Faculty
Founders:
Bea Kreloff (1925-2016) Art Workshop International founder was a painter, teacher, and former head of the art department, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, New York. She taught painting workshops, seminars, and lectured on art at Cooper Union, Marymount Manhattan College, Women's Caucus for Art, The New School University, The College Art Association, and numerous art groups. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally and is in a number of private collections. She had been a director of Art Workshop International for 31 years.
Edith Isaac-Rose (1929-2018) co-founder of Art Workshop International; painter, teacher, and graduate of the Chicago Art Institute, B.A.E. She’s represented by Phyllis Kind Gallery in New York. Isaac-Rose has been a Visiting Artist, American Academy in Rome, 2003; and Vermont Studio Center Fellow, 2005. She’s exhibited in the U.S. at the Phyllis Kind Gallery and abroad, recently in China; taught at Ohio State, Columbia, Princeton Art Association, and in her studio. In addition, she has lectured and critiqued in various schools in the Northeast and conducted art workshops in the U.S. and abroad. Her work is in the Hirshhorn Museum and other important collections.
Directors:
Charies Kreloff Art Workshop International director, has run his own design studio for over 20 years. A publications and book art director, his clients include Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, Random House, Viking Penguin, Scholastic, and Conde Nast. Kreloff has taught graphic design and typography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the co-author of the books Is Your Dog Gay?, Is Your Cat Gay?, and Pills for Cats. He is currently working on a screenplay.
Lynn Gernert Art Workshop International director, is the principal of Lynn Gernert Architects. For over 20 years, she has designed and overseen construction of projects ranging from highly detailed private commercial and residential projects to large-scale affordable housing and community centers. Prior to establishing her own firm, she was Senior Architect at the Pratt Center for Community Development in New York City. Gernert is an Adjunct Professor at NYC College of Technology, CUNY, where she teaches architectural design and building science.
Instructors:
Maria Adelaide Basile Born in Rome, Italy, Maria Adelaide Basile received her Master in Contemporary Italian Literature from the University of Rome La Sapienza and her Ph.D in Medieval Italian Literature from Rutgers University in United States. She taught Italian language and literature at Rutgers University, at the College of Charleston and at John Cabot University in Rome. She read her papers at several conferences, and has published several essays on Dante, Nievo, Manzoni, and the filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo. In addition, Dr Basile has worked as theater critic for several newspapers, and translated and introduced the poems of the French poet Alain Bosquet and the American poet Anne Carson. Her main areas of interest are the Middle Ages, Italian Theater, and Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Italian literature. She is also a published poet. Dr Basile’s publications include an essay on the Italian writer Piero Sanavio Caterina Cornaro o del potere, published by Il Mulino and a collection of poems, Viaggi (Travels), Campanotto, November 2014.
Liz Collins is an artist based in New York City known for pushing the boundaries of art and design in innovative and experimental work in fabric, yarn, and other materials and techniques associated with textile media. Whether in the form of textile, painting, drawing or installation, Collins frequently explores the dichotomy of structure and entropy—qualities inherent to textile that speak to the fissures present in broader architectural, political, and social structures.
Collins’ work has recently been on view in the 60th Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, and in Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, curated by Lynne Cooke and presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON; and Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Liz Collins: Motherlode, Collins’ mid-career retrospective at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI, runs through January 11, 2026 with an accompanying monograph published by Hirmer.
Julia Dougherty was born in the US and graduated with a BA in History from Pomona College, California. She then moved to Rome and continued her studies at the University of Rome, La Sapienza, majoring in Languages and Literature with a focus on English, Italian and German. She taught English in Rome for over twenty years at various academies as well as LUISS University. After relocating to northern Italy, she started working in the English Department at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. Over the years she has also taught Italian to various groups of adult learners. Julia has spent decades in the Bel Paese, traveling to different parts of the peninsula to learn more about its history and art and architectural heritage, and local varieties of its national language.
