BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Pamela Moulton
President, Bridgton, Maine
After living in Europe for three decades, Pamela has returned to Maine where her work focuses on environmental activism and community building. She received her BFA from UVM and Villa Arson, France (1984) and later her MFA from ESA-Aix, France (2011). She then studied dance pedagogy at IUFM Blois, France which was the catalyst for her collaborative large-scale performative community projects. Pamela Moulton’s work has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Maine Arts Commission, Kindling Fund, New England Foundation for the Arts and Conseil Regional in Central France. Pamela’s work has been shown internationally at the National Gallery of Art, Albania, The Katonah Museum, NY, Portland Museum of Art, ME and Ogunquit Museum of American Art, ME. Two of her recent large-scale installations are on exhibit at the Arcadia Earth Museum in Las Vegas, NV (2021) and a TEMPOarts commission in Portland, ME (2022). Summers, Pamela is resident manager of Hewnoaks Artist Colony in Lovell.
Judy Schneider
Secretary, Norway, Maine
Judy Schneider is a designer, painter and printmaker living in Norway, Maine. She received her BFA in Interior Design from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst and has had her own design firm, Interior Resources, since 1996. In 2012 she went back to school to pursue a fine art practice and received her Master’s degree in Studio Art in May, 2014 from Maine College of Art & Design. She prints at the Peregrine Press in Portland and has a studio in her home.
Daniella Trask
Treasurer, Brunswick, Maine
Dani has two decades of experience in Compensation, Human Resources, and Financial Management within various industries including Advanced Technology, Financial Services, Media, and Healthcare. She is currently working at a high tech company based out of California overseeing global compensation program design and strategy. Dani has been on the board of Perna-Rose Foundation for Hope and participated in the Amigos de las Americas non-profit as a health worker and program supervisor. She is passionate about fostering community and supporting the arts.
Dani was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil and lived in Minnesota, Massachusetts, California, and New York before moving to Maine in 2015. She has a BA in Psychology from Bowdoin College.
Suzette McAvoy
Belfast, Maine
Suzette McAvoy is the former Executive Director and Chief Curator at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA), where she spearheaded the institution’s $5.2 million capital campaign and relocation to a newly constructed building designed by internationally-renowned architect Toshiko Mori, which opened in Rockland, Maine, in summer 2016. Prior to her tenure at CMCA, she served as Chief Curator at the Farnsworth Art Museum. In 2013, she was recognized as one of the Fifty People Who Have Made a Difference in Maine by Maine magazine.
Rose Marasco
Portland, Maine
Rose Marasco is a prolific photographer and award-winning educator. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of Southern Maine. Marasco developed the photography department at USM where she taught for 35 years. Prior to this, Marasco initiated the photography department at Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute in her hometown, Utica, NY.
Marasco had a career retrospective entitled, index at the Portland Museum of Art which was nationally featured and/or reviewed in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, American Photo Magazine, Downeast Magazine, and numerous regional publications throughout New England.
Brian Smith
Portland, Maine
Brian Smith is a mixed media sculptor whose work explores the potential by which humans can connect to nature through the lens of queer ecology. Smith grew up in Burlington, Vermont, and currently lives/works in the greater Portland, Maine area. He received his MFA in Studio Arts from Maine College of Art & Design, where has also taught as an adjunct professor; prior, Smith earned his BFA in Sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Smith has shown in a series of group exhibitions in Maine, Antwerp, Texas, Massachusetts, and New York. He has been written about in Maine Magazine, The Chart, Floorr, Divide, and Working Artists Magazine. He has participated in artists residencies at Hewnoaks Artist Colony, where he also works as a Residency Manager, and at Monson Arts Residency.
John Bisbee
Brunswick, Maine
John Bisbee is an accomplished Sculptor and painter, He moved to Maine to teach at Bowdoin, He is the founder of the informal artist colony at Fort Andros Mill.
