We are so pleased to introduce Peters Valley’s 2021 Artist Fellows! Our Artist Fellows manage our fully equipped and busy studios while mentoring our studio assistants. Please read more about them below and say hi when you’re on campus!
Anna Koplik
Blacksmithing Artist Fellow
Anna graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Jewelry and has worked as a blacksmith at a variety of craft schools and architectural shops. She travels often, working as a journeyman smith and teaching blacksmithing workshops. She has a passion for educating and showing beginner smiths the many different possibilities blacksmithing has to offer. Her personal work focuses mainly on tool and utensil making, and combining functionality with a refined, delicate aesthetic.
Alyssa Colon
Fiber Artist Fellow
Alyssa is a textile artist and industrial designer making through her lens as a mixed-race Latina, post a PWI education from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work is informed by cultural loss in diaspora, criticizes the phenomenon of assimilation, and expresses through material, form, and pattern, the desire to escape human identity altogether. She frequently employs waters as changing forces in her work, whose forms or implications emerge as a portal into healing. She enjoys learning new kinds of making, mastery, and sharing culture through cuisine.
Talya Kantro
Fine Metals Artist Fellow
Originally from Centerport, New York, Talya received her BFA in Metal from SUNY New Paltz in 2017 and her MFA in Jewelry + Metalsmithing from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2021. She has a deep love for craft schools, having taught at Snowfarm New-England Craft program in 2019 after completing an 11 month residency at Pocosin Arts School of Fine Craft from 2018-2019. She held the position of Fine Metals studio assistant at Peters Valley in 2017, and is excited to be returning as the Studio Fellow this season. When she’s not in the studio, you can probably find Talya wandering around outside with a field guide in hand, identifying all the different species of birds she can find.
Mollie Schaidt
Photo/2D/Mixed Media Artist Fellow
Mollie is a Photographer and Sculptor from Virginia. She recently graduated with her MFA in Photography from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. Mollie received her BFA in Photography and Print Media, and 3D Media with an emphasis in Sculpture, from Old Dominion University. She is concerned with systemic issues and social injustices impacting the lower socio-economic class in the United States. She examines the long-term effect of poverty on this population. Schaidt’s current ongoing project, “When Pigs Fly,” is an experiential and personal work depicting her family and their current condition in a cycle of poverty.
Jamie Herman
Woodworking Artist Fellow
Jamie is a woodworker, furniture maker, and sculptor. Brought up in Kentucky and Ohio, he completed a degree in anthropology at the University of Cincinnati. He first came to be inspired by craft and material culture while participating in an archaeological dig at a Maya site in Belize, where he realized the stories that handmade objects can tell. He developed an interest in carpentry while working on organic farms in the Pacific Northwest, and eventually decided to switch coasts to pursue fine woodworking programs in Vermont and Maine. Jamie’s work often features complicated geometries and precariously balanced elements, and he is always looking to marry complex design with precise and elegant execution.
Tianna MgGregor
Youth Artist Fellow
Tianna works under the artist alias Snow. She is a recent graduate of Kutztown University and attained her Bachelors of Fine Arts. She is a painter who specializes in color theory, natural pigments, and earth based compositions. Her practice involves traditional and contemporary methods. Her work is designed to provide a sensory and transformative experience through touch, sight, and memory. In her free time, she volunteers and works in her studio at the Alternative Gallery located in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
We are incredible grateful to the Windgate Charitable Foundation for their support of Peters Valley’s Artist Fellowship Program.
