Aurora Rosado, CPA, MBA, CGMA Aurora is an accounting professional with over 15 years of experience in public accounting. She is currently a Principal at a US top 10 accounting firm. Aurora specializes in helping small and medium-sized businesses and non profit organizations achieve financial success through accounting guidance and strategic planning. Collaboration is at the heart of how Aurora works with her clients and team. Her area of expertise includes financial planning and analysis, budgeting and forecasting, cash flow management, and financial reporting. Aurora also focuses on accounting system design and implementation. Helping clients through financial literacy is her why.

Beverley Watson is a ceramic sculptor, art therapist, and small business owner, providing services to children with special needs. She was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. Beverley has been based in the Bedford Stuyvesant community for more than 35 years. She identifies herself as Ja’merican combining her cultural heritage as a Jamaican and an African American. Beverley pursued her college education in the USA at Pratt Institute. She earned her BFA with highest honors, in Fine Arts with a Minor in Psychology. She continued her Graduate studies at Pratt and earned a double MPS in Art Therapy/Creativity Development and Special Education. She spent most of her adult life teaching inner city youth in NYC Public Schools where she was a strong advocate for inclusion of the arts in schools. Thirty years transpired before she returned to her passion, creating with clay. Beverley describes herself as a conduit through which ancestral energy flows. She has a strong connection and love of the Ocean and Mother Earth. Her art has been described as ancestral, African, healing, protective and powerful. She believes that her work expresses many aspects of her life’s journey. Beverley is a resident artist at Artshack, located in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

Dave Kim is a Korean-American artist based in New York. Kim’s practice is research-based. Through extensive study and labor-intensive apprenticeships under master potters, Kim has mastered the key visual elements—form, surface, color, and material— that define traditional Korean ceramics. He has a specialized focus on the techniques of Sang-gam (inlay), Baek-ja (porcelain-ware), and Bun-cheong (stamps). These techniques were originally developed during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897) and were used to create functional wares for a variety of contexts that ranged from mundane household affairs to ancestral ritual practices to royal ceremonies. Prioritizing refined subtly over ornate embellishments, they signify the distinctive aesthetic philosophy of that time– simplicity as an embodiment of natural and unpretentious beauty. Dave Kim (b. 1985) received his MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and BA from San Francisco State University. Dave was awarded artist residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Sculpture Space, Dongguk University, Pioneer Works, Shigaraki Cultural Park, and Catwalk Institute. He was also awarded the Andrew & Barbara Choi Family Grant from the AHL Foundation and artist session at Recess Art. His work has been exhibited at venues including: Cantor Art Center, Stanford University; HUB-Robeson Gallery, Penn State University; Museum of Art and Design, NY; Christie’s Inc., NY; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, NY; Artist Alliance, NY; Rhode Island College, RI; Kavi Gupta Gallery, IL; the Fashion Institute of Technology, NY; Spring Break Art Show, NY & LA; Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., RISD Museum, RI; American Museum of Ceramic Art, Mills College Art Museum, CA. Dave is currently teaching at Bennington College and Brooklyn College. He is also the director at DOCLAY NYC.

Jason Shure is an amateur potter, an Artshack member, and his teen daughter was long-time Artshack summer camper. His recent career work has been in managing non-profit organizations, with particular interest and expertise in mission-driven organizations that earn their income from the general public. He lives in Bed-Stuy, around the corner from the twin Artshack studios. He throws big pots and has a pet tortoise.

Lucila Moctezuma is a consultant to documentary filmmakers and media organizations in the US and internationally, and programmer with international festivals. Her work with independent filmmakers focuses on story and creative authorship, and consults with media organizations in program design, program implementation, and as facilitator of story workshops. Currently she is Senior Consultant of Artist Programs at Points North Institute, International Programmer for Hot Docs in Canada, and a member of the documentary programming committee at the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. Previously, she held senior positions at high-profile organizations such as Chicken & Egg Pictures, UnionDocs, Women Make Movies, the Media Arts Fellowships for The Rockefeller Foundation, and founded the TFI Latin America Fund for Tribeca Film Institute. She is part of the Industry Advisory Council for UFO, the Executive Board of Cine Qua Non Lab, the Board of Artshack, and was Vice-President of the Board of Trustees of The Flaherty. She is Producer on the feature-length documentary, She Wrestles (in development, by award-winning director and wrestling state champion, Charles Fairbanks). Originally from Mexico City, Lucila is a 2019 Ford Foundation / Rockwood Leadership Institute JustFilms fellow and a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

