Faculty members of the Sessions School of Fine Arts are accomplished artists with major gallery credits.  They love art, and love to teach their tried-and-true techniques.  Every instructor provides individualized feedback on student work, and instructors are available throughout the class for mentoring and to answer your creative questions.

Fine Arts Faculty:

Carolina Caycedo is an emerging contemporary artist whose most recent exhibitions were at Blow de la Barra in London, UK, and Galeria Comercial in Puerto Rico. Her fine art and photography collections have been written about in The New York Times, Artfacts.net, Artecontexto, The Nation, and Art Dispatches. Photography from Carolina's bartering project, entitled "Daytoday," was featured at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City. Carolina has given talks about art at The Whitney Museum in New York, The Art, Memory, and City Seminar in Bogota, and the National University in Bogota. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Contemporary Artists Center in Massachusetts and at Foraneza in Puerto Rico. Carolina was born in London and educated in Colombia. She earned her BA in Fine Arts from Los Andes University.
Notable Exhibitions: "Locomotion" (2006) Blow de la Barra, London, UK; "La Nina" (2006) Galeria Comercial, San Juan, Puerto Rico; "Solo Under" (2005) Galeria Comercial, San Juan, Puerto Rico; "Break It" (2005) Ibid Projects, Vilnius, Lithuania; "Sonidos De Una Cuidad" (2003) Alianza Francesa Norte, Bogota, Columbia; "Break Dance Season" (2003) Espacio La Rebeca, Bogota, Columbia; "Dia Bandera. 24/7" (2002) Wall Gallery, London, UK; "Daytoday" (2002) Secession, Vienna, Austria.

Courses taught by Carolina: Intro to Visual Arts - History of Art

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Annika Connor’s paintings depict a fascination with beauty and decadence. They present the viewer with spaces to exist in, which are both alluring and unsettling. The paintings are infused with mystery and convey a sense of unbalance. Overall, they seem to be fragments from a daydream, and portray a longing for a time of romance and pleasure. In 2002, Annika received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied painting and philosophy. Since then, Annika has worked professionally as a painter in New York and London and participated in numerous exhibitions in California, Chicago, Atlanta, and New York. Reviews and publication of her work have appeared in Art Papers magazine, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Creative Loafing newspaper, C-Heads magazine, and in many other Internet and local publications. Annika Connor is Swedish-American with dual citizenship status. She currently resides in Manhattan where she maintains an active studio.

Courses taught by Annika: Watercolor - Watercolor Studio

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Palden Hamilton is first and foremost a painter, having majored in painting for his B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He continued his education at the Art Students League of New York, where he trained in figure painting under prominent figurative painters Ron Sherr and William Beckman. He was awarded a Merit Award in Realism in 2003 and the prestigious Phylis T. Mason Grant in 2004. Palden currently applies these skills as a portrait artist in the Baltimore area, painting portraits in the tradition of his heroes: John Singer Sargent and Velasquez. He has recently been commissioned to paint Maestro Yuri Temirkanov, outgoing musical director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and present musical director of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra in Russia. Illustration is also dear to Palden's heart, his artistic talents having been discovered at an early age through his obsessive and ceaseless childhood drawings. Palden is also working on writing and illustrating a children's book, which he looks forward to completing in 2008.

Courses taught by Palden: Portrait Painting - Portrait Painting Studio

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Anki King is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based artist whose work has recently been shown at The Katonah Museum of Art, Tokio Metropolitan Museum, and Chasama Gallery and also featured in Black Book magazine, Viking magazine, and The New York Times. Anki studied drawing, composition, and painting at Gran Videregaende Skole and Oslo Tegne og Maleskole in Norway. In the U.S., Anki has worked at the Art Students League of New York and served as model coordinator for art classes. Born and raised in Norway, Anki's artwork has also appeared at the Norwegian Artists in New York exhibit at the Trygve Lie Gallery. Her paintings have been featured in the independent movie The Trade and on the album cover for the group Funkhouse.

