Introducing new PCA&D faculty; announcing new faculty positions

With the opening of a new PCA&D academic year, we also welcome new faculty and staff joining the College community, and those who are stepping into new roles:

Joining PCA&D

Emily Artinian (Fine Art): Artinian produces artists’ books, text-based art, installations, and audience participation works. Some of her areas of focus have included narrative and storytelling projects, Occupy Wall Street, the city of Wilmington, Del., and the complex relationships we have with material objects and ownership. Her bookworks are in many public and private collections, including Tate Britain and the Art Institute of Chicago, and she has participated in the collateral exhibition section of the Venice Biennale. In 2011, she founded Street Road, a project space in Cochranville, Chester County, that explores intersections between art and ownership, particularly of land, buildings, and space. Artinian holds a BA degree in Russian Literature from Columbia College, a Master of Art in Slavic Literatures from Yale University, and a Master of Art with honors in Artists’ Books from the Camberwell College of Arts, London. She has taught Foundation courses at Chelsea College of Art and Byam Shaw/Central Saint Martins in London.

Brittany Blair (Animation & Game Art): A 2018 Digital Media BFA graduate of PCA&D, Blair earned a Master of Arts degree in Game Design from Academy of Art University in San Francisco. There, Blair worked in the university’s indie game studio “Studio X”, where she led and mentored a group of BFA game design students in the development of experimental room-scale Virtual Reality game experiences. As a PCA&D student, she worked with faculty to found the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design AMC SIGGRAPH Student Chapter and began her journey as an educator through her work mentoring other students. Blair has taught 3D Animation for the College’s Center for Creative Exploration and has worked in freelance game design and asset creation.

Jill Broderic (Foundations of Verbal Communication): Broderic has taught for nearly 30 years — English communication, literature, composition, and journalism courses — at the secondary level, working with students of all ability levels and creative aptitudes. Additionally, she has managed people and programs as an English Department chair, journalism adviser, and director of secondary gifted education. Broderic holds a Master of Education in Teaching and Curriculum and a Bachelor of Humanities in English Education, both from Penn State University.

Jesse Clark (Global Musics): Clark is nearing completion of his Ph.D. in Music Studies from Temple University and holds a bachelor’s degree in Music Composition from Lebanon Valley College. He is an artist of multiple disciplines, and his work can be seen and heard in Oscar-qualifying films, Grammy award-winning albums, ballets, and operas, as well as in immersive exhibitions of community artists in and around the Lancaster area.

Dr. Caitlin Glosser (Art History): An art historian specializing in modern European art history, with a secondary concentration in the historical and contemporary arts of Africa, Glosser graduated with her Ph.D. from Emory University. Her research focuses on questions of intermediality, collaboration, gender, race, power, and the construction of knowledge.  Passionate about collaborative work, Glosser has also spent three years working with a team on the digital-born project Mapping Senufo, visualizing the knowledge infrastructure around Senufo-labelled objects from Côte d’Ivoire, the Ivory Coast in West Africa.

Randy Haldeman (Illustration): Haldeman is a PCA&D alumnus and has taught in the College’s Center for Creative Exploration. He also has taught children between the ages of 8-18 at the Art Matters Studio and as a private art tutor.  Haldeman’s teaching expertise includes comics, basics of illustration and design, and fantasy art.

Greg Herring (Esports Management): A 21-year sports marketing veteran with 18 years in collegiate athletics, Herring also is the Director of Marketing, Communication, and Community Engagement for the Nashville Superspeedway. Additionally, this Ohio native served as a sports management visiting instructor at York College of Pennsylvania, as the Vice President of Marketing for the Memphis Express in the Alliance of American Football (AAF), and as the President of the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators (NACMA). Herring holds a bachelor’s degree from Miami University, Ohio, and a master’s from The University of Southern Mississippi.

Pete Hudack (Graphic Design): Hudack is a cross-disciplinary visual designer and front-end web developer with a passion for both technology and design. He has worked in the design and tech-related fields for more than 20 years, in positions at multiple marketing agencies around the Lancaster area, and has run his own freelance web development business. His career has given him the opportunity to collaborate with several high-profile clients including Nike, Finish Line, and Walmart. Pete enjoys the challenge of ‘bridging the gap’ between designers and developers to help teams work together more efficiently. He received his BFA in Communication Design from Kutztown University.