McKendree Key founded Artshack in 2008, and turned Artshack into a nonprofit in 2016. McKendree is a professional artist with over 20 years of teaching experience. She is a native New Yorker and taught art with Studio in a School for 8 years. She has taught workshops at Socrates Sculpture Park , P.S.1, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. She taught art education at Pratt Institute for 3 years. She holds an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from Colorado College. She studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Scultpure, and has exhibited her work at P.S.1, The Sculpture Center, CUE Art Foundation, The Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Socrates Sculpture Park, and The Brooklyn Museum, among other venues. In 2023, McKendree founded Keepsake Gallery, a space within Artshack where she leads and exhibits collaborative art projects with community members and kids. photo: Gabriela Herman

Seanna is a litigation partner at Baker Hostetler where she works tirelessly on behalf of victims of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme and for two men on death row in Georgia and Alabama. She has two daughters who she and her partner, also a lawyer, are raising to be fierce negotiators. Seanna has lived in New York City for twenty-five years, giving her ample time to admire and appreciate art in all its forms. She is proud to be on the board of Artshack and involved in the arts community in Brooklyn.

Shaun Leonardo’s multidisciplinary work negotiates societal expectations of manhood, namely definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities, along with its notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. His performance practice, anchored by his work in Assembly – a diversion program for court-court-involved youth, is participatory in nature and invested in a process of embodiment. Leonardo is a Brooklyn-based artist from Queens, New York City. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, is a recipient of support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim Social Practice, Art for Justice and A Blade of Grass, and was recently profiled in the New York Times. His work has been featured at The Guggenheim Museum, the High Line, and New Museum, with solo exhibitions at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MoCA). From fall 2018 through spring 2020, Leonardo enacted socially engaged projects at Pratt Institute as the School of Art, Visiting Fellow.

ALVA CALYMAYOR b. Mexico City Alva is a visual artist living in New York. Alva makes use of a visual vocabulary that addresses social issues, perceptions of safety as well as patterns of mass consumption. She keeps track of its manifestations and the trace they leave as they are discarded, repurposed or become no longer functional. Her work has been exhibited in: Astral America (curated my Keren Moscovitch, SVA, NY), Chaos/Control (curated by Melinda Wang, Doing Living, NY), Harvest the Night (curated by Leah Dixon, Beverley's, NY), Collective Show Mexico (Casa Maauad, México, D.F.), Spring Break Art Show (NY), at MWOW (curated by Grayson Cox, Knockdown Center, NY). Alva was one of five artists selected for ("Air," Ace Hotel Residency, NY), curated by the BHQFU. She was a Mentor in NYFA's Program Mentorship for Immigrants Program (2014), formed part of the 27th Bronx Artist's in the Marketplace during 2006-2007, and received a Grant from the Stephen Sprouse Scholarship Fund for pushing the boundaries within the printmaking field. Alva has been recognized in several publications for exploring and showcasing art in a non-commercial format, for her collaborations with fellow artists through Eyelevel BQE, project that she co-funded in 2008: Interview Magazine (2013), "Alternative Histories," New York art spaces from 1960-2010, MIT Press (2012), Artists in the Marketplace second Biennial; "The Other Marketplace," Lia Zaalof (2013).

Angeli Rasbury is a self-taught visual, ceramics and textiles artist, award-winning writer, educator and lawyer. Angeli primarily works to evolve conversations about being a Black girl and woman in this world and unsung Black women sheroes. Her journalism has looked at girls in juvenile detention, formerly incarcerated mothers' struggle to reclaim children, and policies behind homelessness and gentrification. Angeli loves providing opportunities for youth to create ceramics, visual art, and poetry; dancing; traveling; and riding her bike.