William Hessian
Portland, Maine
William Hessian is the current president of the Union of Maine Visual artists, he was born in St. Louis Park, Minnesota and has been a resident of Maine since 2010. William is an artist, activist, teacher, game designer and social worker. In Portland, William helped start the Hidden Ladder Collective and in 2019 became the UMVA acting President. William has created 25 Public Miniature Art Hunts across the country and has also done a series of live performances called: "Canvas Kill Live" as the Canvas Killer.
Amy Rahn
Rob Moschetta
Norway, Maine
Experienced manager of planning, processes and people through construction management profession. Moved to Norway from NJ in 2022 after working in Manhattan for over a decade. Focused on being a dedicated father, husband and steward of my community.
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Lynn Duryea
South Portland, Maine
Lynn is a Founding Trustee of Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts and was the Program Coordinator and Artist-in-Residence for The Watershed Workshop for People with HIV/AIDS. She is a co-founder of Sawyer Street Studios, an artist-owned ceramic facility in South Portland. She was a recipient of the Maine Crafts Association 2012 Master Craft Award, and was the first visual artist to receive Portland, Maine’s YWCA Women of Achievement Award. Lynn was an Emerging Artist at the 2004 NCECA Conference (National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts). She has received grants from Appalachian State’s University Research Council and the university’s Foundation Fellows, the Maine Arts Commission and Watauga County Arts Council
Samaa Abdurraqib, PhD
Brunswick, Maine
Samaa is the Executive Director at the Maine Humanities Council, she moved to maine to teach Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin. Samaa received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s English Department in 2010. Samaa left Bowdoin in 2013 and, after teaching a semester at the University of Southern Maine, left academia to begin a career in Maine’s nonprofit world. From 2013 through 2015, Samaa joined the staff at the ACLU of Maine as a reproductive justice organizer. After that grant funded position ended, Samaa joined the staff at the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, where she worked for five years supporting domestic violence advocates across the state through training, technical assistance, and policy work. Since March of 2021, Samaa has been working at the Maine Humanities Council as the organization’s Executive Director.
Katarina Weslien
Portland, Maine
Katarina Weslien is a multidisciplinary artist and educator. Her work has been exhibited internationally. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and the Payson Foundation. Alongside her studio practice she lectures, teaches seminars, and has been a visiting artist in the U.S., Israel, India, and Sweden. She was the Director of The Graduate Program at Maine College; co- facilitated the Study Abroad Program/ India, for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she also taught in the Fiber Material Studies Program. Weslien currently lives and works in Portland Maine.
Katherine Bradford
Brooklyn, New York
Katherine Bradford is an American artist based in New York City, known for figurative paintings, particularly of swimmers, that critics describe as simultaneously representational, abstract and metaphorical. She began her art career relatively late and has received her widest recognition in her seventies. Critic John Yau characterizes her work as independent of canon or genre dictates, open-ended in terms of process, and quirky in its humor and interior logic.
Bradford has exhibited internationally, at venues including MoMA PS1,Campoli Presti (London and Paris),Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, and Tomio Koyama (Tokyo). She has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim, Joan Mitchell and Pollock-Krasner foundations and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work belongs to public art collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and Menil Collection, among others.
Warren Seelig
Rockland, Maine
Warren Seelig lives and works in Rockland, Maine. He holds the rank of distinguished visiting professor in the Fibers/Mixed Media program at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia where he teaches, curates and writes on various subjects related to textile, fiber and material studies. He received a B.S. from the Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science and an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Seelig has twice received individual fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and three fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His work has been included in over 30 major museum exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Japan and Korea with many solo and group exhibitions in museums, universities, and private galleries. He has lectured extensively including programs at the Korean National University of the Arts, Banff Centre in Alberta, the Royal College of Art, London and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and has written extensively for various magazines and journals including American Craft, Fiber Arts, Surface Design Journal, Textilforum, and Nouvel Objet. His work is in the collections of museums, colleges and in private and corporate collections world wide. Warren is a regular visiting critic at Rhode Island School of Design and is a mentor in the graduate program at Maine College of Art. Warren is a recently elected Fellow of the American Crafts Council and a member of its board. A retrospective of his work opens this December titled “Textile Per Se” in the galleries of Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.