Katie Jacobson (Performance Studies): A Lancaster-based dramaturg, actor, and museum professional, her academic interests include early modern drama, history of the book, and theater and performance theory. She has a background in classical acting, has trained at institutions such as Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., and has worked as a dramaturg in Chicago. When Jacobson isn’t teaching, she can be found at the North Museum of Nature and Science, where she works as the Manager of Special Projects. Jacobson earned her BA degree in English Literature and Theatre Arts from Skidmore College, and her Master of Art from the University of Chicago’s Master’s Program in the Humanities with a concentration in English Literature and Theater & Performance Studies.

Rich Johnson (Graphic Design): Johnson has worked as a graphic designer/creative director using Adobe software since 1997 in various agency settings and as a freelancer. He has taught Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign since 1996, both in college settings as an adjunct professor and as a contracted corporate trainer. He has a technical background in image prep/manipulation and prepress focusing on output and complex composites prepared for different press and online needs. In addition to design and production, he is also a professional photographer and videographer. Rich holds a BS in Education, with a focus in Art Education, from Millersville University.

Lucas Korte (Illustration): A Lancaster-based professional illustrator, artist, and educator, Korte has taught painting and drawing, previously at the University of Notre Dame, for seven years. As an illustrator, he works primarily in the underground death metal scene. His clients are based all over the world including in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. He holds a BA degree in Biological Sciences from Wayne State University, studied Fine Art at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, and holds a Master of Fine Art degree from Notre Dame University.

Normandie Luscher (Illustration): An illustrator and designer with an interest in storytelling, comics, fashion, patterns, product and surface design, and lettering and typography, Luscher graduated with an MFA degree from MICA’s Illustration Practice program in 2019, and has taught as an adjunct professor with MICA and Towson University, Maryland.

Courtney Mengel (Art History): Mengel holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, Art, and Visual Culture from Lebanon Valley College and earned her Master of Arts degree in the History of Art, with a focus in Italian Renaissance, from Syracuse University. There, she participated in the Florence Program in Italian Renaissance Art, with experience at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. Mengel was engaged with the history and practice of art conservation, art historical theories, methods, and historiography, the collection and display of art, and the manner in which the visual culture of the period relates to larger Mediterranean and global historical and artistic contexts. In addition to teaching Art History at PCA&D, she is a feature writer for Engle Printing & Publishing, Inc.

Matt Novak (Animation & Game Art): A former PCA&D assistant professor in Illustration, Novak has returned full time for this academic year as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Animation & Game Art.  Novak has been an author and illustrator of picture books for almost 35 years.  Mouse TV was a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and Newt received an International Literacy Association’s Children’s Choice Award. His work has been reviewed by the New York Times and he has been a puppeteer, a teacher, and a Disney artist. He holds a BFA degree from the School of the Visual Arts in New York, NY.

Jonah Primiano (Animation & Game Art): A Los Angeles-based filmmaker, Primiano uses precise editing and selective graphite rotoscoping to deconstructs media and reveal and challenge political, cultural, and ideological structures. He is interested in materiality, indexicality, and the relationship between culture, image, and meaning. He is the editor and publisher of the animation magazine Mostly Moving and is currently a Postgraduate Teaching Fellow for CalArts. He holds an MFA in Experimental Animation from CalArts and a BFA in Animation from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Patrick Quinlan (Business in Creative Industry): Quinlan is a long-time member of the faculty of Adrian College, Michigan, where he served as Department Chair and President of the teachers’ union. He has extensive experience teaching courses in Principles of Marketing, Sales Management, Advertising and Promotion Management, Consumer Behavior, and Marketing Research.

Kathleen Eastwood Riaño (Foundation): The Philadelphia-based Riaño joins PCA&D as an Assistant Professor, and produces paintings, drawings, and installations that investigate intergenerational memory.  She is a 2021 grant recipient from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and a 2021 recipient of the Fleisher Wind Challenge Solo Exhibition. Kathleen received her MFA in Painting from The San Francisco Art Institute and her BFA in Painting and Drawing from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has taught at The Tyler School of Art at Temple University, The University of the Arts, and Moore College of Art & Design.

New roles

In addition, several PCA&D faculty members will be stepping into new roles:

Becky Blosser (Fine Art Chair): An assistant professor of Fine Art, Blosser now will serve as Chair of the Fine Art department.  She has been with PCA&D full time since 2018, and began as a part-time instructor in 2014.

