Staff

  Lauren V. Walling | Co-Executive Director: Finance, Development & Operations | She/Her/Hers
As Co-Executive Director, Lauren Walling has grown the organization’s financial capacity by increasing the donor base and investing in projects that promote self-reliance. Currently, she is responsible for all strategic advancement, fundraising and fiscal management including annual audits. She deeply understands the financial management needs specific to the arts nonprofit sector and is committed to creating economic opportunities for all artists as a matter of principle and right. Prior to her time at WSW, she was an art educator for 15 years. She has degrees from Wells College, Yale University, and Columbia University. lauren(at)wsworkshop.org
     
     
  Erin Zona | Co-Executive Director: Arts & Strategic Advancement | She/Her/Hers
Erin Zona has been working as a facilitator and collaborator in the arts for over 20 years. Focused across multiple platforms and usually within the framework of printmaking and independent publishing, she is a practicing artist with special interest in research-based projects that utilize archives and special collections, especially those highlighting queer and lesbian histories. As Co-Executive Director, she is responsible for the artistic vision and integrity of all programs and projects including WSW’s artist’s book publishing imprint, studio residencies, exhibitions, as well as WSW’s youth and adult art education series. Zona oversees the panel selection for all competitive programs and co-represents over 200 artists from WSW’s publishing catalog in the sales and distribution of artists’ books. erin(at)wsworkshop.org 
     
     
  Chris Petrone | Studio Manager | She/Her/Hers
Chris Petrone facilitates and collaborates on all studio programming and projects in the printmaking and papermaking studios. She manages all technical aspects of the artists- in-residence opportunities, maintaining the studios’ equipment and leading artist book production. She came to WSW as a studio intern in 2004, a year after getting her BFA from SUNY Purchase, and has been a part of WSW’s operations ever since. She sees herself as a practicing technician and collaborator playing a part in a professional workspace that encourages experimentation, mistakes, and play. chris(at)wsworkshop.org
     
     
  Rhonda Lowry | Business Operations Assistant | She/Her/Hers
Rhonda Lowry joins WSW as an experienced art administrator with a demonstrated passion for artist-run spaces. Throughout her young adulthood, she actively participated in many underground art galleries and music venues in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago and NYC, both as an organizer and participating artist. From 2016 to 2020, she served on the staff of Flux Factory, a celebrated artist residency and nonprofit exhibition space in Long Island City. Her responsibilities encompassed grant writing, fundraising events, daily financial operations and artist services. After relocating to Kingston in 2020, she expanded her operational skill set as the Warehouse Manager of MINNA, a B-corp certified home goods business specializing in handmade textiles. Her partner of 10 years is a native of Rosendale, encouraging her to build strong ties with the local community surrounding WSW. She is a drummer, DJ and electronic musician and has toured internationally as part of the band Erica Eso. She holds a BA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. rhonda(at)wsworkshop.org
     
     
  Natalie Renganeschi | Marketing Associate | She/Her/Hers
Natalie Renganeschi crafts and oversees the creation of all of WSW’s public-facing communications. Utilizing her expertise in graphic design and marketing gained through her years in the for-profit sector, she has elevated WSW’s visual and virtual identity, and has more than tripled the organization’s social media following since she was hired in 2018. In addition, she crafts twice-yearly virtual fundraising campaigns that have raised over $54,000. Natalie holds a B.S. in Art Education from SUNY New Paltz. Prior to her career at WSW, Natalie  was an inaugural-year teacher at Newburgh Preparatory Charter High School and  founded the Community Arts, Digital Media, and Art History departments Natalie left teaching in 2016 to pursue a career in graphic design, and served as  the Art Director and Art Department Manager at Hudson Valley Brewery for five years. natalie(at)wsworkshop.org
     
     
  Ruth McKinney Burket | Ceramics Studio Manager & Volunteer Coordinator | She/Her/Hers
Ruth McKinney Burket received her M.F.A. in ceramics at SUNY New Paltz in 2011. Her work explores the link between art and community building and has found that clay is a great vessel for bringing people together. As ceramic studio manager and volunteer coordinator she maintains the ceramic studio, supervises clay classes, and manages volunteers. Ruth is in charge of the annual Chili Bowl Fest Fundraiser and oversees the production of nearly 1,000 hand crafted bowls annually. In preparation for the fundraiser she hosts a regular gathering of creative volunteers and orchestrates collaborations between artists to produce unique vessels for the event. She is always up for creative conversation over a cozy cup of tea (in hand made mugs of course!). ruth(at)wsworkshop.org
     
     
  Robert “Woody” Woodruff | Electrician and Maintenance | He/Him/His
Woody has been a core member of the WSW staff since 1979. He is a technician, innovator, artist and electrician. He has supported WSW’s mission for decades by assisting artists with inventions and technical support while managing the campus and facilities. Additionally, he is a builder and a licensed electrician.     
     
