Courses
In The Studio
Instructor(s)
- Paul Lebel
- Nikki Rice
- Brad Taylor
- Daniel Goody
- J. Gordon
- Meg McLynn
- Nicole Beerman
- Winnie Westergard
- BC Campbell
- Charles Sheaffer
- Dan Shafer
- David Taft
- Ellen Forney
- Geof Alm
- Ian Bond
- Jessica Jobaris
- Leanna Keith
- Maja Sereda
- Matt Sircely
- Robynne Raye
- Sarah Lavin
- Tory Franklin
- Zoe Crago
- Alia Swersky
- Brian Miller
- Chelsea Cook
- David Taylor Gomes
- Diana Trotter
- Jeff Brice
- Jenna Spinei
- Jimmy Shields
- Kyungjin Kim (KJ)
- Lana Sundberg
- Lauren Boilini
- Lily Hotchkiss
- Lucie Baker
- Peter Vogt
- Ruthie Dornfeld
- Sage Casias-Abplanalp
- Samar Abulhassan
- Sarah Bixler
- Sarah Comer
- Soo Hong
- Sophia Franzella
Premiere Pro Film Editing
Paul Lebel
From a young age, I've been captivated by light and its power to transform the world around me. At seven years old, I begged for a camera, eager to capture the magic of my small world through photography. This insatiable curiosity has fueled my journey as a visual storyteller, leading me across the globe to film and edit stories for brands worldwide. Through these experiences, I've grown as a person, and I remain just as curious and excited to explore new stories and mediums.
My artistic practice as A Box In The Sea extends into multimedia, print, and sound art. In my sound lab, I experiment with soundscapes and scores, translating them into visuals and rendering them into pen and ink. This process of creating and transforming sound into art is a continuous cycle of discovery, and it's a journey I feel lucky to be on.
Intro to Documentary Flimmaking
Paul Lebel
From a young age, I've been captivated by light and its power to transform the world around me. At seven years old, I begged for a camera, eager to capture the magic of my small world through photography. This insatiable curiosity has fueled my journey as a visual storyteller, leading me across the globe to film and edit stories for brands worldwide. Through these experiences, I've grown as a person, and I remain just as curious and excited to explore new stories and mediums.
My artistic practice as A Box In The Sea extends into multimedia, print, and sound art. In my sound lab, I experiment with soundscapes and scores, translating them into visuals and rendering them into pen and ink. This process of creating and transforming sound into art is a continuous cycle of discovery, and it's a journey I feel lucky to be on.
Clown Study Intensive
David Taft
David Taft was a Theater Professor at Cornish College of the Arts for 24 years and developed clown study coursework taken from his own training and performance experience. He curated the annual Clown Show at the Cornish Playhouse and currently is a movement consultant for stage and screen. His website and resume can be found at: david-taft.com
Music Intensive
Leanna Keith
A freelance flutist, artist, improviser, and composer in the Seattle area, Leanna Keith delights in creating sound experiences that make audiences laugh, cry, and say: “I didn’t know the flute could do that!” She also teaches as the flute professor at Cornish College of the Arts. Her performance artworks have focused on cultural connection and the breaking of audience/performer boundaries. In 2021 she released her first solo album, TAROT Album, which she composed, performed, recorded, and mixed. The album release show premiered online, featuring collaborations between choreographers, digital media artists, stop motion artists, puppetry, and more.
Leanna is currently a co-director of the chamber music ensemble Kin of the Moon, with violist/improviser Heather Bentley and composer/vocalist Kaley Lane Eaton. Kin of the Moon is an improvisation-centric, technology-friendly chamber music series incubated in Seattle's rich musical scene. The series explores sonic rituals, promotes cross-pollination of genres, emphasizes the communicative power of specific performance locales, and celebrates the creativity that multiplies itself through the collaboration of performers and composers.
2D Stop Motion Animation
Zoe Crago
Zoe Crago is the co-founder of Duo Design + Media. A partnership of two creatives specializing in graphic design, social media, and video production for individuals and businesses/organizations looking to expand their visual presence. As the lead graphic designer and illustrator, Zoe's project list includes (but is not limited to) the 2023 Festival Design for NFFTY (National Film Festival for Talented Youth), illustrator for The Rise Book Project, event campaigns for TEDxSpokane, and social media marketing for Washington Filmworks and Seattle Creates! Her love for illustration and hand-lettering often finds its way into her regular projects creating a beautiful hybrid of traditional and digital art.
After 6 years in the design world, Zoe hopes that her work, collaborations, and community involvement will ultimately impact those who want to grow and succeed in the creative industry!
Writing for Stage & Screen
Samar Abulhassan
Samar Abulhassan is a writer and teaching artist living in Seattle. She's a Hedgebrook alum, Jack Straw Writer and holds an MFA from Colorado State University. She's worked with Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools since 2008, and for Hugo House's Scribes program and the Skagit River Poetry Foundation since 2010. She was an instructor for Cornish's summer film program in 2019.