Atlas is a project manager, studio technician, and teacher at Artshack Brooklyn. They work to help maintain and improve the different systems and equipment used throughout the ceramic making process. Outside of studio work, he is a sculptor, ceramicist, and art historian. His work is centered around different traditional crafts, and the limitless possibilities of combining different practices. They draw inspiration from ceramics, glasswork, textiles, and woodwork to create art that is an extension of the individual craft or trade. By combining different mediums and crafts, they are creating a practice where boundaries are arbitrary and tradition can be rewritten.

Dini Dixon received a BFA in Ceramics from Pratt Institute. Her work explores the intersection of video and ceramics utilizing traditional ceramic techniques and stop motion animation. In 2018 she had solo exhibitions at 808 Projects in Denver and the Thomas Hunter Project Space in Manhattan.Her video The Long Goodbye was an official selection of the 2018 Supernova Digital Animation Festival. in 2023 She will be the artist in residence at Artshack Brooklyn. Currently Dini is Director of Youth Programs at Artshack Brooklyn. She works on her ceramics and clay-animation at her studio in East Williamsburg.

Elycia is our Annex studio manager, teaching artist for youth programs, and annual Woodfire class host. She is a ceramic artist whose works are inspired by her love of nature: from the forms to her surface design, all are pulling something from the earth.

Jon feels incredibly fortunate to be able to work with clay. He loves problem solving and helping others realize their ceramic dreams. Recently, he has been delving into the magical world of atmospheric firing.

Katie loves getting her hands in clay, and loves Artshack’s mission of making clay more accessible to all. As a ceramicist, she pays particular attention to the ways that working with clay is enlivening, healing, and full of lessons. She can’t get over this medium that is both so grounding, and expansive. Katie enjoys teaching people of all ages with clay, both on the pottery wheel and handbuilding, and thinks that a combo of the two makes really cool pieces. She finds inspiration in books, conversation, nature, the art of others, and by letting her own hands guide the way. If you see a small animal running around the studio or curled up in some clay, it’s her cat Eloise!

McKendree Key founded Artshack in 2008, and turned Artshack into a nonprofit in 2016. McKendree is a professional artist with over 20 years of teaching experience. She is a native New Yorker and taught art with Studio in a School for 8 years. She has taught workshops at Socrates Sculpture Park , P.S.1, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. She taught art education at Pratt Institute for 3 years. She holds an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from Colorado College. She studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Scultpure, and has exhibited her work at P.S.1, The Sculpture Center, CUE Art Foundation, The Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Socrates Sculpture Park, and The Brooklyn Museum, among other venues. In 2023, McKendree founded Keepsake Gallery, a space within Artshack where she leads and exhibits collaborative art projects with community members and kids. photo: Gabriela Herman

Michael Dajour (he/she/they) is a photographer from Brooklyn, New York. Michael finds fulfillment in making others feel beautiful, included, and represented through their body of work. Inspiring to one day create a safe space for all youth that will grant them limitless creative expression, they hope to change the urban dynamics of Atlanta by challenging gender norms of the south with unconventional work that includes, but not limited to, themes of androgyny, expression of identity, and appreciation of all with different skin tones, body types and appearances. Now working as the Visual Assistant for Mobilizing Our Brothers Initiative (MOBI), Michael is also co-founder of My Cousin’s Studio, an all black queer & trans photographers collective aiming to create programming for young creatives to hone in on their creative skills by providing educational resources of the arts.

Quinn McNeill loves clay and community building! What luck she found Artshack!

I was born and raised in Northern Italy, and spent my summers in southern Italy where my Mother's family lives. I grew up cooking with my grandmother and always admired her ability to bring people together through her cooking. She took me under her wing and provided me with an outlet for all my wild child energy! She became sick and passed away when I was 10, which was when I decided I wanted to cook for people in a way to make them happy and bring everyone together. Cooking makes me feel so close to her in a way I wouldn’t otherwise. I eventually graduated from "E.Maggia" Stresa culinary school, and found my way in the kitchen of the Maestro of Italian cuisine, Gualtiero Marchesi. I worked as a pastry chef, learning to cook modern and traditional dessert for Giancarlo Perbellini, and later moved into the kitchen as Chef de Partie. In 2012, I jumped at the opportunity to move to New York for the opening of Giovanni Rana Pastificio e Cucina. I was originally meant to be a part of a three month consulting team, but stayed on as sous chef, relishing the opportunity to work in Manhattan. Two years later I received an offer to become Executive Chef at Aita in Brooklyn, where I directed the restaurant using fresh local produce to create traditional and modern Italian dishes. In 2016, I competed in Season 14 of Bravo's Top Chef. At the same time I had decided to open a new restaurant along with my now partners. I opened Larina Pastificio e Vino in Fort Greene Brooklyn as Chef and Co-Owner upon my return from filming where I use the inspiration of my childhood in Northern and Southern Italy as well as my current travels in my dishes.

