Studio Artists

Buffalo Arts Studio’s includes 30 peer reviewed Studio Artists who are selected based on their creative practice, commitment to the community, and reflection of regional demographics. Studio Artists actively maintain working studios and have access to a ceramics facility, communal workspace, technology, and full kitchen. Buffalo Arts Studio is committed to providing safe and affordable studio space to working artists, charging approximately half of the market rental rate based on square footage and amenities. Studio Artists are encouraged to exhibit in our Annual Studio Artists Show and Sale, serve as paid teaching artists, and participate in collaborative projects, open art critiques, professional development, and communal meals. Studio Artists also benefit from the diverse skill sets within the community, sharing personal and professional experiences as well as best practices.

Beth Atanacio

Beth Atanacio is an American artist who creates abstract art to communicate complex emotions. Born to Filipino and Chinese immigrant parents in Buffalo, NY, she studied abroad in Beijing and worked as a designer and programmer in New York City for many years before returning back home. Navigating these different social, cultural, and economic spaces has, and continues to, influence her work. Beth’s visual inspiration comes from the man-made and the natural realms; the most emotionally moving being phenomena that exist from both of these components. Beth earned a BFA in Communication Design at SUNY Buffalo and a Master of Industrial Design at Pratt Institute. She has exhibited work during New York Design Week (now NYCxDESIGN) at the Model Citizens NYC show.

Jozef Bajus

Jozef Bajus is an award winning mixed media artist. Originally from Slovakia, Bajus received his MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, (AFAD), Bratislava, Slovakia. He began his teaching career in 1990 during the Velvet Revolution, an exciting and tumultuous time in Slovakia’s history. It was a time of great energy and new beginnings, including the building of a new Fiber program at AFAD headed by Bajus. Since that time, he has held positions of visiting scholar, instructor, and coordinator at various colleges and programs in the United States and abroad including the Rhode Island School of Design, Slippery Rock University, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, Split Rock, Kanazawa College of Art (Japan), and Jianxing University (China). Currently, Bajus is an Associate Professor at SUNY Buffalo State College, Buffalo, New York and serves as the Coordinator of the Fibers/Design Program.

His career has earned him numerous prestigious awards and recognition. He has been the recipient of 1st Place, Triennial of Pattern, Budapest, Hungary; selected for Triennial of Tapestry, Muzeum Wlokienictva Lodz, Poland; The George Soros Fellowship Award; Residency at Rutgers University and the Judith Brodsky Center for Print and Paper, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Esprit de Corps Award, Burchfield Penney Art Center (BPAC), Buffalo, New York; Presidents Award for Excellence and Creativity, BSC, Buffalo; The Henkel Award, Bratislava, Slovakia and the Langley H. Kenzie Award, BPAC, Buffalo.

Bajus’ work has exhibited in numerous one – person, and groups exhibitions, nationally and internationally, and is in the collection of many museums, art galleries worldwide including the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava; The City Gallery of Bratislava – Mirbach Palace, Bratislava; Trencin Art Gallery of M.A.B., Trencin, all in Slovakia; as well as the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo; the Gregg Museum of Art and Design in Raleigh, North Carolina; The Racine Art Museum in Racine, Wisconsin; Szombathely Art Museum in Szombathely, Hungary; and The Moravian Art & Craft Museum in Brno, Czech Republic. His artwork is also included in private collections in Europe, North America, Japan, and China.

Madeline Bartley

Madeline Bartley’s mantra is to practice making slow adjustments in reaction to dramatic changes. Her work addresses concepts of vulnerability, exploration, and the need for maintenance. Bartley follows a path with an unclear trajectory with a focus on creating as she finds her way. Her imagery weaves together a concern for strength and vulnerability, often within a garden setting. By producing one-of-a-kind prints using screen printing and stencils, Bartley creates assortments of random compositions with deeply saturated colors. Layers of watercolor, collage, and color pencil give clarity to the image. As layers of color build up, vibrant watercolor pigments create a looming dramatic effect.

