About Us

Suzanne Schmidt

Suzanne C. Schmidt is a parent, professor, substitute teacher and overall creative person. She learned how to sew from her mom, who learned from her own mother. Over the past twenty years, she has taught machine and hand sewing to students, family and friends from age 2 to adult in after-school programs; elementary, middle school and college classrooms; and in drop-in sewing and ESL workshops. She teaches at Saint Mary’s College of California in the program of Justice, Community & Leadership and has worked with the Social Justice Sewing Academy. Suzanne researches and writes about craft narratives in fiction and elsewhere. When she teaches sewing, she does so as a pathway to sustainability, self-expression, community-building and feminist praxis.

Julian DeMark

Ceramics Technician

Gianna Benetti

Gianna Benetti is an artist and potter currently living and working in Berkeley Ca.  She received her BFA in Studio Art with a ceramic emphasis from California State University, Chico in 2018.  Before studying at CSU Chico she was a student at Diablo Valley College where she found her passion for the ceramic medium.  Today she is a Manager at Brushstrokes Studio and works as an Artist Assistant for Mary Law.  She produces her work out of a humble little studio in Northwest Berkeley.

www.giannabenetti.com

Nathan Ring

Nathan is a potter with a special interest in the Northern California coastline, kayak fishing, and history. His pottery is inspired by his curiosity of the natural world, past pottery traditions, and his deep appreciation for the understated beauty of Japanese tea ware. While pursuing his love of form and function, Nathan has simultaneously explored traditional Japanese glazes, with a focus on Oribe and Shino. He has worked with different atmospheric firings and desires to make building and operating wood and soda kilns a focus of his future work. Nathan studied at Cosummes River College with Yoshio Taylor and finished his BFA in Ceramics at the California College of the Arts.

You can contact Nathan at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Hue Yang

Hue was born in Taiwan and has lived in America for most of her adult life. Since she was young she has had a love for color and form. She came to California in 1996 to pursue her education in art, eventually focusing on ceramics and pottery. Hue enjoys the artistic social connections gained through teaching as well as maintaining her own artistic practice.

Rebecca Rippon

Rebecca Rippon is a San Francisco based artist working in printmaking, taking its unique capabilities as an invitation to experiment. She received her M.F.A. from San Francisco Art Institute and was awarded the Murphy Cadogan Contemporary Art Award. Rebecca takes inspiration from nature in city spaces in her work, and finds plenty by frequently cycling the Bay Area’s fantastic bike paths.

Narges Poursadeqi

Narges Poursadeqi is a conceptual artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work investigates culture, memory, and narrative, and how they’re tied together. Poursadeqi’s practice is driven by politics, culture, and religion. Her works come to life through archived photos, videos, and texts, and the process of finding the appropriate vessel to re-narrate their stories.

Her work has been shown at SOMAArt cultural center, Salesforce tower, Hubbell Street Galleries, Worth Ryder Gallery, Mimesis Gallery, Belmont Village gallery, Mesa Art Gallery, Kala Art gallery, etc. She is one of the current Artist Residence Awardees at Kala art institute and simultaneously working on her new project at Alumnx Residency, California College of the Arts.

Xochitlquetzal Davila

Xochitlquetzal (cho-chi-ket-zaal), they/them pronouns, is an educator and behavioral health care provider who finds beauty, through the capture of light and shadow on film, in both expected and unexpected places. Inspired by and trained in journalism photography with low manipulation aesthetics, they capture the moment as it is, leaving the interpretation to the viewer. Like many photographers of the pre-digital era they also worked as an event, on site photoshoots, and headshot-photographer.  Currently Xochitlquetzal uses the practice of photography to cultivate a space of intention and centering in a world that is so often geared to depersonalization.

You can contact Xochitlquetzal  at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Neil Freese

Neil Freese is a designer, artist, problem solver, coffee obsessive, and world traveler. As Creative Lead for the Marketing and Art Programs of the ASUC Student Union, Neil manages the design and production processes and mentors student design apprentices. Neil has worked as a designer in both higher education and for startups, and has exhibited his artwork throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in solo shows and as a member of the Champagne and Nettles art collective.

