a Brooklyn born oil painter. She received her BA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts. In 2008 she took first place at the Emaar Art Symposium in Dubai. Pizzarello completed her Masters in Education and Special Education at Touro College in 2012 and is currently working on her diploma project for her MFA at the New York Academy of Art.

Richarson, Judy

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
jrichardson@lagcc.cuny.edu

Judy Richardson is a sculptor living and working in Brooklyn. She spent many years sculpting and painting scenery for the San Francisco Opera and all kinds of rock n¹ roll shows before she came to New York in 1990. Judy makes her own versions of functional objects out of lots of different recycled materials that address political and emotional situations. She is the recipient of the Roswell Artist in Residence grant, the Vermont Studio Fellowship, the C-Scape Dune Shack Residency, and the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant. She shows her work in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, California, and New Mexico.

Salomon, Debra

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
dsalomon@lagcc.cuny.edu

Debra Salomon has a BFA in painting from Kent State University. She followed up her undergraduate training at the New York Studio School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture, where she studied with Phillip Guston, George McNeil, and Mercedes Madder, among others. She has shown her figurative abstract work in many group shows, and maintains a studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Along with teaching art and design, Debra works as a designer and has practiced graphic, exhibition and interior design with a painter's eye for two dimensional space and color.

Saltz, Mark

Adjunct Associate Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
msaltz@lacc.cuny.edu
www.marksaltz.com/

Mark Saltz is a Painter who lives and works in New York City. His Paintings, Drawings, and Prints may be found in Museum, Academic and Public Cooperate Collections throughout the United States and Europe. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Painting, A Mid –Atlantic States Grant for Painting and a Pollack/Krasner Foundation grant for Painting.
His Graphic work is published and represented by VanDeb Editions, NYC, and his Paintings and Works on Paper by JHB Gallery. NYC
Mark Saltz is both an Adjunct Assistant Professor at LaGuardia Community College, and a part time teaching professor in The School of Design Strategies and Department of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons School of Design/New School, NYC. He is a graduate of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and Goddard College Independent Study Graduate Program, Westbury, Vt.

Schuwerk, Michael

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
mschuwerk@lagcc.cuny.edu
mikeschuwerk.info/

Michael Schuwerk was born in Chicago, raised in Houston and currently lives in New York. He received an MFA from Hunter College and a BA with Honors in History from the University of Chicago. In 2010 he attended The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: the 92Y Tribeca, 255 Canal, Gallatin Galleries, 3rd Ward, Chashama, Zora and Tompkins Projects in New York; Champion Contemporary in Austin; Director’s Lounge in Berlin; and Citta’ al Muro in Trento.

Segre, Michelle

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
msegre@lagcc.cuny.edu

Michelle Segre is a sculptor who has exhibited her work widely since the mid-1990's. She has had solo shows at the University Art Museum at SUNY Albany, the Derek Eller Gallery in New York, the Daniel Weinberg Gallery in Los Angeles, Murray Guy Gallery, NY, and the Susan Inglett Gallery in NY. Selected group shows include the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY; the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in NY; the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT; the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs, NY; the Kemper Museum in Kansas City; and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Colorado, amongst others. Segre has taught at both New York University and the Cooper Union School of Art. She is currently an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts MFA Program in New York. Segre is represented by the Derek Eller Gallery in New York, where she lives.

Youens, Rachel

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
ryouens@lagcc.cuny.edu
www.ryouens.com

Rachel Youens, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA in 1980 and an MFA from Brooklyn College, CUNY in 1993. She has exhibited in numerous galleries in the NY metropolitan area, including Sideshow Gallery, Valentine Gallery, Open Source, and Long Island University. Youens has attended artist residencies at the Fundación Valparaiso and Ragdale Foundation and has been a guest lecturer at Montclair State University. She has written art criticism for The Brooklyn Rail’s artscene section (1999-2005), artcritical, Cover Magazine, NY Arts Magazine, and NowChelsea. She received a Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2005, a PSC CUNY grant in 2008, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008-09. She currently teaches at LaGuardia Community College and at the Parsons School of Design

Zegeer, Brian

Adjunct Assistant Professor
C-745
718-482-5690
zegeer@gmail.com
http://www.brianzegeer.com

Brian Zegeer makes stop-motion animations, enacting physical changes to an environment in order to unearth the network of stories arising from the site’s particular history or the politics associated with its use.
Zegeer received his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and attended Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in 2010. He has recently exhibited at the Queens Museum of Art, The Delaware Art Museum. Louis V. ESP, Regina Rex, Thompkins Projects, Elga Wimmer Gallery, and Stephan Stoyanov Gallery.
Staff
Eppich, Helmut

College Laboratory Technician
M-223G
718-482-5709
heppich@lagcc.cuny.edu

After graduating from LaGuardia Community College with an A.A., and The City College with a B.F.A., I began freelancing in comic books: Pacific Presents #4:The Shell Game; Blackthorne Publishing:Star Flight Squadron #3; Harris Comics:Q-Unit; Demon Boy Comic Book: Issues 1 and 2.
During a brief period I became involved with creating astronomy paintings utilizing a self-taught method, bordering on realistic,semi-abstract, and abstract concepts. These paintings have been shown in various juried exhibitions in Soho and Tribeca, including a solo exhibition at 55 Mercer Gallery. Some of these paintings are on display around the college.
Currently, I relive classic tv shows, old movies, and the 1964 Worlds Fair as futile attempts to avoid impending reality. This ongoing conflict, fortunately, inspires creativity utilized to write and illustrate contemporary fantasy scenarios.

Vollo, Gary

Chief College Laboratory Technician
M223
718-482-5709
gvollo@lagcc.cuny.edu

Gary received his Associates Degree from La Guardia Community College and his Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts from Queens College. His studies in studio art evolved into a passion for both analog and digital photography. He has now been working with photography for over 35 years and has exhibited photographs at numerous galleries and museums, including the Paul Klapper Library, Queens Museum, The Greater Astoria Historical Society, and Saint Peter’s Church in the Citicorp Building. In collaboration with the Greater Astoria Historical Society Mr. Vollo recently had the book “Then & Now, Long Island City” published by Arcadia Publishing. The book consists of vintage photographs of Long Island City taken 80, 90 (and in some cases over 100 years ago) juxtaposed with images taken by Gary in the past several years. Mr. Vollo has taught beginning, advanced and digital photography, and is currently teaching computer art courses here at the college.