Making Center Staff

Alec Snow is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, drawing, collage, and sound. Their work is concerned with the material and aesthetic properties of rural environments and the way these properties act as structures or strictures that support and inhibit those who move around and through them. Alec graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in Fine Arts. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and Southwick, Massachusetts.

Alika Potts is a designer and maker hailing from the Tri-State and Philly whose studio practice is rooted in her diasporic identity. She spent her undergrad years studying fiber art, printmaking, and fashion. Alika’s professional career has included working in fine arts education; designing and fabricating large-scale installations; creating block-printed textiles, upholstery, apparel, and home decor design; and managing retail and projects. She enjoys creating environments and learning how to use new tools to hone her craft. Alika can’t resist an invitation to any kind of travel adventure.

Andrew Jarman is a New York–based artist primarily working in photography. He is a graduate of Pratt Institute with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Additionally, he is a fine art printer dedicated to supporting artists in analog and digital printing media. Andrew lives in Brooklyn, has many plants, and likes to cook, hike, see movies and performances, and read in the park.  

Andrew Kimbro graduated from Virginia Tech with a BS in Industrial Design in 2016. While in college, he discovered his desire to design and build furniture and just be in a shop as much as possible. Since graduating, he has spent time in a wide array of shop environments. He has spent time designing and building custom furniture in Richmond and Baltimore, teaching woodworking, and overseeing shops at MICA and NYIT. Over the years, he realized he enjoys sharing craft with others and is excited to continue to do so at Parsons.

Arly Amaya is an interdisciplinary artist, freelance designer, and sewing instructor based in Queens, New York. She holds a BFA in Fashion Design, with a specialization in Sportswear, from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her interests include but are not limited to patternmaking, machine knitting, and production management. Through her own journey in fashion and sewing, she has realized the true joy of imparting her knowledge to others.

Isabella Carry-McDonald is a New School alum transplanted to New York from rural Oregon. She worked as a student technician in the Specialty Sewing lab for four years while completing her BFA in Fashion Design. Her apparel design centers on experimental patternmaking, supplemented by shoe design and jewelry design.

An artist and educator, Benjamin Dimock has worked in various fabrication and instructional contexts after receiving a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught metalworking and forging at the Chicago Industrial Arts and Design Center; led youth in the production of a large-scale public sculpture with the Beam Center, based in Brooklyn; and constructed supports and armatures for displaying scientific and anthropological artifacts at the Field Museum of Natural History Chicago. Approaching technique and process as both conceptual and physical challenges is central to his educational work and studio practice.

Casey is a teacher and photographic artist with an affinity for older cameras and film processes. After earning his MFA at Parsons School of Design, he shifted to a conceptual photo practice, focusing on investigating his family’s Jewish history as a vehicle for understanding how certain narratives become part of national history and how others are left in the past. Bring Casey a broken camera or equipment, and he will enthusiastically try to fix it.

Catherine McCulloch (pronounced Katrine) (she/her) is a maker and designer, focusing on functional objects in a wide variety of materials. She lived and worked in Chicago for more than ten years running making spaces for the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and now calls Brooklyn home. When not making, she loves to cook, garden, and pet cats.

Chad Repp was born in Washington State. For many years, he traveled the country finding inspiration in the natural world. Chad developed his skills in historical restoration in New Jersey and Vermont, in bronze foundry work in Arizona, and in tall ship restoration in Connecticut. Settling for a while in rural Kentucky, he earned his Bachelor of Science in Technology and Design from Berea College. At Berea, Chad realized his passion for helping others with his skills in wood, metal, and small-scale production techniques and spent several years working with students, artists, and fabrication businesses in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Chad’s passion for wood, the metal arts, and fabrication, combined with his commitment to sharing his skills with others, led him to the Making Center.

Vera is a New York City–born sculptor. He received his Bachelor of Science in 2007 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and studied under sculptor Barney Hodes. He has been teaching at the Art Students’ League of New York since 2008 and working for The New School since 2012. He has shown in multiple venues along the East Coast and had long-term installations at venues such as Riverside Park South in New York City and Leonia Sculpture Garden in Leonia, New Jersey. His practice focuses on the use of representative modeling and metal-forming techniques to explore the nature of barriers and intimacy.