     
  Faythe Levine | Hauser & Wirth Institute Archivist for Women’s Studio Workshop | She/Her/Hers
As the Hauser & Wirth Institute Archivist for Women’s Studio Workshop, Levine will manage, oversee, and increase public visibility of our archives and special collection, while advancing WSW’s work as an important hub for radical thought, for modeling economic viability for print and book culture and story-telling, and for technical exploration in multiple mediums. Levine has been in service to the arts for over twenty years advocating for creativity to be used as a vehicle to build community, personal independence and empowerment. Her personal practice revolves around reimagining archives and collections through a queer feminist lens. She has a new book slated to be published by OK Stamp Press in 2024. From 2017-2021 Levine worked at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, first as the Assistant Curator and was then promoted to Director of Arts/Industry. Among other projects, she directed and authored two feature length documentaries with accompanying books published by Princeton Architectural Press, Sign Painters (2013) and Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY Art, Craft and Design (2009). faythe(at)wsworkshop.org
     
     
  Alexa Hernandez | Non-Profit Management Intern | She/Her
Alexa Hernandez is a ceramicist from Laredo, Texas. She received a BA in Communications and a Studio Art Minor from Texas A&M International University in 2020. Alexa later became the first ever Virtual Artist-in-Residence for Daphne Art Foundation in 2021, where she started to experiment with pigmented clays and a Japanese hand-building technique named Nerikomi. Drawing inspiration from antique patchwork quilts and pictorial needlework art, Alexa makes functional ceramics that are colored with a constellation of mix-match and wonky patterns. Alexa works closely with WSW’s Business Operations Assistant and Marketing Associate in all things relating to administrative and marketing upkeep.
     
     
  Ophelia Wild | Studio Intern | She/He/They
Ophelia Wild is a multimedia artist. She creates works ranging from: illustration, performance, printmaking, fiber, painting, and installation. In May 2022, Ophelia graduated from VCUarts with a major in Painting and Printmaking and a minor in Psychology. Since then, she has worked with the Bread and Puppet Theater and Press furthering her exploration of art as activism and creation using trash and natural materials. At the core of her work are themes of land and body. As a WSW studio intern, Ophelia is developing deeper understandings of print techniques, and the collaborations within studio and non-profit operations.
     
     
  Joseph Ni | Studio Intern | They/Them/Theirs
Joseph Ni is a printmaker and artist from Queens, New York. They graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in Spring 2023 with a BFA in Illustration. As a queer Chinese American they draw upon traditional Chinese motifs and reinterpret them within a queer diasporic framework. Their work situates their emotional landscape through compositions of cultural artifacts and self-portraiture. The following images exist within the clash of differing cultural aesthetics and navigate the internal conflicts of existing within intersecting identities. As a studio intern Joseph will help with studio upkeep, assisting artists in residence, and the studio’s various programming.
     
     
  Thaïs Calvarin | Studio Intern | She/Her/Hers
Thaïs Calvarin is a papermaker and printmaker from Princeton, NJ. Since earning her BFA in Chicago in December of 2019, Thais has been exploring what visually communicating through paper might mean. She builds off of introspective drawings of her own thoughts and experiences by papercutting, redrawing, layering, translating, and reconfiguring this foundational imagery. When completed, the pieces are always an homage to compromise and a tribute to context. The original drawings act as both records of an evolving mindset and factors of a greater whole: translucent layers in a translucent piece where no single part can be viewed in isolation.
     

Board of Directors

Alexander Campos, Development Officer at Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York, NY
Alexander is a museum professional with over 30 years of experience working in the NYC cultural arena, including tenures at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and as executive director of the Jamaica Arts Center, and The Center for Book Arts. His experience includes both artistic and administration functions, including institutional and individual fundraising, finance, strategic planning, capital and architectural master planning, government and community relations, special events, curatorial planning, exhibition management, collections oversight, educational and curriculum development, public programs and performances planning and implementation, artist-in-residence management, and art study tours and art travel development and implementation. Alexander is a trustee of the Morris-Jumel Mansion Museum (the oldest freestanding house in Manhattan) and the Bronx Council on the Arts.

Timothy (Tim) Delaney, Retired, Glenford, NY
Tim has been a WSW member, supporter and student since 1980. He retired as General Manager of Negotiation Analysis at K&R Negotiation Associates. He worked to create and teach negotiating techniques in more than 20 countries negotiating business proposals of up to $2.2B US across a variety of industries. He also created and taught methods to express business value in negotiations. Previously, he worked for IBM as a large project development manager and as Program Director, Premier Accounts, negotiating and managing partnership agreements in numerous countries. Tim’s non-profit experience includes 7 years with Ulster County Habitat. He graduated from the University of Connecticut as a Departmental Honors Fellow in Mathematics.