Vannesa has over 10 years of experience working with ceramics. She studied microbiology and ceramics at UC Davis. Her work draws inspiration from natural forms and her background in biology. She has shown at galleries in New York and California. She currently works out of, and teaches at Artshack Brooklyn. Her work can be found on www.deandaceramics.com or in IG @deanda_ceramics

Camila Ruiz is a ceramics artist from Montevideo, Uruguay. She obtained her PhD in biochemistry. Camila’s background in chemistry is extremely valuable for creating new glazes for members and students, ensuring the safety of these glazes, and keeping track of Artshack’s stock supply of materials. The glaze making process requires an extensive knowledge of the materials used and the chemistry behind the reactions that occur during the kiln firing process. She is a valuable ceramics instructor that teaches beginner and intermediate students in wheel and hand building. Come take a class with her! You will not regret it.

Cody was a very creative child, and as an adult that creativity and passion for making things has manifested in many ways. Cody has a BS in Product/Graphic Design from North Carolina State College of Design, and currently works as a successful hairstylist here in Brooklyn. Three years ago, Cody became an Artshack student and then went on to become one of our teachers. When not in the salon with his clients, Cody can be found at the studio working on whatever projects he dreams up for himself that week. Cody loves sharing his ceramic knowledge and experience with students in a very casual and approachable way.

Ivan has been a ceramic instructor for the Artshack Brooklyn mission for six years. Ivan has practiced the clay medium on a professional level in shared communities in New York City and Boston, MA. He engages our adult populations with beginner to intermediate classes. He engages our clay healing mission with mostly functional pottery wheel instruction, and some hand-building projects, and events. It is also extremely gratifying for him to be able to engage his mentoring and youth development skills. When leading our partnership with the adolescent population from the Bedford Academy High School. The partnership allows Ivan to introduce and teach the clay medium for 9-12 graders for the neighboring community. When he is not sharing his gift instructing the ceramic arts. Ivan is honing his craft at his studio creating collections of small batch functional pottery. Inspired by his love for nature and sea landscapes . Which is featured on his website and at retail pop-up shops and gallery sales. For small business artisans in Brooklyn and throughout the New York City area.

Jon feels incredibly fortunate to be able to work with clay. He loves problem solving and helping others realize their ceramic dreams. Recently, he has been delving into the magical world of atmospheric firing.

Katie loves getting her hands in clay, and loves Artshack’s mission of making clay more accessible to all. As a ceramicist, she pays particular attention to the ways that working with clay is enlivening, healing, and full of lessons. She can’t get over this medium that is both so grounding, and expansive. Katie enjoys teaching people of all ages with clay, both on the pottery wheel and handbuilding, and thinks that a combo of the two makes really cool pieces. She finds inspiration in books, conversation, nature, the art of others, and by letting her own hands guide the way. If you see a small animal running around the studio or curled up in some clay, it’s her cat Eloise!

Lam Thuy Vo has been part of Artshack since 2021 and loves teaching people pottery. She started by being a student at Artshack. She became a working member, teaching classes to mentally disabled adults and assisting with date night before starting to teach 5- and 8-week classes. She is a reporter and data journalism professor most days when she’s not playing with clay

Octavio is a ceramics artist from Montevideo, Uruguay. As a young boy he was able to get a hand feel of clay while experimenting with different techniques such as Raku, wood firing, Wabi Sabi and others. He started experimenting a bit more with wheel throwing as a young adult and now he has become an instructor for those fresh inquirers of wheel technique needing a methodization structure on how to conquer the unruly wheel. He tries to keep the class fun and dynamic and really delve into the rationalization of how our body and wheel communicate with each other. Come take a class with him! You won't regret it.