Bartley blend realistic imagery on top of a flat abstracted or atmospheric space to depict fragments of experiences and dreams. Often, she adds embellishments like botanical detritus or fiber drawings to the work and incorporates symbolic images such as arches and portals, garden arbors, and other botanicals. Tracing over detailed illustrations allows Bartley time to reflect on events and their lasting emotional effect. Even though structures may begin strong, its foundation inevitably weakens over time. Ultimately, this body of work is about a relationship with maintenance within a landscape that prohibits the possibility of permanence.

Dennis Bertram

Born in the Netherlands but growing up in southern Indiana, Dennis Bertram’s early interest in art was sidetracked for an academic career in health care. He returned to art in the late -1990’s taking studio courses at Buffalo State College and the Steve Carpenter Art Center in Rochester, New York. He is best known for his abstract oil paintings with their complex imagery consisting of multivarious, imaginative architectonic structures. He exhibits with the Buffalo (New York) Society of Artists and the Buffalo Niagara Art Association and maintains a studio at Buffalo Arts Studio in Buffalo, New York.

Kaylee Blesy

Born in Buffalo, NY, Kaylee Blesy makes figurative ceramic works to challenge expectations placed on women and discuss what these expectations mean today.

The position of being quiet and submissive is placed on women from an exceedingly early age. In Kaylee’s artwork, however, she finds her voice to be quite loud and sarcastic. She fights to reclaim her voice by utilizing imagery from art history and in turn, reshaping narratives. Over-saturated colors are used to demand their presence and create a sense of an alternate, surreal reality- one in which women do not comply with preexisting notions of how they should act.

Additionally, she discusses the difference in internal and external reactions that may occur in response to injustices. Repression in contrast to feeling, being loud in contrast to complying, and the reality that these are all valid responses to the mistreatment of women. Many of her works discuss sexual assault, in which sometimes being the hero is not always a possibility. Overall, her work uses the female form throughout history to critique problems in western society such as objectification and sexual assault, and the unrealistic expectation of a woman’s response to such injustices.

Julia Bottoms

Julia Bottoms is an active visual artist based in Buffalo, NY, where she recently completed a six-week residence at the Albright-Knox Northland, participated in the University at Buffalo Arts Collaboratory Working Artist Lab with Cecily Brown, and was an Albright Knox Participating Artist for the Works From Home Project. Her large-scale mural work includes Mamie Smith Memorial Mural in Cincinnati, OH, the East Delavan Library Mural and seven panels on The Freedom Wall, in Buffalo, NY, among others. Bottoms has been featured in solo and group shows across New York State and her work has been featured on the cover of The Public, in Buffalo Spree, The Challenger, in the HBO series Insecure, and online through AfroPunk. Bottoms holds a BA (2012) and a MA (2017) from Buffalo State College.

Emma Brittain

Emma Brittain is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the intricate tapestry of identity through cultural connections and natural metaphors. As an artist of color, she explores the collective black identity, lost ancestry and connection to the land. She reflects on her travels and also her work locally with youth in Buffalo.

Emma Brittain’s work has been featured in exhibitions at Buffalo Art Movement, Buffalo Arts Studio, The Roger Tory Peterson Institute, and the artist continues to engage with communities through workshops and community art projects. She is also the Executive Director of Locust Street Art, a nonprofit that specializes in offering free community art classes in animation, ceramics, photography, and drawing and painting.

David Buck

David Buck has been a Resident Artist at Buffalo Arts Studio since 2006, working in oil paint and graphite. He takes or finds photographs and reinterprets them, often inventing the color and reshaping the work for effect. Concentrating on gesture and emotion rather than detail, his works explore the way our memory filters events and places and people. He has exhibited consistently, including Echo Art Fair, Studio Hart, the Kenan Center, and the Distillery in Pittsburgh. David has been widely collected in Western New York, and recently had a piece added to the permanent collection of the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

Claudia Carballada

Claudia Carballada is a visual artist with a studio practice rooted in drawing and painting, extending to installation and performance. The impetus of her work comes from the exploration of emotive and intuitive mark-making as it aligns with the vibrations of color, movement and emotion, all represented through gestural abstraction. Claudia is Creative Director for The Discovery Project, an ensemble based in Los Angeles which produces multimedia installations for performances based in music. Together with this team, she creates concepts, maintains the role of scenographer, and engages in performance with live painting and drawing. She has guest lectured in figure painting and taught drawing, painting, and figure drawing at many universities and community organizations. She has coordinated gesture drawing/dance workshops and gallery performances as well as exhibited her work in numerous exhibitions.

