Jessica Pinsky
Executive Director

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 is currently serving as faculty in the Sculpture and Expanded Media department. Together with Cleveland Institute of Art, Jessica founded Praxis Fiber Workshop in June, 2015.
“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

Emmy
​Studio Staff

Leah Trznadel
​​Studio Staff

Leah Trznadel is an artist, grants writer and arts educator from Buffalo, New York. She holds a BFA in Photography from the Cleveland Institute of Art. She currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. Her practice consists of photography, performance, multimedia installation and handmade books. Her work has been exhibited at the Cleveland Institute of Art, H Space Gallery and the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio and Roy G Biv Gallery in Columbus, Ohio. She received a creative book project grant from the Rowfant Club in Cleveland in 2018 and two awards from the Cleveland Institute of Art for excellence in photography in 2018 and 2019. She has taught for the Cleveland Institute of Art and Greater Cleveland Neighborhood Centers Association.

Camden Jennings
​​Gallery Intern

Camden Jennings is a recent Arts Management & Entrepreneurship graduate from Baldwin Wallace University. They value our environment, creating art, and sharing conscious love with others.

Denise Williams
​Instructor

Denise Williams, a former school teacher, decided to live her dream and become a writer and an artist. Her passion is processing and spinning fibers to knit, crochet and weave. Denise sheep herds with her German Shepherds and chronicles her fiber adventures on her YouTube channel Something Beautiful Handcrafts.

Sarah McMahon
​Instructor

Sarah McMahon is an artist and educator who grew up in Northeast Ohio.  She earned her MFA in Textiles from Kent State’s School of Art, where she continues to teach weaving and surface design.  She has shown her work both regionally and nationally, and received the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2021.  She is currently Artist in Residence at Spring Garden’s Waldorf School, and a Teaching Artist in SmArts, an arts integration program with the non-profit Arts in Stark.  Her work currently explores woven cloth and pattern as signifiers of body, domestic space, and experience. ​

Jennifer Omaitz
​​Instructor

Jenniffer Omaitz lives in Kent, OH. She holds an M.F.A. in painting from Kent State University and a B.F.A. in painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art; showing her professional artwork under the name Jenniffer Omaitz. In 2016, Omaitz started JC Marbling after 14 months of independent research and experimentation with marbling. JC Marbling & Book Arts was founded to pursue the practice of marbling, book arts, and as a teaching out reach for the craft of marbling. Omaitz currently works with Praxis Fiber Workshop and the Morgan Paper Conservatory teaching a variety of marbling techniques and she sells her handmade books and cards at BayArts in Bay Village, Ohio; Morgan Paper Conservatory and McKay Bricker in Kent, Ohio. jcmarbling.com

Cathryn Amidei
Digital Weaving Director

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.
www.cathrynamidei.com

Will Grimm
Studio Staff

Will Grimm is a fiber artist living in Cleveland, Ohio. He was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where 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’s work has been featured in publications such as Curated Quilts, Fiber Art Now, and BMoreArt, among others. Grimm has shown work in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland, and most recently, San Diego. He is the proud dad of two studio cats who insist on inspecting each piece of work before it leaves the studio.

David Wells & Lu Little
Garden Managers

Dave and Lu have been in the nursery/landscape industry for decades. Currently owners of Little & Wells, inc. they are proud gardeners for the Praxis Fiber Workshops natural dye gardens, Hospice of the Western Reserve and a small group of private clients. Do you have landscaping needs of your own? Feel free to reach out to them at littlewells@sbcglobal.net.

Meagan Smith
Digital Weaving Intern

Meagan Smith is an interdisciplinary fiber artist that lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her BFA in Painting and Drawing from The University of Akron in 2015 and just recently received her MFA at Kent State University in 2021, specifically focusing on digital weaving. In fall 2021, she began her new position as a faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Art and her studio resides at Praxis.
She is currently exploring new possibilities of digital jacquard weaving while observing the wave motions, patterns, and colors of Lake Erie to inspire future works. She competed in the sport of swimming for many years and this marked the beginning of a path and language that she easily understood, ultimately leading her to focus on lines and rhythms found in weaving.
www.meagsmith.com

Tony Williams
​Instructor

Tony Williams is a Cleveland based artist who’s approach to works of art is like the Ashanti proverb. “You must you must act as if it’s impossible to fail.” Whether working in paper or a fabric quilt, or a pen and ink illustrations, his sense of design and line quality are always present in his work. A former student of the Cleveland Institute of Art, and a graduate of the Art of the Institute of Pittsburgh. Tony uses his life experience as a catalyst for his work. A self-taught Indigo artist, costume designer and Accessory designer in New York’s garment industry have molded and shaped his view and eye for design. Tony uses his willingness to experiment and try new techniques and methods to expresses Art. Tony’s work has been shown in numerous local and national juried exhibits, international exhibitions and publications have featured his work. Tony is currently working with Indigo on paper.