Acting for Stage and Screen
Meg McLynn
Meg McLynn is an actor, vocalist, and teaching artist who has been seen on stages and screens throughout North America. Meg loves to share her passion for performance with students of all ages, and it is her belief that the work we do in “the studio” is applicable to all aspects of our everyday lives.
Having studied for 7 years under renowned voice teacher, Kristin Linklater, Meg now works with students to help them take ownership of their wonderfully unique voices. She teaches Voice and Speech at Cornish College of the Arts, and she serves as a vocal coach with Jack Straw Studios. She has assisted with voice training at Columbia Business School and World Leaders Forum in New York City. Meg also teaches Voice and Acting classes at Freehold Theatre Lab and Mighty Tripod Studios in Seattle.
Meg is a member of the Seattle-based vocal trio, Blue Plate Special, and has been an Anthem Singer for the Seattle Seahawks. As a concert soloist, she performed the songbooks of Patsy Cline, Judy Garland, and Carly Simon with Purple Phoenix Productions. Local acting credits include roles with Seattle Shakespeare Company, Book-It Rep, Seattle Symphony, ArtsWest, Seattle Opera, Seattle Public Theatre, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Theatre22, Harlequin Productions, and 14/48: TWQTF, as well as the feature films “Different Drummers”, “7 Minutes”, and “Colton”. You can see her in the series, “The Girl in the Woods” streaming on NBC/Peacock.
Jazz@Cornish
Stop Motion Puppet Fabrication
Nikki Rice
Born and raised in Seattle, Nikki moved to California to attend college, receiving a BFA in Film Production in 2002 from Chapman University. For the next 6 years she worked various office jobs in the film industry while also earning a Masters Degree in Secondary Education. In 2006 Nikki decided to shift her career to Special Effects Make-Up working at Creature FX studios and from there segueing into the stop motion world, beginning in 2008 with Shadow Machine on the Adult Swim hit show, Robot Chicken: Season 3. Nikki has worked as a puppet fabricator, lead fabricator and department head on numbers stop motion television shows, commercials and films, helping create iconic stop motion characters for such shows/films as Happy Honda Days (Socal regional commercial campaign for the last 12 years), Ask the Story Bots, Buddy Thunderstruck, Anomolisa and Ted Lasso to name a few. In 2022, the next adventure brought Nikki back home to Seattle to be closer to family and to hang out her own shingle as Puppets Northwest, offering a one stop shop for puppets of all kinds, SFX, 3D modeling/printing and educational outreach of all of the above.
Musical & Theater Intensive
Nicole Beerman
Nicole is an actor, singer, dancer, choreographer, teacher, visual artist, wife to Josh and mother to Max and Huxley. Nicole has lived and worked on both coasts, loves to create, garden, and do construction! On screen, Nicole has been seen in Nike, LG, and T-Mobile commercials. On stage in Adrift (Sam French Festival), Big Effing Deal! (Duet with Reggie Watts), Cabaret (Gregory Award Nominee), Mary Poppins, Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, How to Succeed, Once Upon A Time in New Jersey and many Village Originals (Village Theatre), The Constant Wife (Seattle Rep), Cabaret (5th Ave, AMTSJ, Ordway Center), Wonderful Town (5th Ave), Ming the Rude (Empty Space), Elephant and Piggie, Fire Station 7, Sleeping Beauty (SCT), Tapestry (Oregon Cabaret Theatre), and many more. As a choreographer and dancer Nicole had the honor of working with Sonya Tayeh and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with running the dance call for the original production of Head Over Heals. In New York, Nicole’s work has been seen at the HERE Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, Astoria Performing Arts, The Management and Acting Manitou. In Seattle, at KIDSTAGE, Cornish, Oregon Cabaret Theatre, The Triple Door, Café Nordo, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Fantastic Z, and Art Institute of Seattle. Nicole is currently teaching at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle Film institute, and Westlake Dance Center. She has also taught at UW, Art Institute of Seattle, Hunter College High School, VAM Studios, 5th Avenue, Century Ballroom, McCarter Theatre Company, Jersey City Dance Academy, and The Studios. Nicole holds a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts, is a certified Simonson Technique teacher and a member of Actors’ Equity.
Life Drawing
J. Gordon
J. Gordon brings over two decades of experience as an artist, educator, and curator, to his classrooms. Gordon earned his BFA and MFA in painting from the University of Kansas and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts respectively. While his current professional practice centers primarily around the medium of drawing, he incorporates aspects of traditional and contemporary painterly practices in both his teaching methods and mixed media art works.
Gordon is a recipient of multiple scholarships and awards, as well an artist fellowship from the state of Delaware. He has taught drawing at many colleges, art centers, and museums including the Tacoma Art Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He is currently represented by Gallery Strega, where he also plays a supporting role in exhibition design and curation.
Game Art
Jeff Brice
Jeff Brice has a long career as an artist and illustrator. His work has appeared in Wired magazine, Scientific American and Macworld to name a few. Jeff was one of the early content creators for the Microsoft Hololens mixed reality headset and helped produce the first major exhibition of the Hololens for the public. Jeff has shown in exhibitions internationally. He worked as creative director for Tiny Bites Games smartphone game GemSpinners II Waterquest. Jeff has a masters degree from New York Institute of Technology.