Bree Gilliam

Bree Gilliam is a figurative painter and muralist from Buffalo, NY. She is the owner and founder
of Paintphoria, Buffalo’s first paint-throwing studio. Gilliam attended SUNY Buffalo State
University where she received a B.F.A. in painting and a minor in art therapy. In her work, she
addresses the social issues that plague society. As a young black woman, she believes that her
responsibility is to depict the perspective of marginalized people, give a voice to the voiceless,
and empower her community.

In 2023, Gilliam was selected as an artist-in-residence at Hunt Art Gallery. Her work has been
featured in several exhibitions around Western NY. Some of these include a solo exhibition,
“INSPIRED,” at BOX Gallery and Buffalo Arts Studio, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center’s
“Amid/In WNY 2024”, and Burchfield Penney Art Center’s “Welcoming Spaces” and “Sharing
Our View: 25 th Anniversary” . She has been commissioned to paint several murals in the Western
New York area. Currently, Gilliam works as a contracted artist assistant installing multiple
community-based polytab murals with Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, NY. In 2023,
Niagara Falls National Heritage Area chose Gilliam to paint her mural entitled Free Your Mind.
Gilliam has received over ten academic awards and scholarships during her time at Buffalo State.
These include the Dean's Award for Excellence in the School of the Arts and Sciences, Robert C.
and Marilyn Wilson Painting Scholarship, and the SUNY Undergraduate Summer Research
Fellowship.

Bryan Hopkins

Bryan Hopkins was born in Philadelphia, PA, and currently resides in Buffalo, NY. He began at West Chester University of PA as a mathematics major, and went on to earn an MFA in Ceramics from SUNY at New Paltz. Bryan has been studio potter working in porcelain since 1990. His research in the field of ceramics centers on the vessel – both utilitarian and sculptural. Bryan teaches at Niagara County Community College. He has curated ceramics exhibitions both nationally and locally. Bryan’s work has been exhibited in group and solo shows nationally, including the NCECA Clay National Biennial. His work, research, and writings have has been published in numerous magazines and books. Bryan is a founding member of the on line ceramics group Objective Clay. He is also a New York Foundation on the Arts Fellow in Craft.

Cheryl Jackson

Cheryl Jackson is a video artist, teacher, and former executive director of Squeaky Wheel/Buffalo Media Resources. Her work as a media and installation artist has been presented around the nation and is included in the permanent collection of the Burchfield Penney.

Jackson's background includes extensive teaching and presentations on film, video, and electronic media.

Erin Kearney

Erin Kearney is a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in Buffalo, New York. She received her BFA in Sculpture from Alfred University and MFA in Art and Technology from the Ohio State University.

Kearney’s work utilizes sculptural installation, video projection, and performance through a variety of fiber-based mediums. Her research roots itself inside the architecture of her childhood home. Pulling from personal narrative, Kearney examines the daily happenings that expose the tensions and fleshy underbelly of domestic spaces.

Elizabeth Leader

Buffalo-based artist, Elizabeth Leader, has a strong affinity for the places and objects that most of us pass on the street without even a glance. For Leader, the blank windows of an abandoned house or a discarded and dirty child’s toy are simply pieces of a story that has been lost in time. Her work takes on the task of gathering these pieces from the past and stitches them back together. In doing so, she simultaneously assumes the roles of historian, urban explorer, and social commentator.

By combining discarded elements of our consumer culture and pairing the objects with photographs of abandoned home and businesses, Leader sets before us the bitter truth of our often-fragile economy and constantly shifting desires for the next and greatest thing. In many cases she must hunt out this truth in the hidden or forgotten places within our urban landscape. She travels to these empty but not always uninhabited spaces, like an archaeologist exploring the crumbling ruins of a long vanished society. The irony of these expeditions is not lost on Leader given that she often sets foot in places that were thriving homes, shops, and factories only a few years or decades ago. This helps to explain the style in which she works and why she chooses to juxtapose elements like found objects against images of the places she has visited. What Leader proves with all of this is that there is still a lot of life left in the objects that our society has otherwise cast aside.

