Chelsea Cook is a freelance costume designer, educator, and business owner. Her work has been seen at Kentucky Opera, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Seattle Opera, Village Theatre, Tacoma Opera, George Street Playhouse, ArtsEmerson, and more. Select favorite designs include Ernest Shackleton Loves Me (Off-Broadway Alliance Award, Second Stage Theatre); O+E (Seattle Opera) She’s Come Undone (Gregory Award Nomination, Book-It); What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Book-It Repertory); and Medea (Seattle Shakespeare Co.). She has a B.A. from Cornish College of the Arts.

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.

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.

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.

Alia Swersky is a movement artist, performer and educator deeply engaged in dance improvisation, durational time-based art, film, site-specific work, and environmental installation. She is an artist and an educator with degrees from Cornish College of the Arts and an MFA in dance from the University of Washington.

Her artistic path over the last two decades has been shaped by this yearning for deep and meaningful connections with people and places. As a co-creator, ritual maker, and a “horizontal” director, Alia seeks to touch others through dance, somatic presence, vulnerability, and fierceness. Her work ranges from full audience participation to intimate acts of One-to-One performances, site-specific dances for film and live performance, as well as durational time-based art that includes physical acts of endurance, repetition, stillness, subtlety, singing, soft energetic grace, abstraction, caricature, and a deconstruction of clichés such as extreme high femme expressions. Her teaching and art-making seek to create practices that embrace endurance on stage and in life as acts of resistance, resilience, release, and beauty. 

As a performer, Alia has also toured nationally and internationally as a member of the LeGendre Performance Group and has performed in the works with many Seattle artists, some of which include The Maureen Whiting Company, Khambatta Dance Company, Jurg Koch, KT Niehoff, and Salt Horse.

As an educator, she has taught at Cornish College of the Arts for sixteen years and in the Seattle community at Velocity’s Strictly Seattle Festival, and the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI). She was a long time Co-artistic director of Dance Art Group (DAG), a non-profit organization that promotes the practice and appreciation of dance and somatic education in the Seattle area, including the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation.

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. 

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.

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.

Travis Palmer is a songwriter, arranger, jazz pianist, and music educator whose passion lies in helping his students learn and apply new musical vocabulary, with an emphasis of learning how to shape the concepts to come across in the student’s own voice. Travis has a wide range of interests and experience in various musical styles such as singer/songwriter, salsa, jazz, free music, traditional jazz, and classical music. Travis’ current musical projects include; serving as the board president for the 501(c)(3) non-profit Songwriters in Seattle, playing tenor banjo in and directing the 1920’s-1950’s style jazz band The Emerald Street Ragtime Band, and leading, composing and arranging for the all-originals band The Palmer Group.

I have been making art my whole life in one form or another. I fell endlessly in love, over and over, with the process of making. This led to my role as a teacher, first with young children and later with teens. More facilitator and guide than anything else, being able to participate and witness someone’s creative journey and awakening is an awesome gift. It demands that I remain nimble and bring all my best to working with youth and helping them discover and share their voices. I am both an arts educator and a working artist. As a member of Side Rail Collective, I co-curate shows throughout the year and participate in exhibits. My work as an artist is based in storytelling. I work in a variety of mediums, including clay, found materials, wood, fiber, as well as 2D mediums. The story informs the material.

Sarah Bixler is a painter and educator living and working in Seattle Washington.  She began her artistic studies focusing on the figure and observation, at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle Washington.  There she was able to deepen her understanding of the human body through intensive focus on long-form sculpture, anatomy and drawing from direct observation.  In 2011, Sarah received a BFA from the University of Washington where she studied contemporary drawing and painting, with a focus on paint language, form and color.

Lauren Boilini has served as an artist-in-residence at several institutions across the U.S. and in Italy, Ireland, and Spain. She has served as faculty at a number of schools in the Baltimore/DC area as well as Evergreen State College, Pacific Lutheran University, and Cornish. She has completed several public art projects along with many temporary public installations and solo exhibitions across the country.  In 2016 she was awarded an Artist Trust grant to publish a book of drawings and spent this past summer as an artist-in-residence at MASS MoCA working on the sequel. Lauren is also a long-distance open water swimmer and loves to call Seattle home.

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.

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.
 

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.

Lauren Boilini has served as an artist-in-residence at several institutions across the U.S. and in Italy, Ireland, and Spain. She has served as faculty at a number of schools in the Baltimore/DC area as well as Evergreen State College, Pacific Lutheran University, and Cornish. She has completed several public art projects along with many temporary public installations and solo exhibitions across the country.  In 2016 she was awarded an Artist Trust grant to publish a book of drawings and spent this past summer as an artist-in-residence at MASS MoCA working on the sequel. Lauren is also a long-distance open water swimmer and loves to call Seattle home.

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.