Danielle Izzi-St. Pierre
Chair
Danielle is the proud two-term chair of the Commission. A resident of the Meshanticut neighborhood, Danielle is an avid crafter, and enjoys building miniatures, crochet, macrame, and more. She is an event manager and wedding designer, with ten years of industry experience. She received her bachelor's degree in English from Rhode Island College.
In her free time, she enjoys exploring Rhode Island's hiking trails with her dog, and crafting with found and foraged objects.
Leah Thovmasian Hill
Vice-Chair
Bio Forthcoming.
Shannon Casey
Secretary
Shannon Casey of Cranston, RI, is an avid ceramicist and fiber artist whose focus is on creating harmonious relationships between the seemingly incongruous mediums. After graduating with a BA in art education from Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA, Shannon began teaching at Artists' Exchange, a non-profit community arts collaborative. 12 years later, Shannon is now the director and oversees the many programs she helped implement. Most notably, and the program of which she is most proud, is the sustainable fiber program and collaboration with Revive the Roots, a non-profit organization with the focus on sustainability and permaculture. The fiber program at Artists' Exchange was created as a means to educate students on not just the fiber arts but animal husbandry and sustainable sourcing for art materials. As director, Shannon remains a teacher, sharing not only a love for her craft, but mentoring young educators to lead and inspire the next generation of artists.
Nilton Cardenas
The artistic world of Nilton Cárdenas (Peru 1972) stands before us as an evolving process which is constantly achieved. His paintings, drawings and murals offer us a pictorial language polarized by the feelings, memories and nostalgia of an identity: The passion for his country and its original (aesthetic, folkloric, mythological ...) traditions typical of the Inca civilization. That ancestral history is reborn in his paintings under a sort of veiled Andean mysticism which coexists within his present world; his own world; the stage where he lives (the United States). From this symbiosis a constant self-questioning emerges and it is pictorially projected and extended with originality and strength. A work that from his creative crucible radiates intensity, color and life, and it is characterized by a style not subject to limits or fixations, but rather to a form of free expression and aesthetic –realistic, surreal, abstract, contemporary, etc. –plurality. An expression that, in this artist, investigates and risks in search for self-identity, for an original vision, for a feel of the dynamics that produces synergy in the rich universe of form and color: Inspiration and creativity, tradition and present; ´a whole´ that invites us to reflect through the spatial framework of his paintings.
Abbey Tellier
Bio forthcoming
Linda Peterson
Bio forthcoming
Nancy Vitulli
Nancy Vitulli is a high school theater teacher and director at Cranston High School West since 1995. A native of Cranston, Rhode Island, Nancy studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute and received her B.F.A. in Undergraduate Drama from New York University. With a Masters in Education from Adelphi University, Nancy implemented a dance program and directed plays at Grover Cleveland High School, Queens, NY. Returning to Cranston in 1990, she soon thereafter co-founded the Cranston Community Theater, a multi generational group, which brought live theater to our city for over ten years. Under Nancy’s direction at Cranston High School West, numerous productions have been selected to represent Rhode Island at New England Drama Festivals while earning students recognition for their outstanding work in acting and theatrical design. In 2019, Nancy was recognized by the Kennedy Center as one of ten recipients nationwide for a Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Award.