• www.damienavera.com

Danielle Clare Pomorski is a ceramics artist and playwright from Erie, Pennsylvania. Danielle attended Ohio Wesleyan University, focusing on ceramics and theater, and continued with her ceramics studies in Athens and later in Brooklyn, New York, where she currently lives. Danielle worked as a ceramics technician and instructor at Choplet Ceramics Studio for four years and has collaborated on facilitating a ceramics knowledge exchange program in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she led Raku workshops and worked with raw glaze materials. Her work was featured in a solo show and has been included in many group exhibitions. Her ceramics work is largely inspired by the environmental challenges and invasive species of the Great Lakes.

Deanna Siguenza is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Queens, New York. Her identity as an artist is informed by the history of craft and making. Her interests range from 3D technologies to textiles. Deanna has worked in art education and nonprofit art organizations. She enjoys working with new media and is excited to continue learning alongside her colleagues here at The New School.

Dylan Phillips is a designer and tinkerer primarily working with light. He has collaborated in multiple contexts, including performance, architecture, gallery, and public art. He has an MFA in Lighting Design from CalArts.

Echo is an interdisciplinary designer and artist based in New York City who graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in Product Design. As a designer, she believes in the significance of our daily objects, seeing them as media capable of changing our conventional ways of interpreting our daily lives. A creative, she enjoys working in metal and wood, experimenting with microcontrollers and LEDs, and exploring other media.

Ella Desmond is a printmaker and performance artist originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She holds a BFA in Printmaking from Louisiana State University and an MFA in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute. She excels in lithography and letterpress and recently completed a color-reduction relief print at the Vermont Studio Center, where she was a resident in 2019. Desmond has performed multiple times with the avant-strange ersatz music group Hide the Knives at Picasso Machinery in Williamsburg. She is currently working on a series of prints exploring the intersection between tragedy, comedy, and public service. Desmond lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

• http://www.edesmond.com

Eva Warne is a carpenter and mixed-media artist whose work exists in the realm between furniture design and functional art. They graduated from TNS with a BFA in Product Design and have experience with wood and metal working, glass casting, CNC milling, and ceramics. Eva enjoys the lathe, working large scale, and 80 grit sandpaper.

Hannah Wong is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker living in Queens, New York. She holds a BA in Screen Studies from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and a BFA in Photography with a minor in Printmaking from Parsons School of Design.

Hashem Eaddy is an artist who lives and works in New York City. He received his BFA in Studio Art and BA in Art History from Queens College in 2012. He has worked as a professional printer for more than ten years while making art, riding bikes, traveling, exhibiting, hiking, and helping people figure stuff out. You can research him on the World Wide Web if you would like to know more about him, but it’s probably better to ask him if you see him.

Henry Portillo is a printmaker and 2D animator born and educated in the Bronx. He enjoys demystifying printmaking processes and assisting developing artists whenever he can. He is currently working on a mythological narrative with his pantheon of “Gawds,” a family of flawed, vulnerable deities of color. Part self-portrait, these figures embark on a journey while enduring an existential crisis like the one that plagues so many of us, embracing vices to suppress these emotions, and, ultimately, realizing their ability to adapt and persevere.
 
Portillo earned a BA and an MFA in Printmaking from Lehman College. He currently manages a print shop in The Gowanus Studio Space.

• www.henryportillo.com

Huy Nguyen is joining the Making Center as a digital tools technician. He is a multimedia artist originally from Portland, Oregon, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Huy worked as a 3D printing engineer for Shapeways for five years and is a multifaceted fabricator and designer. In his spare time, Huy works as a freelance illustrator, graphic designer, and animator. Outside of art and design, Huy enjoys nothing more than skateboarding, cycling, petting dogs, and singing karaoke.

Jason Rabie is an Australian lost in New York. He received his BFA from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his MFA in Digital Media from Rhode Island School of Design. His interests include the insides of old technology, anthropomorphic furniture, making pinball machines out of mirrors, music, and soccer.

• www.jasonrabie.com

Jillian Hurley is an interdisciplinary fibers artist and textile designer. She has worked in a range of industries relating to art, education, textiles, and design since earning her BFA in Fibers from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2012. Prints, patterns, and textures bring her joy on a daily basis. Jillian’s favorite works accentuate the interplay between sculpture, installation, and product design.

Joe Hirsch received a BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design and has been part of the school ever since. Originally from Japan, he traveled to North America to study arts. He is passionate about visual design and narrative.

Kasia Hope is a Polish interdisciplinary artist and recent graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design where she received a BFA in Textiles. Working mostly with textiles, archival family photos, and different sculptural media, she explores how transforming materials and creating environments can represent memory, identity, and human relationships. She is happy to call New York her new home, having moved here recently after completing residencies in Berlin and Iceland. 

