Patty Kane’s passion is painting with transparent watercolor using a limited palette. She says, “it is a process, which allows me to explore subject matter that inspires my creativity and passion for mixing colors”.

Patty has won many awards for her Florida-themed paintings, most recently The People’s Choice Award at 1st Thursdays at Orlando Museum of Art and the “Lee Ackert” Award for Outstanding Color at Fort Myers Beach Art Association. She was granted “Art Educator of the Year” at the Center for the Arts of Bonita Springs in 2010 and received a “Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition” for Keeping Hope Alive Through Art at an exhibition in Winter Park, Florida.

Born in Moscow, Vadim Malkin is a third-generation artist, and the first in his family to dedicate himself to the medium of ceramics. Having been raised around such great creativity, Malkin found he was drawn to art from a very early age and has been actively pursuing it since. After earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts, Ceramics in 2004 from the University of Central Florida, Malkin joined the Ceramics faculty at Crealdé School of Art. He also teaches high school ceramic classes for Seminole County Public Schools. Malkin is the host of the popular monthly Date Night Ceramics workshop. Since 2011, Malkin has served as the Visual Fringe Producer, organizing the visual art exhibition at the annual Orlando International Fringe Theater Festival. His work has been on display in numerous galleries, shops, shows and art festivals throughout Florida, Georgia, California and in several countries throughout the world.

A photographer and photo educator originally from Colorado, Jon P. Manchester brings 30 years of traditional and digital photography experience to the school. His understanding of fine art photography, technical image processing and post-processing has made him a valuable student resource. Manchester was influenced by his mentor, Rick Lang, the late Director of Photography at Crealdé. He says he greatly admired the way Lang related to his students, opening a collaboration of knowledge and learning as much from them as they learned from him.

Raised in the Philippines, Jesus Minguez is now an Orlando-based professional painter and potter, and an expert wheel thrower. He has worked as a painter and freelance illustrator for more than 12 years and has worked with clay for nearly 20 years. Minguez received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Central Florida with a specialization in ceramics. He has taught students of different levels in the Central Florida community, providing private lessons and also as a high school teacher for Orange County Public Schools. Minguez is inspired by his early childhood memories of traditional folk art owned by his grandparents, and by the works of notable Japanese Shigaraki and Bizen potters.

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Writer, instructor, editor, speaker, performer, and photographer, Elaine Person has a parody of King Arthur included in Random House’s A Century of College Humor. Her writing is published in Florida Writer Association’s collections, The Florida Writer magazine, Sandhill Review, Not Your Mother’s Book, Poets of Central Florida, Haikuniverse.com, The Five-Two, Encore–from National Federation of State Poetry Societies (NFSPS), Cadence–Florida State Poets Association’s (FSPA) annual anthologies which she co-edits, The Isolation Challenge, and Poetic Visions Museum of Art-Deland exhibit and anthology.
Person won the Saturday Evening Post limerick contest, East Lake County poetry contests, and NFSPS, and FSPA contests. She performs a one-woman show called Humor in A Hurried and Harried World. Elaine writes “Person”alized poems and stories for all occasions and teaches writing workshops. Elaine Person was the recipient of the 2022 Florida Writers Association’s Kaye Coppersmith Award for Writers Helping Writers.  Elaine became a Crealdé faculty member in 2022.

Robert Ross’s paintings have been exhibited in a growing number of venues throughout Central Florida, including Anita Wooten Gallery at Valencia State College, Winter Park City Hall, Orlando City Hall, Maitland City Hall, Orange County Chambers, Gallery at Avalon Island, and Casselberry Art House. He has been in the Winter Park Paint Out sponsored by the Albin Polasek Museum, and he has won several awards for his paintings in the Winter Park Autumn Art Festival. He received his art education at Oakland University, Crealdé School of Art in Winter Park, and in master workshops taught by Stuart Shils. He is represented by Arts on Douglas Gallery in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Website: www.robertrossart.com

A revered artist and educator with 50 years of experience as a professional potter, Vincent Sansone joined the Crealdé faculty in the mid-1970s, shortly after the school opened and served as the longstanding Ceramics Studio and Program Manager from 2002 to 2022.  Sansone also taught at Valencia College, where he was an Assistant Professor of Ceramics Art.  Sansone was awarded his M.F.A. in Ceramics and his B.F.A. in Painting at Southern Illinois University, and he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Sansone's creations have been exhibited throughout the United States, including New Orleans, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Ashville, Chattanooga and Los Angeles.  Internationally his work was included in a cultural exchange exhibition in 2001, organized by the Florida CraftArt and exhibited in San Jose, Costa Rica.  In 2004, he was part of the first Taiwan Ceramics Biennale Exhibitions in Taipei.  In Florida, his work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the Pine Castle Folk Art Center, SunTrust Bank, Orange County Public Library, Maitland Art & History, the City of Orlando and the Sculpture Garden at Crealdé School of Art.  He is a recipient of multiple United Arts of Central Florida Individual Artist Recognition Awards as well as individual Artist Fellowship Awards from the State of Florida.  Sansone has conducted workshops throughout the Southeast and regularly exhibited in galleries and art festivals where he received many top awards and recognitions.  He has also served as a judge at local and regional art exhibitions.  Sansone established the popular Cup-A-Thon fundraising sale at Crealdé School of Art, which is now a nearly 40-year-old tradition, held in August.

Photography Program Manager | Senior Faculty, Photography

A native of Switzerland, Peter Schreyer is an internationally exhibited, award-winning photographer who has documented America’s cultural landscape for over three decades. He has received a wide range of public art commissions, research grants and recognition awards for his black-and-white photography on Florida communities, including a Visual Arts Fellowship from the State of Florida. In 2005-2006, Schreyer was honored with a major retrospective titled Small Stories From A Big Country at the Swiss Camera Museum in Vevey, Switzerland. In 2015, following his solo exhibition at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College, Winter Park, a collection of Schreyer’s Central Florida archival photographs were purchased for the museum’s prestigious Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art.

Schreyer has served as Executive Director of Crealdé School of Art, one of Florida’s leading community arts organizations, since 1995. In 2007 he founded the Hannibal Square Heritage Center, a unique cultural facility in Winter Park that celebrates the historic African-American community’s heritage through documentary photography, oral history, and public art. In 2009, he was named Arts Educator of the Year by United Arts. Winter Park Magazine distinguished his impact on the arts in Winter Park in its selection of The Influentials in 2017. He received a Neighborhood Hero Award from Bank of America in 2010 and a State of Florida Diversity & Inclusion Award in 2016 for his leadership in establishing the Hannibal Square Heritage Center and for his long-standing relationship as a documentary photographer and educator in Winter Park’s west side community.

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Thomas Thorspecken (Thor) studied animation and illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He worked for ten years at Walt Disney Feature Animation. In 2009 he made a new year’s resolution to do one sketch a day and share it with a worldwide community of urban sketchers through his online site Analog Artist Digital World www.analogartistdigitalworld.com

An artist her entire life, Barbara Tiffany joined the Crealdé faculty in 2012 and has served in multiple capacities. She served as the Painting & Drawing program manager and currently teaches adult classes and workshops.  She also served as Crealdé’s Curator of Exhibitions for the school’s galleries for six years.   After a long commercial art career, she devoted herself to her painting in 1982. Her studies in classical painting were strongly influenced by her mentor, the late Maury Hurt, at the Maitland Art Center, where she was an instructor and maintained a studio for many years.