Jessica Pinsky
Executive Director
​(she/her)

Jessica grew up in Akron, Ohio and moved to Cleveland in 2011 after receiving a BFA in Studio Art from New York University in 2006 and an MFA in painting from Boston University in 2009. She began teaching at Cleveland Institute of Art in 2011 and in 2015 founded Praxis Fiber Workshop.
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“It has been a great privilege and honor to bring a new life to the fiber department at CIA and to open Praxis in a city with such welcoming community, kindness, talent and creativity. Thank you to every single person I have met along this journey and to every person who has created art using this precious equipment over the years and so are woven into the rich history of textiles in our region.” 

​www.jessicapinsky.com

Chad Troyer
​Digital Weaving Coordinator
(he/they)

Chad Troyer is an interdisciplinary artist working in textile practices such as weaving and felting. They graduated from Kent State University in 2022, receiving a BFA in Sculpture and Expanded Media, in addition to a BA in French.
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Their art uses the interlacement of yarn to highlight the relationship of textiles to itself, interlacing patterns to craft a metaphor between the artist and their community, family, and environment. Using their rural and Christian upbringing as a framework, Chad satirizes the religious rhetoric they grew up with to elevate a queer message.

Find more of Chad at chadtroyer.art

Cathryn Amidei
Digital Weaving Director
​(she/her)

Cathryn holds a B.A. in Anthropology/Russian from University of Illinois Chicago and an M.F.A. from Eastern Michigan University and was Associate Professor there for 13 years.

​She has been the Studio Director at the Jacquard Center in Hendersonville North Carolina since 2018.
Cathryn has been engaged with Jacquard weaving for 15+ years. She has travelled extensively, studying and teaching on the TC2. She spent a year living in Norway working and walking at Tronrud Engineering Headquarters: the Digital Weaving Norway production facility. She owns a TC2 and provides technical support to Artists and Universities in North America when they purchase the loom and after. She lives in Ann Arbor Michigan and is a member of the WSG Gallery.
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www.cathrynamidei.com

Will Grimm
Program Manager
(he/they)

Will Grimm is a quilter living in Cleveland, Ohio. Originally from Pittsburgh, his grandmother taught him to sew at a young age. He graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2019 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fiber. Grimm has exhibited work nationally and has been featured in publications such as Curated Quilts, Fiber Art Now, and BMoreArt, among others. He believes in making for the sake of making, and making what will make him happy.

​ Find him (and his cat) on his website willgrimm.com or on Instagram @_willgrimm_

Shametra Rozzel
​Studio Coordinator
(she/they)

Shametra is a multi-dimensional artist that intersects all aspects of design with various healing modalities of the physical form. Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, immersed in the world of art through both parents, she continued on a creative path by receiving a B.F.A in Fashion Design at Kent State University. There she found the textile studio which sparked a focus on studying the interrelationship of textiles and fashion design. A few years after landing in New York City to work in the fashion industry, she answered the call to learn Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. She recently graduated from New York College of Traditional Chinese Medicine with a B.P.S. in Health Science and Masters in Acupuncture.

Back here at home, she is eager to navigate the nuances between the ancient healing arts and continued personal art practice of crocheting, dyeing and weaving to approach the community in profound yet therapeutic ways.

Insta: @lattehoney