George Mai

For George Mai, making ceramic pots is great fun. He especially enjoys those that people are able to use. He has been a ceramicist for some time, often giving his artwork to friends and family. Many of the bowls and mugs he has gifted are still used today, often carefully repaired after the inevitable injury resulting from that very appreciation and incorporation into domestic life. For those shattered beyond repair, Mai borrows a phrase from the great Bernard Leach: “teach us to forgive, love well, and if need be, let go and simply pick up the pieces.” And if need be, perhaps even make another one ourselves at Buffalo Arts Studio.

Aprille Nace

Aprille Nace is a Buffalo-based artist, currently a resident at Buffalo Arts Studio. Working with clay since 2014, she earned her MFA in Ceramics (2018) from the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where she studied with Jane Shellenbarger and Peter Pincus. Aprille works part-time in the Art Conservation Department at SUNY-Buffalo State. Before discovering clay Aprille worked as a librarian at The Corning Museum of Glass. She also holds an M.A. in American Studies and M.L.S. in Library and Information Science.

Roberto Pacheco

Born in Cuzco, which Incans believed was “The Center of the World,” Roberto Pacheco spent most of his youth in Lima, the capital of Peru. He left when the military forced the closings of educational institutions and the loss of many personal freedoms were imminent. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in sculpture from Buffalo State College and M.F.A. from SUNY/Buffalo.

Much of Pacheco’s work addresses the politics and heritage of his former home. “I try to translate our social, psychological and political situations into forms, lines and geometrical shapes that can bring to the viewer situations or emotions he can identify with, like harmony, deprivation, stress, a sense of balance or movement, etc. There are elements we are dealing with every day of our lives and have dealt with in the past.”

Andrea Pawarski

Andrea Pawarski was born in Buffalo, New York where her fondest memories come from being immersed in the outdoors. Her artistic exploration began as she became mindful of her environment and all of nature’s grand and subtle treasures. Sketching became a primary outlet for the inspiration she found within nature. However, it wasn’t until Andrea truly engaged her work in clay that she began to form a deep relationship with the natural world. Today, Andrea mainly works in clay and finds that the versatility of this medium helps her to fully express her fascination with the complex textures and forms that weather and erosion has created upon different landscapes. Her work is known for referencing specific geological landscapes and features with a narrative.

Andrea balances being an educator as well as a working artist. She began her desire to teach while instructing art classes for children in her community as a young adult. She enjoys helping her students find their voice in art and has since developed her teaching experience through working with the Charter School of Inquiry. She received a BFA in both Art Education and Ceramics in 2014 from Syracuse University. She has also recently completed her master’s degree in 2017 from SUNY Buffalo State College. She was enrolled in the Multidisciplinary program with a concentration in ceramics.

Betty Pitts Foster

Betty J. Pitts Foster is a BFA and Master of Ed graduate of the University of Buffalo. Her passion is to express through impressionistic art, God’s creation. Past awards include the Chautauqua Art Association’s 13th National Juried Show, Buffalo Arts Society, Williamsville Art Society and selection by renown artists Ernest Chrichlow and Romare Bearden to exhibit at the Gallery Museum, Hall of Springs, Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Her work was selected by Buffalo-born Haitian Ambassador, James B. Foley for US State Department’s Art in Embassies program. She has exhibited in many area group shows in Buffalo, Chautauqua, and Washington DC. She is a resident artist at the Buffalo Arts Studio.