Live Sound Engineering
Daniel Goody
Daniel Goody has been working in the performing arts field since 2001 starting in the UK as a sound engineer. Presently working as the Head of Audio at the Playhouse in Seattle for Cornish College of the Arts, his work has spanned many disciplines over the years including audio, light and video design. His primary collaboration since 2015 has been with the Danish immersive theatre group Sisters Hope.
Following a decade in Sweden as the Technical Director at the culture house Inkonst Malmö, Daniel formed artistic partnerships with a number of performance, dance and theatre groups based throughout the Nordic and European regions. These collaborations, with groups such as; Institutet, White On White, Jon & Juli and Lucie Tuma explored the family, critical whiteness and the relationship to the body on a wholly radical level.
Film Intensive + Portfolio Development
Paul Lebel
From a young age, I've been captivated by light and its power to transform the world around me. At seven years old, I begged for a camera, eager to capture the magic of my small world through photography. This insatiable curiosity has fueled my journey as a visual storyteller, leading me across the globe to film and edit stories for brands worldwide. Through these experiences, I've grown as a person, and I remain just as curious and excited to explore new stories and mediums.
My artistic practice as A Box In The Sea extends into multimedia, print, and sound art. In my sound lab, I experiment with soundscapes and scores, translating them into visuals and rendering them into pen and ink. This process of creating and transforming sound into art is a continuous cycle of discovery, and it's a journey I feel lucky to be on.
Darkroom Photography
Winnie Westergard
Winifred Westergard is a Seattle based fine art and commercial photographer with degrees from the University of Washington and Cornish College of the Arts in Creative Writing, Journalism and Art. Her art making foundation is rooted in the early processes of photography, fully embracing the slow processes of 19th century photography. She is a visual creator with a strong base on human emotion and storytelling. She has managed the photography studio at Cornish College of the Arts since 1999 and has taught Photography and Portfolio Development through Summer@Cornish since 2003.
Producing Music
BC Campbell
Comics Studio
Ellen Forney
Ellen Forney is the author of the bestselling graphic memoir, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me, and its companion book, Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life. Marbles has been translated into six foreign languages and was the selection for common book programs at the University of Washington Health Sciences schools and UC Davis. She curated an exhibition for the National Library of Medicine on Graphic Medicine, comics about health, and has given talks and lectures internationally at universities, conferences, and institutions, including a recent TED talk. As a visual artist, she created two large-scale murals for Seattle’s Capitol Hill light rail station. She has taught comics at Cornish College of the Arts since 2002 and is currently working on a middle-grade book on making autobiographical comics.
Graphic Design
Robynne Raye
Robynne Raye is a co-founder of the Seattle-based Modern Dog Design Co, an internationally acclaimed design and illustration studio that opened in 1987. Her client list includes Showtime, The New York Times, Coca-Cola, Nordstrom, HarperCollins, Warner Bros. Records, Hillary Clinton, and K2 Snowboards. Her posters have been exhibited internationally, and are collected in the archives of major libraries and museums worldwide, including the Library of Congress, Bibliothèque National de France, Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe, the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Guan Shanyue Art Museum, and the Louvre’s Musee Des Arts Decoratifs, among others.
For over thirty years, Raye has lectured extensively about design issues and led workshops around the world. In 2013, Graphic Design USA Magazine listed her as one of the "50 Most Influential Designers Working Today.” She is the co-author of Modern Dog, 20 Years of Poster Art and Inside the World of Board Graphics: Skate, Surf, Snow, and author of 1000 Dog Portraits.
Stage & Screen Combat
Geof Alm
Geoffrey Alm has been teaching Stage Fighting at Cornish since 2008. A Certified Teacher with The Society of American Fight Directors since 1987, he is also a Certified Fight Director and Fight Master. Professionally he has been choreographing fights since 1988, locally and Nationally. He’s a proud member of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Actors Equity, and SAG-AFTRA.
Dance for Musical Theater
Jimmy Shields
I was born into a military family in Honolulu, HI and moved to the Pacific Northwest as a toddler. Already singing and dancing by the age of two, I began my formal dance training at the age of 8 while attending Elk Plain School of Choice, an arts elementary school that allowed me to study all disciplines of dance.
Over the years, my strong passion for music & the arts has given me the opportunity to sing and share the stage with the likes of Sugar Ray, Keith Sweat, (the REAL) Lady-A, Kim Archer and Tiffany Wilson. Singing has also allowed me to perform for the Seattle Seahawks Season Opener and the Make a Wish Foundation.
If you are local to the Seattle area, you may have seen me acting on stage at Village Theatre, Tacoma Musical Playhouse, or ACT Theatre. I’ve also directed and choreographed for Showtunes Theatre Company, Seattle Repertory Theatre, The 5th Avenue Theatre, Village Theatre, Theatre Puget Sound and Tacoma Arts Live.
On this site you will get to see all sides of me. Be it through my words, my music, or my movement, I hope I make you feel something.