C. Finley, Founder and Curator of the Every Woman Biennial, is known for her elaborate paintings and intense use of color, monumental murals, multi-disciplinary collaborations, and her activism through urban art interventions, including her acclaimed Wallpapered Dumpsters. As the creator of the 2014-2021 Every Woman Biennial she has exhibited 1200 female and non-binary artists in New York, Los Angeles and London. Finley has shown internationally and her work has been featured in the The New York Times, La Repubblica, Dazed, Fast Company, Women’s Wear Daily, Cultured, and more.
Bob Hughes, formerly with the Wall Street Journal where he honed his skills in cultural journalism, is the author of “Late and Soon,” which was cited for its elegant prose and rich character development, earning praise from noted authors like Adriana Trigiani and Edmund White. He is also a playwright, currently polishing his new work, “A Constant Life.” His writing continues to reflect his diverse interests and expertise. Currently splitting his time between New York and Paris, Bob shares his insights and experiences of French life on his blog, Parisian on Purpose.
Elliot Kreloff is an award-winning children’s book author/illustrator arts educator and designer. His career as creative director for Scholastic Books, Disney Publishing Worldwide, MacMillan Publishing and his own studio, Design Five, has spanned over forty years. As an arts educator, he has taught at Parsons School of Design, New York Institute of Technology, Rutgers University and Fordham University. His books have been awarded Best Book of the Year by Child Magazine, and he has received numerous awards from various professional design organizations and publications including the Bookbinders Guild, Art Direction, Communication Arts and the Society of Illustrators. He is a graduate of Cooper Union and holds a master’s degree from Hunter College. You can find many of his books on his author’s page on Amazon.
Mario Andres Robinson was born in Altus, Oklahoma and at the age of 12 moved with his family to New Jersey. Robinson studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York where early on he was influenced by Degas, Rembrandt, and Vermeer among others. His work fits squarely within the tradition of American painting with a close affinity to the masters of the realist tradition—Eakins, Homer, Hopper, and Andrew Wyeth. Robinson's work has been featured in The Artist's Magazine, The Pastel Journal, Watercolor Magic, American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur and on the cover of American Artist. In the February, 2006 issue of The Artist's Magazine, Mario was selected as one of the top 20 realist artists under the age of 40. He is the author of "Lessons in Realistic Watercolor," a comprehensive guide of the artist's watercolor techniques (Monacelli Press). In 2014, Robinson was chosen to be a Brand Ambassador for Winsor and Newton art materials.
S.J. Rozan is the author of eighteen novels and more than 75 short stories, and the editor of three anthologies. She has won multiple awards for both novel and short story, including the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, Macavity; Japanese Maltese Falcon; and the Private Eye Writers of America Life Achievement Award. She teaches and lectures widely and has been a Master Artist at The Atlantic Center for the Arts and Writer-in-Residence at Singapore Management University. Her most recent novel is The Mayors of New York.
Barbara Shoup is the author of eight novels for adults and young adults, a memoir, and two books about the creative process. Her YA novels have been named to the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, the Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Book; Voya Best Young Adult Book and Perfect 10, and the International Reading Association’s Young Adults Choice List. The recipient of the PEN Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Working Writer Fellowship, Lilly Endowment Creative Renewal Fellowships, and fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, she is the Writer-in-Residence at the Indiana Writers Center. Her most recent novel is Looking for Jack Kerouac.
Gavin Snider is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. He paints to slow down the world and to better understand the places and people around him. With a background in architecture, much of Gavin's work focuses on buildings and cityscapes. A few times a week he picks a location—whether a famous landmark or a far-flung neighborhood—packs up his supplies, and goes to paint. In a way, these paintings are a form of urbanism—the study of city life.
Gavin has created original artwork for a number of organizations, including the New York Yankees, Saturday Night Live, Netflix, Sony Music, the MTA and the NYC DOT. He's led painting and drawing workshops throughout New York City, in partnership with the Guggenheim Museum, McNally Jackson, Happy Medium, NYC Urban Sketchers, Drawing America, Art Toolkit and Juicebox NYC.