Susan Corl is a visual folk artist/quilter/poet.  Susan's specialties are textiles, fibers, mixed media and multi-cultural crafts.  A versatile artist working with   in many forms, her work has a strong emphasis on pattern and color inspired from nature and folk art from around the world. Corl has been a member of the Arizona Commission on the Arts Roster since 1996 doing residencies in schools and communities throughout Arizona.  These have included a focus on two and three dimensional design, quilting, bookmaking and handmade paper, sculpture, mask making and puppetry, highlighting natural and recycled materials.  Susan is particularly interested in process and technique, one example:  gathering and processing plants into sheets of paper that are bound into a handmade book written in calligraphy. Her workshops emphasize the use of natural materials and recycling and connect to the core curriculum while implementing the Arts Standards.

susancorl@hotmail.com

Visual Artist 

Alex Jones worked as an artist and illustrator in Los Angeles,  primarily in the record industry (ie. Warner Bros. Records, the Welk Music Group and Vanguard Records). For over a decade he provided cover and spot illustrations for Warner Bros. Records monthly sales catalog The Guide. His graphic work has been used for posters, album covers, greeting cards, T-shirts, coffee mugs. His clients have included The Los Angeles Southwest Museum, The Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and Chaleur ceramics. Alex has marketed and licensed these works under the company name Roadside Distractions.

Alex has recently joined the artists of Southeastern Arizona Arts and Academics bringing his draftsmanship skills to the mix. His classes center around the powers of observation offering students an approach to visualizing a subject through it's basic individual elements of shape and proportion by creating very simple step by step progression drawings. He provides his students a template to guide them through their own creative process giving them a starting point from which they can realize their own vision of the world around them.

achapinjones@yahoo.com

Kimi Eisele   is a multi-disciplinary artist. Kimi facilitates students of all ages to enter the writing, research and documenting process through movement, artifacts, and memories. Her work explores how individual and community geographies intersect and how personal and political landscapes can be communicated with words, images, maps, and the body.

As an artist on Arizona Commission of the Arts Artist Roster, Kimi has taught creative writing and movement in schools and institutions for the past eight years. She served for five years as the Writing Director of VOICES, Inc. mentoring young people in writing, research, and interviewing for the after-school magazine program, 110 Degrees. For that work she was awarded the 2005 Compass Health Care "Dynamic Duo Award: Making a Difference" with photographer Josh Schachter.

Kimi is the Special Projects Director for NEW ARTiculations DanceTheatre, where she has facilitated community dance projects using modern dance and personal stories to illuminate issues of social, political, or environmental significance.

Paul Fisher is a private consultant specializing in the use of creativity and theatre as tools of assessment, learning, communication and critical thinking.  He has conducted staff development and worked in-classroom with The University of Arizona, Tucson Unified, Marana and Sunnyside School Districts, charter and private schools.  Mr. Fisher is also a performer, writer and director.

Paul Fisher has worked in differing venues, in a variety of locations, throughout the US, in Europe, Russia and Africa. He has consulted for INTUIT, Canyon Ranch, and many other organizations.  He teaches creative thinking, lectures for The Learning Curve, consults with the National Endowment for the Arts, and UA Presents, at the University of Arizona.

Mr. Fisher is a graduate of the University of Birmingham, Great Britain.  He has published a variety of books and articles. 

Referred to as "the Robin Williams of Education", he is a veteran teacher.  Mr. Fisher always provides a stimulating, hilarious & educational experience.

Paul@murielofskye.com

Carrie Starr  is a vocal and instrumental teacher.  She also works as an Orff Schulwerk music specialist,  "I have found that students learn best when they're having fun at what they're doing. "    Active music making, dancing and acting all play a part in Orff-based instruction.   Carrie was a music teacher who was heavily involved in school improvement efforts.   Her variation on teaching the Orff model includes integrating core subject standards into music instruction, thus using excitement and enthusiasm to enliven students' daily work.  She has taught K-Community College level classes and brings a particular emphasis on world music and rhythmic improvisation to my work.

carrie_starr@yahoo. com

Alida Wilson-Gunn, a native Arizonan, became a staff member of Borderlands Theater at the end of their 2002/2003 Season and now manages their Education Outreach Program.  This season she is directing the Coyote y Culebra Youth Projects' Wind in the Shadows and original and evolving piece of theater inspired and created by students and arranged by Toni Press-Coffman, as part of an ongoing in-school workshop, writing and performance project.  Alida previously directed Coyote y Culebra and Javalino Balerino, an ensemble piece, as part of the Folktales Youth Project, developed by Borderlands Theater and Folklorist Professor Maribel Alvarez, written by Toni Press-Coffman, conceived by Maribel Alvarez, Eva Tessler, Toni Press-Coffman, and my self, with assistance from Jim Griffith and the Southwest Center (Humanities Department) at the University of Arizona.  Alida has been affiliated with Borderlands Theater since 1989, starting as an actress in La Casa de Bernarda Alba/The House of Bernarda Alba.  Since then she has performed in several Borderlands' productions. 

She has worked professional as an actress and  a theater technician in New York and  Los Angles.

gunndrama@aol.com 

Josh Schachter is a photographer, visual storyteller, educator, and community activist who has worked for organizations throughout the U.S. to document issues from urban revitalization to food security. His images have been published internationally in books, magazines, newspapers, films and web sites, in venues ranging from the New York Times to the Navajo Times. Josh earned a master's degree in environment management at the Yale School of Forestry and Environment Studies, where he explored how urban youth could use photography to share their own lives and perspectives. Over the past decade he has taught documentary photography to youth, teachers, neighborhood groups, and nonprofit organizations in places ranging from New Delhi to Nigeria. Since 2005 he has developed a passion for digital storytelling and has facilitated digital storytelling workshops in the US, India and South Africa. You can learn more about Josh's work at www.joshphotos.com and www.findingvoiceproject.org.

joshsch@cox.net

Toni Press-Coffman was born and raised the Bronx. She has written 20 plays, which have been produced throughout the country.  She has had work developed at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Sundance Institute, Midwest Professional Playwrights Laboratory, and Minneapolis' Playwrights Center.  In addition to writing plays, she has taught playwrights at the undergraduate and graduate levels and mentored them through her work as the Literary Manager of Tucson's Borderlands Theater, and taught K-5 children through a Tucson Pima Arts Council residency.

Created with a grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Press-Coffman's Touch has been produced throughout the United States, including a 2003 Off-Broadway production and a production at Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival.  Her play about the Los Angeles riots, Trucker Rhapsody, was developed at Playlabs in Minneapolis in 2003 and subsequently produced in Indianapolis and San Francisco.

Press-Coffman lives, writes, teaches and acts, in Tucson. She wrote her most recent play, Armor, with a Sloan Foundation commission.

tpplay@cox.net