INSTRUCTOR BIOGRAPHIES
Our instructors are some of Pittsburgh’s most talented artists.

Jeff Brunner | Hey Beast Studio is an artist working in illustration, ceramic, and mixed media. After self-publishing an alphabet book, Armadillo to Zebu: an Alphabet Book for You and Me Too, he began doing an illustration-a-day-project. He participates in gallery exhibitions and art markets, including the Westmoreland Museum of American Art’s @rt30, Pittsburgh’s Handmade Arcade, Renegade Craft Fair: SXSW Edition in Austin, Texas, Union Project’s Mother of All Pottery Sales, Highland Park Pottery Tour, and Three Rivers Arts Festival where he was awarded the Emerging Artist scholarship in 2014. Currently he is working on a new picture book. In addition to teaching at The Artsmiths, Jeff teaches workshops and classes at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, and others.

Instructor Bio coming…

Lindsay Huff | Huffalo is an artist and metalsmith who creates wearable art and works primarily in enamel. Her artistic process stems from a fascination with her materials and environment. Lindsay graduated with a BFA in Metalsmithing from Syracuse University, where she began her first experiments with enameling. As an artist, Lindsay loves the act of transformation and the dialogue between certainty and uncertainty: how glass enamels react with each other, the anticipation of waiting for a piece to reveal itself after a firing, and the hammered metamorphosis of sheet metal to finished vessel.

Scott Hunter | Scott Hunter Fine Art studied painting and art history at Boston University. He graduated in 1993 after a classically structured education based on intensive studio training and drawing from life. His related experience includes theatrical set design, illustration, commissioned portraits and wall murals. Scott lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is represented in many private and public collections.

A lifelong crafts enthusiast, Nan Loncharich | Fancy Wool Flowers is happiest with a needle in her hand. She watched her grandmothers make braided and punch-hooked rugs, and learned how to embroider, knit, crochet, and sew clothing from her mother. She stitched needlepoint as she commuted to work, toted quilts on airplanes, and now has settled in with rug hooking and wool flower making. Nan has written for Rug Hooking Magazine and is the author of Making Flowers from Wool (Stackpole Books). Nan is at work in her studio daily, making flower pins to supply Pittsburgh-area museums and specialty shops. She also regularly appears at area fiber and craft festivals, and teaches her techniques at a local community college in a hands-on, energetic style.

Artist Beth Magyan | Magyan Clay & Paper had been a ceramic artist for many years before she discovered the wonders of paper. It is an immediate and gratifying creative outlet – one that she never imagined working in. Some time ago she took a break from clay and discovered the beauty of Japanese Yuzen papers and the therapeutic value of the repetition of folding paper. Working in both mediums represents a creative balance for her and it works.

Artist Maria Richmond | Lost Marbles draws her inspiration from the possibilities she sees in ordinary objects and materials. While she plays with wire, she often envisions unique ways of combining traditional, repurposed, and found objects into her creations. She regularly teaches in Western Pennsylvania, as well as other venues. She teaches basic and intermediate techniques in a relaxed atmosphere. Her goal is to help her students find their own creative voice and the endless possibilities in the seemingly mundane.

For the past decade Carol Scheftic | Convergent Series has been working with and teaching classes using a range of different “powder metallurgy” techniques. Carol has been certified as a metal clay Artisan by Rio Grande (a major jewelry supply company and importer of the PMC-brand of precious metal clays) and accredited as an Instructor in a program organized by Hadar Jacobson (USA-based inventor, manufacturer, and distributor of a line of base metal clays). She is a member of the Cranberry Artists Network, the Pittsburgh Society of Artists, and the International Guild of Miniature Artisans.