Jon di Venti (Illustration faculty): Di Venti, assistant professor and chair of the Animation and Game Art department, will transition to full-time teaching in the Illustration department.

Caitlin Downs (Director of the Writing Center & Liberal Arts faculty member): A a mainstay of the Foundations of Verbal Communication and creative writing programs at the College since 2014, Downs has developed many of PCA&D’s literature courses, including Fantasy Literature, Science Fiction & Horror Literature, and Diverse Voices in Literature. Her dual master’s degrees in Creative Writing and English combined with her experience tutoring and teaching developmental writing, rhetoric, creative writing, and communication courses at multiple colleges over the past decade has positioned her well to take the helm of PCA&D’s new Writing Center, which she helped to launch as co-director in 2020. Her MFA thesis was a collection of visual poetry based on a historic grimoire cataloging regionally specific healing remedies. Downs received a Saltire Scholarship to study and present her work on spoken word poetry at the University of Edinburgh in 2016. She also has a visual arts certificate in photography, which has led her to explore cross-disciplinary studies. Her particular interest is work in which images and language intersect, such as concrete or visual poetry.

Michelle Fogel (Assistant Professor in General Humanities): Fogel has been a part-time faculty member in the Liberal Arts department at PCA&D for 13 years, teaching courses in theater, linguistics, verbal communication, folklore, and cultural studies. In 2020, she helped to launch the College’s Writing Center as co-director, and she has been the faculty advisor for multiple student clubs, including PCA&D’s improv theater group Yes &. Her background external to the college in arts-based education, teaching artist residency programs, and critical literacy curriculum development has enabled her to empower students by fostering creativity and life skills through storytelling, writing, dramatics, and community building, and she will also work with students this fall as a faculty persistence mentor. She is the founder of Dramability Works!, a unique arts-infused theater program for young adults with cognitive disabilities. Fogel has been a teaching artist with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for the past five years, leading the Neighborhood Bridges storytelling curriculum in the School District of Lancaster.

Laura Korzon (Part-Time faculty): Korzon has taught at the College as an adjunct professor since 2018.  She has spearheaded three new courses and brought real-world clients, like Vans, into her projects. She also serves as faculty secretary and minute-taker for the Committee of the Whole and supports pan-institutional events such as Designathon.

Angie Kost (Part-Time faculty): Kost has taught art history, visual culture, and communication courses for the College as an adjunct professor since 2015. Her educational and professional background in art education and years of experience teaching and developing art history and art education curricula at several area colleges has piqued her interest in pursuing a second master’s degree in Art History with a concentration in Modern Art with a focus on gender studies (2022).

William Mammarella (Foundation Chair): Assistant professor and former Chair of the Fine Art department, Mammarella will Chair the Foundation department. He began teaching at PCA&D in 1997 and has been a full-time faculty member since 2015.

David Spolum (Part-Time faculty): Spolum has been teaching at PCA&D as an adjunct professor for 18 years and is a Master Lecturer at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. His teaching and research areas of expertise are in film and English literature, particularly the cutting-edge documentary film work of Stephen and Timothy Quay. At PCA&D, he has recently has taught Mythology, Constructing Secondary Worlds, and film course offerings such as Cult Cinema and Painting with Light: Cinema and the Visual Arts.

Todd Ulrich (Part-Time faculty): A 2014 alumnus of the Illustration program, Ulrich and has been teaching at PCA&D as an adjunct professor since 2016.  His broad experience in digital illustration media has been important in developing students’ ability to paint digitally as well as 3D modeling.  He has extensive professional experience as well, working for Skullduggery Press, Braine Games, ClearHorizon Miniatures, and Loud Ninja Studio.

Natasha Warshawsky (Animation & Game Art Department Chair, Assistant Professor): Warshawsky joined PCA&D six years ago in the then-Digital Media department, and now has been named an Assistant Professor and Chair of Animation & Game Art. She was essential in designing and teaching new courses, especially in 3D animation. She has served as a part-time instructor overseeing the capstone learning experience for Animation & Game Art students, has taught numerous elective courses, and offered high school-level classes in game design, motion graphics/video editing, and experience design.  She earned her BS in Animation and Visual Effects and a Master of Science in Digital Media from Drexel University.

Robert Young (Illustration Department Chair): Young joined PCA&D in 2019 as an assistant professor of Illustration.