Jasmine Kornel
Instructor

Born and raised in Cincinnati, Jasmine is a visual artist, designer and educator currently residing in Northeast Ohio. She received her MFA in Textiles from Kent State University School of Art in 2018. Her work generally employs the textiles medium in a sculptural capacity. The relationship between cloth, the body and the mind is a continual conversation. Exploration and process are important elements in her work as well as incorporating sustainable techniques into her making practice such as low impact dyeing, material choice, recycling and craft practices. She works as a part-time instructor at Kent’s Fashion School and as an assistant designer for uni-sex clothing company GODDESS. Her work has been accepted into both local and national exhibitions and she is always working on a production line of wearable textiles that are shown locally.  www.jasminekornel.com

Em Good
​Program Manager

After earning a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art, Em gained experience as a designer, instructor, and carpenter in Philadelphia, New York City and the Mid-Hudson Valley. Driven by problem solving, their work explores utility through craft with a commitment to environmental and social compassion.
Natural building, photography, and writing are prominent in their practice.

Ajdin Kulić
​Studio Staff

​Ajdin Kulić (Bosnian-American, b. 1999) is a interdisciplinary textiles artist and poet. Born and raised in Akron, OH to refugee parents, shaping their worldview and art-making practice. Kulić recieved their B.F.A in textiles at Kent State University and currently works as a Studio Staff member at Praxis Fiber Workshop.
Textiles serve as a medium of ritual and metaphor, helping to uncover the traumatizing intergenerational effects of the Bosnian war. Understanding these effects and how they mark life and sense of self, and healing them, has become a chief artistic undertaking. Kulić’s work is also grounded in research on the mind-body connection, trauma, nervous system health, and polyvagal theory.

Jordi Rowe
​​Research Intern

As the Praxis Research Intern I aim to continue to learn the fiber arts and apply them to both
my studio practice and role as an educator.
Additional skills that I bring to the program include long-term experience with sewing (machine
and hand), crochet, screenprint, and painting. I have a particularly robust skill set in research,
communication and time management having achieved my current undergraduate status at CIA
(as a rising junior painter and non-traditional student), by balancing my work in medicine with
my art education and family responsibilities. As a parent I know that integrating the younger
generation into Praxis’s mission is crucial for our success in promoting sustainability and wise
fiber choices as we move into this century. I aim to educate the next generation of leaders and
policymakers in the eco-friendly, pragmatic, and beautiful ways that the fiber arts affect our
daily lives.

Katie Mongoven
Studio Intern

​Katie Mongoven (Chinese-American, b. 1995) is a fiber artist based in Cleveland, OH. Born in Shanggao, China during the One Child Policy, Mongoven grew up in Washington, DC and received her BFA from the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.

Deb Berkebile
​Instructor

Deb is an artist with an extensive background in textiles and quilt making. Recently, she has been exploring surface design and multi-media in her artwork.
She is a naturalist and environmentalist at heart. Her current body of work explores satellite imagery and creating ‘false-color’ artistic depictions of remote sensed satellite images or Geographical Information Systems. She has eight quilts in her “Earth in Three Bands: R, G, B” Series: The Painted Desert, Eye of Sahara, The Great Salt Desert, Susitna Glacier, The Grand Canyon, Galileo Inspiration, The Great Lakes and my latest Rocky Mountain Trench. The vivid colors and their outstanding variations are what first drew her to these representations. She is also interested in activism and has been juried into the “OurStory” traveling exhibit about civil rights. Her pieces feature quilts celebrating the contributions of Martin Luther King/Rosa Parks and Sitting Bull “Lakota Warrior”.
She has started a new series of work combining natural dyes and Shibori techniques. She uses rusted hand dyed fabric dipped into indigo; manipulating the fabric with an assortment of Shibori techniques has led to this series with Sashiko hand stitching for finishing numerous pieces.
She creates most of the fabrics she use in her design process. she use surface design techniques, hand-dyeing and painted fabric, plus digital manipulation of images printed on fabric. She enjoy the challenges of creating original artwork that combines her passions and interests.

Sandy Shelenberger
​​Instructor

Sandy Shelenberger is an artist from Conneaut, OH whose textile art has been widely exhibited.   She hand-dyes much of her fabric and uses surface design techniques such as batik or experimental screenprinting to create her own marks and patterns. In addition to quilting, Sandy has become enamored with working in encaustic and cold wax.
Her work has been in several publications and juried art exhibits.  Sandy has had work juried into Quilts=Art=Quilts in Auburn, NY in 2019. Sandy’s quilt A Touch of Envy was juried into Visions 2018: Connections and was on exhibit at Visions Art Museum in San Diego, CA. Sandy had work on display in Quilts + Resist: Art, Politic, Storytelling at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL. Sandy has been in several “Best of Ohio” exhibitions at Ohio Craft Museum in Columbus, OH. She received the Award for Excellence at the “Best of Ohio” in 2014.  She has participated in the Invitational Exhibition “from Woman” yearly at Lakeland Community College. Sandy has had two recent solo exhibitions: Solon Center for the Arts in 2018, and Ashtabula Arts Center in 2017. Sandy’s artwork was juried in to Focus: Fiber 2016 at Kent State University Museum, Kent, OH; and Transgressing Traditions: International Juried Exhibit by Surface Design Association at Schweinfurth Arts Center in Auburn, NY. She also had work exhibited in the prestigious Fiberarts International in Pittsburgh, PA in 2013. Sandy’s quilt received a Juror’s Award of Merit in Quilt National 2005 in Athens, OH.
Sandy teaches dyeing, shibori and surface design techniques on fabric. She is a member of Textile Art Alliance, Cleveland Museum of Art, Surface Design Association, Art Quilt Network and the Northeast Pennsylvania Artist Association.  She enjoys sharing her knowledge and passion for the creative process.