You can contact Neil at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Kristin Kyono

Kristin Grahn Kyono is an Oakland artist who specializes in combining painting with printmaking. Using her own photographs as a springboard, she meditates on the beauty of urban neighborhoods, whether it be the juxtaposition of engineered and natural forms, or the poetic collision of sign verbiage and architecture. Her work has been featured by Saatchi Online’s “Art We Love This Week” and American Art Collector, and exhibited in galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. She produces large-scale commissions for businesses and hotels from San Francisco and Houston to London and Dubai. Kyono earned an M.F.A. from Academy of Art University in San Francisco and a B.A. in both Studio Art and Sociology from Whitman College.

You can contact Kristin at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Ceramic Specialists

Darren Cockrell

Darren is one of the Berkeley Art Studio’s Ceramics Specialists. He supports the Studio’s technical needs and teaches a variety of classes. Darren enjoys building things and design, specifically collaborating with and inspiring others around the process of making objects. Mostly self taught, Darren’s ceramic work utilizes handbuilding techniques to create primarily woodfired utilitarian vessels, where process plays a pivotal role. He has been a long standing trusted technician at numerous studios and teaching ceramics since 2008 in the Bay Area.

You can contact Darren at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Visual Arts Specialist

Danny Neece

Danny Neece has been around the illustration art world for the past decade. Danny graduated with a BFA in Illustration from the California College of the Arts. Danny is originally from Monterey, CA where where much of the inspiration for his imagery comes from. He has freelanced for Shambhala Sun magazine, Hyphen Magazine, Intel Developers Forum, 14 Hills Literary Journal, Trader Joe’s, Buddha Dharma: Practitioners Quarterly, and Saint Mary’s College. Danny has been teaching illustration, drawing, and painting classes with the Berkeley Art Studio for several years.

You can contact Danny at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Alan Tarbell

Alan Tarbell has an MFA from the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he spent four years as a bilingual professor. His mixed media paintings and installations stem from a deep connection to the natural environment and our vital human relationships. Alan has exhibited in galleries throughout Mexico and California. World travels and concurrent work as a travel guidebook author and illustrator for Lonely Planet Publications, publishing titles on: México (2006), Hawaii, the Big Island (2005), Indonesia (2003), and Ecuador (2001), have further inspired his work. Alan has taught with the Berkeley Art Studio for several years as well as at the Richmond Art Center and the Sharon Art Studio.

You can contact Alan at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Amber Fawn Keig

Amber Fawn Keig makes works on paper in various media. Invoking tension and ambiguity through her images, she examines silence as a condition and a strategy for survival. Originally from the east coast, Amber completed her MFA at California College of the Arts, where she was the Yozo Hamaguchi Printmaking Scholar, as well as a recipient of the Murphy Cadogan Contemporary Art Award. Her work has been shown in New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, Vancouver, and San Francisco. She has taught printmaking and drawing at the Napa Valley College, Sonoma State University, and the San Francisco Art Institute, and is on the full time faculty at the California State Summer School for the Arts.

Amber can be reached at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Sophie Tivona

Sophie grew up wandering in gardens around the Bay Area and dreaming of flowers, rocks, soil and water.  She was raised by her single mother who has been a professional gardener for her whole life.  She has always loved to create paper products and would find quiet spaces in the yard to make little treasures.  Sophie has followed a meandering path to find her way to a career in illustration and she’s overjoyed to share her love of nature through painting and drawing.

You can contact Sophie at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Cesar Cueva

Cesar Cueva is an artist, animator and creative professional. He has studied Art and American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington and Animation at Animation Mentor. He has worked in video games and television, but most of his experience comes from the museum field, starting with Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum, then with the Exploratorium, and most recently at the Oakland Museum of California. You can contact Cesar at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Joffrey Baylon

Jop Baylon is a freelance photographer based in San Jose, California. His work revolves mostly on his family capturing the beautiful, the bold, the playful and sometimes the gritty part of life. He goes mostly on assignments shoots and in the process document various projects along the way. He likes to tell stories by showing it in a different light or recreate new realities and surreal images.

You can reach Joffrey at artstudio@berkeley.edu.

Ceramics Specialist

Vanessa Di Tullio

Vanessa has her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Ceramics from California College of the Arts. Previously she attended Diablo Valley College while learning figurative drawing and sculpture. Vanessa has been teaching ceramics at the Berkeley Art Studio for several years. Vanessa is the Studio’s “Ceramics Specialist” which entails all of the technical oversight for the ceramics studio as well as leading the ceramics internship program. Besides ceramics, Vanessa is also a deft creator of needle felted creatures, animal drawings, and many other creature creations!

You can contact Vanessa at artstudio@berkeley.edu.