Addie Boswell
Addie Boswell likes to think of herself as a Professional Creative. Her mission is to empower creativity in children and adults: when not painting or writing/illustrating children's books, she teaches recycled art residencies and directs community art projects. She has collaborated with multiple organizations in Portland, including SCRAP, the Mudeye Puppet Company, Multnomah County Libraries, The Children’s Cancer Association, Legacy Emmanuel Hospital, Future Problem Solving Program, the Society of Children's Writers & Illustrators, SUN Schools, Boys and Girls Clubs, and multiple school districts. She believes the hardest part of making a living as an artist is the constant self-direction, and her classes focus on the “business side of art” and lessons gleaned from local business women and various business support groups. Find more at www.addiekay.com
Email:
alliumdesigns@gmail.com
Amanda Horton
Amanda Horton’s creative drive began early – at age seven, she was caught tracing her own body with hopes of creating her own couture clothing. Today, twenty years later, Amanda has created a line of jewelry, assorted accessories and housewares that channel her old-world, vintage sensibility with modern simplicity. Her business, Allium Designs has flourished into a diverse line of jewelry with pieces as easy to wear as they are glamorous. Amanda Horton is an Oregon native who grew up in a small town in the Willamette Valley. She started her business, Allium Designs in 2006 while living in New York. Since moving back to Portland, her main focus has been growing her business. She currently sells her handmade jewelry online and in a few great boutiques around Portland. She started making jewelry in high school after taking a metalsmithing class and after many years in hiatus, started metalsmithing again just last year. Currently, Amanda works at Oregon Health & Science University and helps investigators find funding for their research. She received her degrees in Political Science and Sociology at the University of Oregon in Eugene.
Amanda Horton teaches the following classes:
Cathy Pitters
Cathy Pitters is a mom, artist, and seamstress who lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, eight year-old son, and two cats. She runs Bossanovababy.com, which features cool clothing for young and old as well as assorted fabulous art and oddities. Cathy is also a proud member of the group Portland Super Crafty, a collective consisting of four crafty girls who run their own handmade businesses. They banded together to swap advice and ideas and to save the world from mass production! They recently wrote a book entitled “Super Crafty: Over 75 Amazing How-To Projects!” which is coming November 2005 from Sasquatch Books. Cathy’s favorite things to do are playing with her son on the Slip-N-Slide, going to estate sales, and drinking coffee.
Jennifer Neitzel
DIY Lounge is Jen's love child with the do-it-yourself community. With the intention to create and maintain momentum for local artists and share the outcomes with the masses, DIY lounge spreads knowledge and connects people with their inner innovators with new and unusual classes.
In addition to inspiring children and adults alike with DIY Lounge, Jen runs a tight ship over at Knot Ugly Designs. With Knot Ugly Jen creates knit, crochet and reconstructed pieces, which she sells in boutiques and at arts and craft markets. Jen uses this venue to mix vintage fabrics with unconventional colors and begins to think about two-dimensional things in three-dimensions.
In addition to business management, public education, knitting and crocheting, Jen loves to sew, basket weave, nuno felt, and participate in a hodge podge of other crafts. She inspires those around her to take creative risk and she proves that anyone can do anything they set their mind to it - with enough patience and creative thinking.
Truth be told, Jen is something of a craft Macgyver. When the world goes to hell in a hand basket, this is the girl you want to share a cave with. She can make curtains rods from old pipes or ornate twigs or reupholster tired furniture. She can make stylish and flattering tops from weird grandpa sweaters and she can undo any knot, no matter how big or scary.
On a more serious note, Jen wants to help people connect with the art of making things. In response to the increasing disconnection that society tends to have with the products they buy she offers the ultimate gift: knowledge. The more information you have about how to make things the more choices you can make about what you choose to buy. Jen says, "If you know how to draft your own t-shirt pattern and it is one that is becoming on you, you don't need to buy it from businesses whose practices you may or may not support. Don't be a consumed by consumerism, buy into DIY!"
-Photo by Jen Downer of She Saw Things - Photography
Jenny Wells
Jenny is a down to earth Southern gal from Virginia, who loves helping others become inspired. She’s been making art since she was a young thang when she spent countless hours drawing blades of grass and backyard landscapes. Although at age 5, she was sure that her clumps of plush turf were some of the best drawings in the world, Jenny’s life adventures have led her to dapple in a wide variety of all things crafty and community based.
As a certified Oregon teacher, her experiences include teaching special education for 5 years, starting a community glass studio and camp called Arts for Peace at Grace Institute, a local non-profit where she worked for 7 years, and most recently starting her own community glass studio, Jennifer Wells Design, on Alberta Street. Her favorite art mediums include glass fusing and mosaics, silver-smithing and soldering. She loves teaching and working with all ages and abilities but is most content when she’s leading others through their own creative journey.
Jenny believes that we all have an artful spirit that must be fed. Her hope as an art teacher is to tap into the inherent creative drive that is within each and every one of us; to inspire and to be inspired.
Jenny Wells teaches the following classes: