Deborah "Deb" Appleby
Board President
Deb is a glass maker and designer, and has spent the last ten years traveling to learn her craft. She started her training at Penland in North Carolina, then to the northwest's Pilchuck School and lastly Europe, before settling in her home state of Delaware. Deborah has won 18 National Awards and 2 International Awards in 2003. All of the pieces are one of a kind functional creations whether it be a small votive or a large sink.
Connie Ballato
Treasurer
Having spent most of her career working with computers as an IT Analyst for a Fortune 500 company in Wilmington, DE, Connie switched gears (or “sides of the brain”) and has been working with glass since 1994, when she purchased a home in historic Lewes. She is primarily commissioned to create stained glass windows for homes, churches and businesses, and she also creates fused glass art works. Her work has been shown in the Peninsula Gallery in Lewes, and her studio has been on the Lewes Artists’ Studio Tour for the past five years. Her work is installed in many churches, homes and businesses in the tri-state area, and also in the Court of Chancery courtroom in Georgetown, DE.
Bobbie Brooks
Bobbie is the Marketing Coordinator for SSD Technology Partners in New Castle, Delaware. She has over twenty years of experience working in the non-profit sector in roles such as fundraising, development, administration and volunteer recruitment. Bobbie returned to school after raising her family and continues to pursue a Psychology degree from Widener University. She comes to Delaware By Hand with enthusiasm to contribute to the success of our mission and high expectations for future growth and development of the organization.
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.
Joan Hoge
In 1998 Joan was hired to be the executive director of the Historical Society of Talbot County in Easton, Maryland where she became involved in numerous community and professional organizations including the conference committee for the Small Museum Association, board member for the Maryland Association of History Museums, grant reviewer for the Maryland State Arts Council, Advisory Committee for Governor’s House, and a member of the Easton Rotary Club.
Almost 20 years after leaving Delaware for college, Joan found herself returning to Wilmington in November 2003 to become the executive director of the Historical Society of Delaware. She currently resides in the Old 9th Ward in Wilmington. In her free time she enjoys sailing and traveling in the American Southwest.
Grant Massey
Artist who specializes in creating metal and wood sculpture. Grant's projects include indoor/outdoor lamps, garden sculpture and furniture. His pieces have appeared in museums, galleries and private homes throughout the United States. In 1999, the Department of State purchased a mobile for the new American embassy in Ottawa, Canada
Sandra Ridgely
Secretary
Resident of Dover since 1959. Graduate of the University of the Arts, Graduate work University of Delaware, Savannah College of Art, Delaware State University. She has exhibited art work, Watercolors, Oils and Basketmaking at various venues. Member of Delaware State Arts council, 1974-1977 (Gov. S. Tribbitt appointee). Member of the Delaware State Arts council, 1979-1981 (Gov P. S. duPont appointee). Art Educator of the Year, 1988. Order of the First State recipiant, 1979. Currently retired from teaching, she is a volunteer docent at the Biggs Museum of American Art, a mediator for the Center of Community Justice. A volunteer, Odydessy of the Mind Judge and occasionally at the Delaware Agricultural Museum in Basketmaking Education.
Peter Saenger
Peter has 30 years experience as a Porcelain artist and designer. He has received several awards, and been in numerous shows and publications:
Award of Distinction - 2004 Naples National Art Festival, Naples FL
2001-2002 OBJECTS for USE: Hand Made by Design, American Craft Museum, New York NY
Jurors' Choice 3D - 1999 Columbus Arts Festival. Columbus, OH
1998 Saint Louis Art Fair. St. Louis MO
First Place 3D - 1998 Northern Virginia Arts Festival. Reston, VA
1998 Gasparilla Arts Festival. Tampa, FL
Excellence in Design - Third Annual American Craft Exposition. Chicago, IL
Joyce K. Schiller
Joyce K. Schiller has been Curator, American Art at the Delaware Art Museum since December 2001. Prior to coming to Delaware she worked as the Curator at Reynolda House Museum of American Art in North Carolina and as the Museum Lecturer at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
In the field of American art Schiller’s working expertise encompasses painting, sculpture, works on paper, the decorative arts, and architectural history from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Her subject specialty in American art history is the collaborative work of the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and the architect Stanford White. But she had published a variety of articles and catalogs on such diverse topics as Reading Portraits Through Buttons and Bows, and “‘A Deep Dream of Peace’: John La Farge’s Memorial Windows for the First Unitarian Church of Detroit,” to her current traveling special exhibition, Seeing the City: Sloan’s New York produced with DAM’s Associate Curator, Heather Campbell Coyle.
Wesner “Wes” Stack
Wes is a relative newcomer to the world of art, having previously spent a career in education in Delaware. Initially working in metal sculpture, Wes was introduced to ceramics by Amie Sloan at the Rehoboth Art League five years ago. He now concentrates on wheel thrown and hand built work involving various types of firing techniques (raku, sagger and pit firing). He participates in several annual shows and his work can be seen a variety of galleries and venues in the southern Delaware area.
Barbara Warden
After getting her master's degree from the University of Maryland, Barbara Warden began her career first as a painter and an instructor, then in three dimensional design, later as a freelance photographer and now as a fiber artist. In l999, she realized that working with fiber was a natural extension for her of painting and drawing. Color and line are the two formal elements that are fundamental to each unique pieced quilt.
She believes that color carries meaning and that the density of line creates three dimensional surfaces. There are many influences on her work including Japanese textile design, Native American weavings and contemporary abstract painting.