Courses developed by Anki: Figure Drawing - Figure Drawing Studio

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Jordon Schranz, a 7-year inhabitant of Brooklyn, New York, is represented by the Black and White Gallery in New York, New York. He has had one-man shows in both New York and Chicago and he has participated in several group shows in the USA and internationally. His work is also included in several private collections as well as the collection of the Museum of Air and Space in Moscow, Russia. His work focuses on the idea of social and political interaction and how the media influences it. In addition, Jordon Schranz regularly stages, performs, and promotes avant garde, free jazz and experimental music performances, and is a recording artist on the Black Saint record label with his group The Eastern Seaboard. Jordon is Director of the Sessions School of Fine Arts. Jordon earned his BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art.

Courses taught by Jordon: Intro to Drawing - Drawing - Drawing Studio - Painting - Painting Studio

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Digital Arts Faculty:

Bruce Bicknell is a writer, instructor, illustrator, animator, Web designer, video editor, marketing pro, and graphic designer based in Tampa, Florida. In his career he has worked on projects for Adobe Systems, ATI, Photoshop Elements Techniques, MacTribe, Yellow Machine and Mac Design to name a few. Bruce has degrees in Computer Animation and Web Development from The International Academy of Design and Technology.

Courses taught by Bruce: Digital Video Editing - Digital Video Studio

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Ken Milburn is a professional photographer and leading expert in digital photography. Ken's photographic career has ranged from starlet publicity photos for Univeral Pictures, to album covers, advertising, and editorial work for the TV Guide and Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine. His work has been featured in Design Graphics Magazine and Computer Graphics World. Ken is the principal author of 20 computer and photography books including Digital Photography: Expert Techniques from O'Reilly Associates, and The Digital Photography Bible from Wiley and Sons, and several books on Photoshop techniques. Ken has has written more than 300 articles on digital media, featured in Publish, DV Magazine, MacWorld, Computer Graphics World, PC World, and InfoWorld.

Courses taught by Ken: Digital Photography I - Digital Photography II - Digital Art Photography - Digital Photography Studio

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Piper Nilsson is a graphic designer and information architect. In her four-year career for a leading Web design agency, she blueprinted sites for such global clients as MetLife, Pepsi, ETS, and Citibank. Her current projects include building an e-learning prototype for children with learning disabilities and teaching technology in New York City public schools. She received a degree in graphic design from Pratt Institute.

Courses taught by Piper: Color Theory - Design and Composition

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Andrew Shalat is an author, designer/illustrator, educator, and Mac expert. Since 1985 he has been designing and writing articles for Macintosh, Mac software, and publishing technologies that have appeared in Macworld, maccentral.com and macweek.com (for which he was a columnist writing "Shalat's Web"). He currently has two books: Do It Yourself Mac Projects, published by McGraw-Hill, and MacDesign Out of the Box, published by Inside Mac Press. Andrew's design work covers a large range of media including book, CD and DVD covers, brochures, catalogs, outdoor signage, print ads, artwork, logos, flash and web design, and grocery lists. Over the past two decades, he's taught literature, writing, Web design, and print design.

Courses taught by Andrew: Digital Video Production

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Dr. Taz Tally is the president of Taz Tally Seminars, a computer publishing consulting and training company. Taz is the author of numerous graphics and print production books including Photoshop Before and After Makeovers, Acrobat and PDF Solutions, Avoiding the Output Blues, Avoiding the Scanning Blues, and is a contributing author to The Photoshop World Dream Team Book. Taz has produced numerous instructional videos, CDs, and DVDs on scanning, prepress, Photoshop, color correction, and font management. Taz is a frequent presenter at seminars and trade shows throughout the U.S, and is a member of the Photoshop Dream Team at the biannual Photoshop World convention. Taz is a frequent contributor to Photoshop User magazine, for which he writes a regular prepress column. He has developed accessible yet content-rich courses and seminars for NAPP, Lynda.com, Staffingtools.com, and now Sessions.

Courses taught by Taz: Photoshop Basics

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