Deborah "Deb" Appleby
Board President

I have been in the glass field for the last 18 years. This all started with a glass weekend in New York. I then traveled to North Carolina’s Penland School of crafts where I started my training. A class at the Pilchuck glass school and a job brought me to the Pacific Northwest. The great Italian master’s class called me to Maine’s Haystack school of crafts and my first job offer in Europe. Finally settling in my home state of Delaware after years of traveling and training I hope to bring all these styles together in my one of a kind functional pieces. Drawing on the sea and the natural environment of maritime Sussex County I use glass frit, bar, powder, and in shop made murrine’s to create my patterns. Breath, hands and the day create the final shape.

 

Jeni Barton

Jeni Barton graduated with a BFA from the University of Delaware and continues to exhibit throughout the region. Barton's passion for the arts and talent as a community organizer led to her current position as Consultant for Arts Programming in the City of Wilmington Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs where she coordinates the monthly Wilmington Art Loop and works as an advocate for artists in the region.

 

Ryan Grover

Ryan Grover, Curator of the Biggs Museum in Dover, holds degrees from the art history department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Ryan specializes in 18th-and 19th-century interiors and has additional interests in the ceramics and textiles used in early America as well as 20th-century American visual culture.

 

Heidi Lowe

From snail door shells she found during her wedding in Tahiti, to sugar cane fields and brightly colored clothes during a Barbados vacation, to surfing and hiking at Cape Henlopen State Park, Rehoboth Beach jewelry artist Heidi Lowe finds inspiration near and far. “Nature definitely inspires me and the history of metalsmithing inspires me like old serving spoons and antique jewelry,” she said. The talented and bubbly artist is best known for her reverse-carved clouds in powder blue acrylic to bezzled agates, jaspers, and fossilized materials in decorated sterling silver backings. Lowe is the founder of the first art jewelry gallery in Rehoboth Beach, the eponymous Heidi Lowe Gallery at 328 Rehoboth Avenue. “I would really like the gallery to be a creative hub for jewelry artists to experiment and be a place to show their work and for the public to get acquainted with art jewelry,” said Lowe, who is an adjunct professor of metalsmithing at Towson University in Baltimore. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maine College of Art in Portland and a Master of Fine Arts from the State University of New York — New Paltz.

 

Deb Wool

Deborah Wool serves as a professor of Curatorial studies at Wesley College in Dover, DE.   She holds an MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA; an MA in Studio Art from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, IL; a BFA in Studio Painting, Sculpture and Neon Art from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, IL;  a BFA in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah Her studies and love of art have taken her all over Europe and the United States.