Elizabeth Donsky, Artist, Queens, NY
Since her beginnings as a practicing artist, Elizabeth has concentrated on multiple drawings in site-specific installations. Her projects begin with hundreds of works on paper and an investigation of how discrete still, permanent images can account for the passage of time and the unending transformation of matter. In her installations she de-centers the individual artwork within an ever-shifting whole in an array of shifting sculptural pictures that create multiple points of view. Her work has been exhibited in commercial, nonprofit and academic spaces. Alongside her studio practice, Donsky has many years of financial management experience in nonprofits and with artists, galleries and in the tech sector. Born in Buffalo, New York, Elizabeth has lived and worked in Puerto Rico; she currently lives in New York City. Elizabeth received a MA in Arts and Humanities from New York University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently teaches drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design; she has taught at Brown, Hofstra and Drexel universities.

Hayley Ferber, Operations Director at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, Brooklyn, NY
Hayley Ferber is a contemporary arts administrator, curator, educator and artist living in Brooklyn, NY. In her current role as Operations Director at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center and previous role as Deputy Director of Chashama, she supports a creative community of multidisciplinary artists. Independently, she has curated exhibitions for SVA Residencies, Equity Gallery, New York Artists Circle, and the Yard: Williamsburg, among others. As a visiting curator, Hayley has worked with artists from Residency Unlimited, ISCP, NARS Foundation and Kunstraum. Hayley’s personal artistic practice explores nautical themes through artist books and printmaking. She has exhibited her work at the Kalamazoo Book Art Center, the Pelham Art Center, 440 Gallery, 92NY and Highline Nine, among others. She was a resident artist at ChaNorth in 2021 and received her MAT in Art & Design Education from RISD and BS in Studio Art from NYU. www.hayleyferber.com, @hayleyferber

Richard D. Forbes, Attorney, Richard D. Forbes, Esq. Law Office, Newburgh, NY
Richard attended Tulane University on a Tulane Honor Scholarship where he received his B.A. in 1988 in a dual major of Political Science and Language Writing and Rhetoric. He received his J.D. in 1992 from Brooklyn Law School where he was a Richardson Scholar. Mr. Forbes is admitted to practice in New York and is a member of the New York State Bar Association. From 1992-2000 he served as the General Manger of SunStorm Arts Publishing, an international art publisher of its own Fine Art art magazine, as well as a variety of books, lithographs and other products for the art community. Richard Forbes currently serves as a Professor at Marist College (2000-present), teaching Business Law at the undergraduate and graduate levels, both as an adjunct and as full-time faculty, and is the current President of the Parish Council of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Newburgh, NY (Parish Council, 2011-present). This is Richard’s second time serving on WSW’s board as he previously served 2010-2016, including a time as Secretary.

Bhavna Mehta, Artist, San Diego, CA
Bhavna Mehta works with paper and fabric; cutting and embroidering to tell stories that combine figurative and landscape imagery with botanical motifs, text, and shadows. Using paper as skin and thread to connect and mend, she makes work about relating and remembering. Mehta has exhibited widely in San Diego and Southern California. She is the recipient of the Individual Artist Fellowship grant (2021), Artists In Communities grant (2017, 2019) from the California Arts Council and the Creative Catalyst grant from The San Diego Foundation (2015). She has won multiple awards in juried shows and she was one of the San Diego Art Prize emerging artist winners. She collaborates with artists making public art, using paper as a design medium. She has engineering degrees from both India and US and worked as a software engineer for many years before turning to art. http://bhavnamehta.com/

Gina Pellegrini, Cofounder and CFO of My Money My Future
Gina is a finance and operations professional with over 18 years of non-profit experience. She specializes in capacity building: helping organizations improve and simplify systems and determine how to best use their resources so they can focus on their vital mission work. Gina is currently the Cofounder and CFO of My Money My Future (MMMF), a fin-tech company dedicated to empowering multicultural millennials to build wealth and to manage their money with confidence. Her areas of responsibility span marketing, finance, business development, compliance and operations. Gina believes that MMMF is aligned with her life’s work – to provide communities with access and opportunities that will have a multiplier effect on their lives for generations to come. Outside of work, Gina loves to travel and is about to launch a design blog, Spoiled by Design. Gina received her BA, MBA, and MPH from Columbia University.