Kat Nash is a decorative artist and designer. They are a recent graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, where they earned a BFA in Craft and Material Studies with a concentration in Woodworking and Furniture Design. As a craft artist, they explore many different media including but not limited to wood, ceramics, fibers, metals, and glass. Kat’s greatest interest is in creating playful, functional home objects. Creating furniture with the user’s body position in mind allows Kat to alter the way in which users interact with the world around them. Integral to Kat’s practice is their desire to encourage play in themself and others.

Kelly Chang is a multidisciplinary artist and maker of many types of things. With a background in product design, 3D animation, motion design, and visual effects for television and film, Kelly has broad experience with a variety of digital tools. He is currently working on developing his fine art practice working in ceramics and mold making. Kelly is a bicycle person and a dog person.

Lacie Garnes (she/her) is an artist, educator, and arts administrator who works primarily with photography and video. Her work has been shown nationally and abroad and involves familial landscapes, surveillance and voyeurism, and queer belonging and identity. Lacie has an MFA in Art and Technology Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in Photography and Digital Arts from Bowling Green State University.

Lauren Phillips is a sculptor from Sacramento, California. She received her bachelor's degree in fine arts from Parsons School of Design. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

• www.laurenrosephillips.com

Leah Wolff received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2006 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2011. She has managed ceramic studios and taught at Columbia University, Drew University, New Jersey City University, RISD, and MoMA. Leah is a co-founding director of Meta Meta Meta LLC, a Brooklyn-based not-for-profit established to support underrepresented artists through collaboration and community engagement. A recent participant in Two Trees’ Cultural Space Program, she was previously an artist-in-residence at Cooper Union and the Museum of Art and Design’s Artist Studios.

Luis Manuel Diaz (born in Michoacán, Mexico) is a visual artist working with photography. Drawing on personal and communal history, his practice examines the post-migration consciousness, particularly notions of home, citizenship, and care. He has exhibited work at the Aperture Foundation, Bronx Art Space, Arnold and Sheila Aronson Gallery, Baxter St at the Camera Club, and other venues. He has been commissioned by The Nation, the New Yorker, and the California Sunday Magazine and has been published by BOOOOOOOM, JOIA, i-D, Musee, Foam Magazine, and other outlets. Diaz holds a BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design and is currently based in Westchester, New York, and Stamford, Connecticut.

Madison Koczo is a multidisciplinary artist and instructor. After graduating with a BFA in Painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she has used figures and animals in her work exploring the dismantling of memory. She has extensive knowledge of art history and experience in printmaking and sculpture (primarily clay, wood, and metal). She also received an accelerated fashion certificate from Made Institute in Philadelphia, where she developed her knowledge of sewing and garment construction and worked as a freelance fashion designer and illustrator. Koczo continues to expand her practice in art and fashion. She is passionate about creating and maintaining safe spaces in education and work environments and never shies away from difficult conversations in life or in her art. When she’s not making, Koczo can be found on her couch studying foreign languages with her two cats, Piper and Cheeto, at her side.

María del Mar Hernández Gil de Lamadrid is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Using photography, video, and performance in a creative and conceptual process, she draws on her diasporic experiences as a migrant and on the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in her work. She uses her body to metaphorically produce actions of resistance, emotion, and reclamation of power. Hernández’s work has been shown nationally and internationally.

Hernández completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography at Parsons School of Design.

Megan Stroech is a visual artist whose work explores the dichotomies between realness and imitation, image and object, and luxury and the common through references from pop culture, still life, and domestic spaces. Stroech constructs unusual arrangements of readily available materials, subverting conventional understanding of their utility in order to spark new dialogues between them. Often using inexpensive, widely available "luxury" items, such as Styrofoam food and marble-printed Contact paper, as materials, she invites the viewer to draw on their own experience, whether in connection with a specific material or with the overall form of a piece.

Stroech received her MFA in Printmaking with Exceptional Merit from Illinois State University in 2012 and her BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008.

Meghan Sickler is a textile designer specializing in decorative interior wovens and natural dyeing processes. A lifelong fiber artist, she received a formal education in this field through FIT’s BFA program in Textile/Surface Design, a term studying jacquard production, and intensive independent study of natural dyes at NSCAD. Sickler also earned an AAS in Entrepreneurial Marketing/Accounting, enabling her to bring an understanding of business to the end use of textile creations and the valuation of tactile works' life cycles. She has continued to participate in apprenticeship-style learning with masters in her field and in design courses at RISD, Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute, The Capital District Arts Center, and TAC. Sickler's broad studies are reflected in her research-based practice of fiber art. She loves to discuss chemical reactions in textile techniques but is hard-pressed to chat about knitting!