Christina Riccio

Christina Riccio is a ceramics artist from Buffalo, NY. Riccio graduated Magna Cum Laude from SUNY Fredonia with a BA in Visual Arts and New Media in 2014 and earned her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Utah in 2022. After leaving Utah, Riccio spent two years as an artist in residence at Saratoga Clay Arts Center in upstate New York, where she presented two solo shows, PRISM and Absurdity and Uncertainty. Riccio also studied ceramics and art education at Buffalo State College from 2016–2019, where she received the Sylvia Rosen Award for Excellence in Ceramics and exhibited her work in the Deans Gallery Invitational Exhibition. She is the recipient of First Place in Clay at the 2025 Allentown Art Festival and has exhibited nationally across the United States.

Riccio is currently a studio artist at Buffalo Arts Studio and an adjunct professor at Weber State University. Her work incorporates themes of maximalism and absurdism, critiquing the mass-produced designs of late-stage capitalism. These themes come together through the lens of both functional pottery and figurative sculpture, utilizing satire and bright colors to grapple with the uncertainty of the world we live in. 

Kelly Schnurr

Kelly Schnurr is a multidisciplinary artist merging her design background with fine art practices. After earning a BFA in Graphic Design from SUNY Fredonia, she spent a decade living and working in New York City before returning to her hometown of Buffalo in 2016 to raise her growing family. Motherhood reignited a sense of play and material curiosity, inspiring themes of maternal lineage, memory, and place. Guided by seasonal rhythms, she blends traditional media—such as acrylic, gouache, and watercolor—with foraged materials, paper clay, repurposed fibers, and embroidery. Her process often involves deconstructing paintings and textile remnants, then reassembling them into collages with stitched elements. Through a vivid interplay of color and pattern, she creates portals into fantastical landscapes, weaving together distraction and the interruptions of everyday life.

Kelly is a studio artist at Buffalo Arts Studio, an Exhibiting member of the Buffalo Society of Artists, and was a Hunt Gallery Resident Artist (cohort 5). She actively exhibits her work throughout the local arts community and participates in seasonal art markets. Works on paper and greeting cards are available at Buffalo Shop Craft. Additional images and available work are updated regularly on her website.

Rebecca Schwarzberg

Rebecca Schwarzberg is a figurative sculptor and doll maker. Her work exists where these two
mediums intersect and explores her experiences of being human and the process
of searching for understanding, growth, and transformation over time. She also
explores archetypes and symbols found in traditional fairytales that overlap with
her own experiences of being human.

Kathleen Sherin

Kathleen Sherin began to explore printmaking as a graduate student in painting at the University of Buffalo (MFA 1985) and since has evolved unique methods of creating her one-of-kind prints. Sherin uses various combinations of techniques to create her energized abstract prints. Sherin’s work is in the permanent collections at Roswell Park and Burchfield-Penney as well as many private collections. She has exhibited her prints in over 100 feature and group exhibitions throughout the United States. Her work will be seen in summer 2017 at Buffalo’s Pausa Art House. Kathy has been a resident artist at Buffalo Arts Studio since 2002.

Emma Stanton

Emma Stanton is a painter born and raised in Corning, NY, where she was exposed to art from a young age through local museums and arts centers. Now based in Buffalo, she has most recently been using art as a vehicle for play. This exploration of play has manifested in her interest in the life that is teeming within and around us; the macro of our visible body parts and internal organs, but also the cellular and microscopic building blocks that make up a much larger human body and the living world that surrounds us. Emma holds her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the University at Buffalo, and has previously exhibited at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the C. Stuart and Jane H. Hunt Gallery, University at Buffalo Art Galleries, and other spaces through Western New York.

Deborah Stewart

Deborah Stewart is a sculptor primarily working in clay. She has in the past been a biologist, modern dancer and choreographer, and studio potter. She has a BFA in Ceramics and an MFA in Visual Art/Sculpture. She has taught Ceramics and Three-dimensional Design in a variety of WNY colleges. Her work has been exhibited locally and nationally, and is in several public and private collections. Her main interests are the experiencing of nature and movement, and their transformation into clay forms.