Timea Tihanyi, Artist, Founder of Slip Rabbit, Seattle, WA
Timea Tihanyi is a Hungarian born interdisciplinary visual artist and ceramicist living and working in Seattle, Washington. Tihanyi holds a Doctor of Medicine degree from Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary; a BFA in Ceramics from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston; and an MFA in ceramics from the University of Washington. Tihanyi’s work has been exhibited in the United States, Brazil, Australia, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands, including the American Museum for Ceramic Art, Shepparton Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery, Bellevue Arts Museum, Mint Museum of Art and Design, Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburg, Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences, Foundry Art Center, International Museum of Surgical Science, SculptureSpace NYC and the Museum of Glass, Tacoma. She has received many recognitions, including the 2018 Neddy Award in Open Media and a 2021 Mellon Foundation grant. Tihanyi is a Teaching Professor in the Interdisciplinary Visual Arts program at the University of Washington and the founder and director of Slip Rabbit, a pioneering technoceramics studio located in Seattle.

Rachel Weiss, Curator and Writer
Rachel is a curator and writer, and Professor Emerita at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she founded and then led the graduate program in Arts Administration & Policy. She brings decades of experience in organizational governance and leadership, through her work on Boards ranging from artist-run spaces to national service associations. Rachel’s curatorial work has included the landmark exhibitions “Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin 1950s-1980s” (with Luis Camnitzer and Jane Farver) and “Ante América” (with Gerardo Mosquera and Carolina Ponce de León). Her writing addresses issues in contemporary art, and especially about the dynamics between art and social change. She has published widely in the US, Latin America, and Europe, and is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. Rachel has a BA from Marlboro College and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art.

Kristin Wenger, Retired Arts Education Director, Co-Founder and Partner, KCK Bearsville Co.
Kristin received the Outstanding Lifetime recognition at the 2018 NJ Governor’s Awards, recognizing her 30-year contribution to arts education. Kristin retired as Co-Director of Arts Ed NJ in 2017. Previously, Kristin was the Director of Young Audiences NJ. She served as board president of Susan G. Komen North Jersey. Kristin has a BA from Skidmore College and a MS from Boston University. In 2018, Kristin and her husband moved to Woodstock, NY and established KCK Bearsville Holding Co., a construction and architecture firm specializing in thoughtfully designed, unique, artistic homes. Kristin serves on the Board of the Ulster Literacy Association.

Cat Willett, Artist, Brooklyn
Cat Willett is a Brooklyn-based artist. She has written, illustrated, and published two full-length books, The Queen of Wands: The Story of Pamela Colman Smith, the Artist Behind the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, and Women of Tarot, An Illustrated History of Divinators, Card Readers, and Mystics. Cat is fascinated by tarot as a facet of art history, and the women behind its evolution. She’s dedicated the last few years to telling these magical stories in her published books. Cat also makes illustrated comics about parenting, motherhood, gender, and animals, and is a regular contributor to the Washington Post. Her comics channel personal experiences with pregnancy and postpartum, as well as other topics like travel and animals. Cat holds her MFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in Illustration. She received her BFA from the University at Buffalo with a minor in Art History and also studied at the Scuola Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence, Italy.

Founders

  Ann Kalmbach, Co-founder of WSW
Ann Kalmbach has an M.F.A. from Rochester Institute of Technology and a B.F.A. from SUNY New Paltz. Ann has produced a number of artists’ books with her long-time collaborator, Tatana Kellner, under the acronym KaKe Art. She has also been a resident artist at Visual Studies Workshop, University of Southern Maine, and the MacDowell Colony. As a co-founder of WSW, Ann has helped hundreds of artists print portfolio editions and artists’ books over the years.
     
     
  Tatana Kellner,  Co-founder of WSW
Tana Kellner holds an M.F.A. from Rochester Institute of Technology and a B.A. from the University of Toledo. Tatana (Tana) has received numerous awards for her work including two New York Foundation for the Arts individual artists’ grants. She has been an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Ragdale, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Banff Centre, Lightworks, the Millay Colony, ArtPark and Visual Studies Workshop. Her work can be viewed at tatanakellner.com
     
     
    Anita Wetzel (1949 – 2021),  Co-founder of WSW
Anita Wetzel held a B.F.A. in Painting from SUNY New Paltz. Anita was an artist-in-residence at Blue Mountain Lake Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Weir Farm Trust, as well as at international residencies in France, Spain and Costa Rica. Her work can be viewed at https://anitawetzel.com/In memory of Anita Wetzel: 1949 – 2021
     
     
    Barbara Leoff BurgeCo-founder of WSW
Barbara Leoff Burge is a founder of Women’s Studio Workshop. Her work is in university and museum collections, including Yale, Harvard, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Museum of Modern Art. She’s a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a practicing and teaching artist in New Paltz.