Mick Hondlik has extensive professional and academic leadership experience in technology and design, business and marketing, and nonprofit and volunteer organizations. He is always seeking project opportunities as a problem solver with groups that require experience in human factors, solid technical and engineering ability, an understanding of marketing and communications, and a passion for social and educational impact and change.

Hondlik holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a BS in Physics from the University of Wisconsin, an MBA with Sustainability Focus from the University of Cincinnati, and an MPS in Interactive Design/Technology from NYU. His specialties include design and technology; business and marketing strategy; social impact; sustainability; leadership, organization, and coordination; rapid prototyping and manufacturing; and technology education.

Mick Hondlik—Director, Making Center

Nate Harger received his BFA in Photography from the Cleveland Institute of Art. He went on to receive his MFA in Photography and Related Technologies from Parsons School of Design in 2008.

His exhibition debut in New York City was the critically acclaimed 2009 Contradictions in Black and White, which placed his work alongside that of Irving Penn, Margaret Bourke-White, and Walker Evans. His first solo gallery exhibition was at Hasted Kraeutler in New York in 2010. Harger’s international solo debut was at Gallery Kong in Seoul in 2013. His work has been featured in several publications, including New York, Harper’s Bazaar Korea, Luel, and Zoom.

Harger has been honored as one of Photo District News 30 Under 30, a list of “emerging photographers worth watching,” and has been nominated for the 2009 Santa Fe Prize for Photography and the 2010 Prix Pictet. His images were also included in American Photograph’s Images of the Year portfolio for 2008 and Wallpaper Magazine’s Photo Graduate Directory of 2009. His photographs have been acquired by numerous important institutions, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and The Margulies Collection.

Remi Hirschtick is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. They graduated from The New School in 2019 with a BFA in Fine Arts and a BA in Visual Studies. Hirschtick runs and hosts a monthly poetry and performance event called Drafts on Tap (@drafts_on_tap on Instagram) and is the head of events for the Lesbian Bookstore’s New York chapter. They love biking, hiking, themed parties, and good cover songs.

I am an emerging designer in my junior year of study in the Product Design program at Parsons School of Design. I work primarily with wood but have branched out to experiment with felt and cork. As a designer, I gravitate toward the Scandinavian Modern and Postmodern design styles. Creative problem solving and collaboration are central to my design approach.

Sarah Lam is a New York City–based industrial designer whose work focuses on human-centered design. She graduated in 2021 with a BFA in Product Design from Parsons School of Design, where she discovered her passion for making things. Driven by the desire to help others, Lam aims to create products that improve the quality and practicality of daily life. In her free time, she enjoys creating ceramic tableware.

Shirla Auguste is an experienced textile designer and textile technician who has extensive experience working in higher education. She has been trained in machine knitting, industrial knitting, handloom weaving, repeat pattern print design, and Adobe Creative Suite.

• http://www.shirlaauguste.com

Teke cocina is an interdisciplinary artist living in New York who makes prints, books, sculptures, stickers, videos, interventions, statements, whispers, etc. about stars, being queer, aliens, love, the weather, friendship, photographs,  trees, Hendrik Goltzius, Hercules, moire, shadows, etc.

Timothy Colose is a photographer based in NYC. His work is fundamentally portrait photography, and he has specialized in the use of analog processes and darkroom techniques to personalize the work. Timothy received his BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in Photography and he recently graduated from the School of Visual Arts with an MFA in Photography and Related Media.

Born in Hong Kong before growing up in England, Yin Ting Lau received her BFA in Fine Arts from Parsons. During her studies, she embarked on the biggest love affair of her life—with the E4 Metal Shop! An interdisciplinary artist who often makes dysfunctional/impractical art objects, she hopes to help students create their perfectly “floopy” and weird art projects in a structurally safe and efficient way. You can find her in the N2 General Wood Shop and the E4 Wood and Metal Shops.

• http://www.tingteal.com

Zarrin Karimi is a mixed-media artist and designer focusing primarily in print media. Their pronouns are they, he, and she. Zarrin graduated from Parsons with a BFA in Communication Design and a BA in History from Eugene Lang College. Their work focuses on queer identity and is rooted in anti-capitalism. He is the co-founder of Roller Ink Riso, a risograph practice based in Brooklyn, New York. Zarrin’s cat, Bernie, is the prettiest devil you ever did see.