Quinn McNeill loves clay and community building! What luck she found Artshack!

Vannesa has over 10 years of experience working with ceramics. She studied microbiology and ceramics at UC Davis. Her work draws inspiration from natural forms and her background in biology. She has shown at galleries in New York and California. She currently works out of, and teaches at Artshack Brooklyn. Her work can be found on www.deandaceramics.com or in IG @deanda_ceramics

Alina Patrick is a photographer, ceramicist, and arts educator living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Alina is a 2023 Risograph Print and Publication Resident at the Penumbra Foundation where she published her first book of photography and poetry in October, 2023. She is also a 2023 Artist in Residence with the Little x Little artist residency program where she collaborated with dancer/choreographer Ameeya Singh to produce a dance adaptation of her book, How to grow una flor en el desierto. Alina's work focuses on land, memory, and intergenerational stories which she explores through a variety of mediums from clay to poetry. Photo credit Shina Peng.

ALVA CALYMAYOR b. Mexico City Alva is a visual artist living in New York. Alva makes use of a visual vocabulary that addresses social issues, perceptions of safety as well as patterns of mass consumption. She keeps track of its manifestations and the trace they leave as they are discarded, repurposed or become no longer functional. Her work has been exhibited in: Astral America (curated my Keren Moscovitch, SVA, NY), Chaos/Control (curated by Melinda Wang, Doing Living, NY), Harvest the Night (curated by Leah Dixon, Beverley's, NY), Collective Show Mexico (Casa Maauad, México, D.F.), Spring Break Art Show (NY), at MWOW (curated by Grayson Cox, Knockdown Center, NY). Alva was one of five artists selected for ("Air," Ace Hotel Residency, NY), curated by the BHQFU. She was a Mentor in NYFA's Program Mentorship for Immigrants Program (2014), formed part of the 27th Bronx Artist's in the Marketplace during 2006-2007, and received a Grant from the Stephen Sprouse Scholarship Fund for pushing the boundaries within the printmaking field. Alva has been recognized in several publications for exploring and showcasing art in a non-commercial format, for her collaborations with fellow artists through Eyelevel BQE, project that she co-funded in 2008: Interview Magazine (2013), "Alternative Histories," New York art spaces from 1960-2010, MIT Press (2012), Artists in the Marketplace second Biennial; "The Other Marketplace," Lia Zaalof (2013).

Angeli Rasbury is a self-taught visual, ceramics and textiles artist, award-winning writer, educator and lawyer. Angeli primarily works to evolve conversations about being a Black girl and woman in this world and unsung Black women sheroes. Her journalism has looked at girls in juvenile detention, formerly incarcerated mothers' struggle to reclaim children, and policies behind homelessness and gentrification. Angeli loves providing opportunities for youth to create ceramics, visual art, and poetry; dancing; traveling; and riding her bike.

Dini Dixon received a BFA in Ceramics from Pratt Institute. Her work explores the intersection of video and ceramics utilizing traditional ceramic techniques and stop motion animation. In 2018 she had solo exhibitions at 808 Projects in Denver and the Thomas Hunter Project Space in Manhattan.Her video The Long Goodbye was an official selection of the 2018 Supernova Digital Animation Festival. in 2023 She will be the artist in residence at Artshack Brooklyn. Currently Dini is Director of Youth Programs at Artshack Brooklyn. She works on her ceramics and clay-animation at her studio in East Williamsburg.

Elycia is our Annex studio manager, teaching artist for youth programs, and annual Woodfire class host. She is a ceramic artist whose works are inspired by her love of nature: from the forms to her surface design, all are pulling something from the earth.

Katie loves getting her hands in clay, and loves Artshack’s mission of making clay more accessible to all. As a ceramicist, she pays particular attention to the ways that working with clay is enlivening, healing, and full of lessons. She can’t get over this medium that is both so grounding, and expansive. Katie enjoys teaching people of all ages with clay, both on the pottery wheel and handbuilding, and thinks that a combo of the two makes really cool pieces. She finds inspiration in books, conversation, nature, the art of others, and by letting her own hands guide the way. If you see a small animal running around the studio or curled up in some clay, it’s her cat Eloise!