Ann Stievater

Ann Stievater has a Master of Science Degree in Art Education from Buffalo State College. She has taught art in the Buffalo Public Schools, in the Buffalo Catholic Schools and in the Art Start program at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Since retiring as an art educator in 2000, Ann has been painting with oils and acrylics. She mentored with local and national accomplished artists, resulting in her current illuminist style. Ann has always lived in western New York or southern Ontario. Consequently, her landscape paintings portray her home environment, especially the ever changing moods, patterns and colors of the local waterways, skies and land. Ann is a member of the Buffalo Society of Artists, the Western New York Artists Group and the Buffalo Niagara Artists Group. Her paintings may be found in local and national collections.

Phyllis Thompson

Phyllis I. Thompson is a Western New York artist known for her multi-media works that include prints, fabric and drawings. Her works feature depictions of family, relationships, and various memories.

Thompson received her BFA in printmaking from the Philadelphia College of Art and her MFA in printmaking from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. She has a PhD in Urban Education/Art Education from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

Thompson was an educator at Cornell University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Kutztown University, and Buffalo State College. She also worked in the Chicago Public Schools as a resident artist with Urban Gateways and taught middle school students at University School of Milwaukee.  In 1975, she was part of the Artist-In-Residence program at Artpark, in Lewiston, NY.

Thompson works with textiles, printmaking, photography, and collage processes. She credits her sixth grade teacher with recommending her for Saturday art classes where she became familiar with the vocabulary of artists, learned that there were other visual art disciplines besides painting and drawing, and decided to be a maker of art.

Linda Toomey

Buffalo native Linda Toomey began her painting career in earnest after retiring from a 28 year art teaching career. She is a resident artist at BAS. She uses gouache for small paintings. Her inspiration comes from the play of water, light and sky on the inland marshes of North Carolina, Virginia, and the labyrinth of waters in the 1000 Island area. Tensions induced by terrorism and accelerating technology have changed our lives. Linda’s landscapes are about tranquility and peacefulness. She hopes to take the viewer back to the natural world of quiet solitude, contemplation, and regeneration. Linda is a member of the Buffalo Society of Artists, Breakwater Gallery (Cape Vincent, NY) and the Western New York Artist’s Group. She has won numerous awards in both local and national shows and her paintings are in local, national and international collections.

Laura Valkwitch

Laura is a multidisciplinary artist from Western New York. Her main forms of artistic expression include oil painting and sculpture, though she also enjoys experimenting with unconventional materials. Drawing inspiration from the sublime, Laura focuses on composition, light, and color within her art to create a sense of wonder in viewers. Her recent works delve into themes of identity, the fragility of the natural world, and the transient nature of existence. Laura has exhibited her art in various local galleries across WNY and teaches oil painting at Buffalo Art Studio. Currently, she is a board member and vice president of the Buffalo Society of Artists while pursuing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University at Buffalo. This summer, she will be painting a mural at the Erie County Health Mall on Broadway in Buffalo as part of the Art in Public Places initiative.

Katie Virag

Katherine Virag was born and raised in Detroit, MI. She received a BFA in Sculpture and a BS in Psychology from Louisiana State University in 2013. As an undergraduate, she spent a year studying at Buffalo State College as a national exchange student. From 2011-2013 she was the Arts and Crafts Program Director for two different summer camps in Colorado, planning and leading arts and crafts projects for a variety of groups including children and adults with disabilities. Her work has been included in group shows locally and nationally and her first solo exhibition was in Buffalo, NY in 2014. In August 2015 she was an artist-in-residence at Elsewhere Studios in Paonia, CO. She currently maintains a studio at Buffalo Arts Studio.

Muhammad Zaman

As an urban artist specializing in calligraphy I’ve developed a personal style incorporating the different languages that make up my identity: English since I live in the USA, Bengali, the language of my fatherland, and Arabic, the language of my religion. I’ve always been fascinated by languages, lettering and calligraphy of different parts of the world. As a Muslim in the USA I see a lot of negativity towards our tradition but I always look for ways to use my art as a positive message. I was influenced by the artist Elseed and his idea to create unity for people from different backgrounds, ethnicites and religions. My aim is to inspire people to share the same place and learn from each other in harmony and mutual understanding. Although my works contain words in three different languages, there is always at least one recognizable word. This makes the audience curious to ask and decode the message, giving them to a deep connection with my art. I continuously try new shapes and colors to present my art with a modern look.