Timothy Andrew Kussow is a Professor of Sculpture and Chair of the Visual Fine Arts and Performing Arts Departments at CT State – Manchester, where he has been a faculty member since 1998. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Kussow’s artistic practice investigates the dynamic interplay between work and play, grounding conceptual exploration in hands-on material engagement.

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In addition to his academic and artistic pursuits, Kussow is a committed public servant. He has served as a full-time firefighter and EMT with the Mansfield Fire Department since 2004, following earlier roles as a volunteer and part-time firefighter. His more than two decades of service in emergency response underscore a deep commitment to community and resilience under pressure.

Kussow’s career exemplifies a rare integration of creative inquiry and civic responsibility. Through his leadership in both the arts and public service, he brings a distinctive perspective to the evolving landscape of higher education and interdisciplinary engagement.

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I was born and raised in Mexico. Twelve years ago I moved to CT to earn a Bachelor's in Music from The Hartt School. A few years later, I was granted a full Assistantship to continue with my music education, and that's where I discovered my passion for teaching

and creating art from the other side of performance. Since then, I have taken courses on Stage Management, Stage Combat, Fundraising, and I look forward to continue learning new skills to empower other young professionals and offer them performance opportunities. As a future Doctor in Music and researcher, I am focusing on offering more cultural representation in the research often done in American universities by bringing to light

Mexican opera of the XIX century.

 Based in Providence, Rhode Island, Brett Eberhardt is preoccupied with the similarities in building a painting, a massive accumulation of both intentional and chance occurrences, with the histories of the battered objects and surfaces in his surroundings. Brett has exhibited internationally and won numerous awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and a Merit Award Fellowship from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. He received a BFA at Northern Michigan University and an MFA at Syracuse University and has taught at Western Illinois University, State of New York University at Potsdam and Maine College of Art. He has been teaching painting at CT State Community College Manchester since 2017. He is represented by Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, CT. 

Sherie Gage is an enamel and ceramic artist and designer, and the owner of Cone 6 Designs. She is a local Connecticut Artist. The focus of her work is making handcrafted urns and keepsakes by integrating ceramics, metal working, vitreous enamel, and digital photography into thoughtfully and skillfully made urns.  When Sherie began her art business, Cone 6 Designs, in 2013 she began developing her art and designing jewelry and other functional objects working with both enamel and ceramics. Enamel is glass formulated to be fired onto metal, similar to glaze on ceramics which also creates a layer of smooth glass when fired onto ceramics. Sherie uses similar techniques to work with both types of media and combines them into her unique ceramic urns. Her interest as an artist is in technique, workmanship, and how the materials interact. Recently she has been working with images she photographs of botanicals and insects which are fired onto the surface of both enamel, and ceramics. She is interested in environmental issues as well as botanical and biological imagery. She received a bachelor’s in fine arts from the University of Connecticut in 2008 with an emphasis in sculpture. She has since taught art to people of all ages, in the public schools, and in community art centers, and currently works at CT State Manchester Community College as the technical assistant for the Visual Fine Art department.

Maggie Nowinski is an interdisciplinary visual and teaching artist and curator based in Western Massachusetts. Nowinski is assistant Professor or Drawing Program at CT. State Community College as well as the Director of the Hans Weiss Newspace Gallery, the Virginia and Adolf Dehn Gallery and oversees student galleries as well as the campus permanent collection. Nowisnksi is also an Artist-Mentor in the Vermont College of Fine Arts low-residency MFA program.

Nowinski’s work is rooted in a drawing practice, but her often works across modalities including  installations that incorporate traditional and unconventional media like audio, video, and performative processes. Her practice is grounded in an awareness of the conceptual and political inevitability of art making, and she is deeply invested in collaboration.

Growing up in the Northwest corner of Connecticut in a small factory town, Maura O'Connor studied art at the Hartford Art School, receiving her BFA in Ceramics and Design. She worked as an freelance artist and designer for a time before becoming an Art Director for Field Publications in the late 1980's. With the advent of Apple computers in the workplace, and upon taking graduate courses at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT Maura decided to pursue her masters in Intermedia which included video, installation and performance. Upon receiving her MFA, she became a video producer for public television and began her teaching career in higher education as an adjunct at  Manchester Community College in 1994. She continues to teach, live and work in the arts in Connecticut. She has an art studio adjacent to her garden and practices the technique of encaustic oil painting with collaged archival images and elements from the natural world.

Born and raised in Illinois, clay artist Kate Oggel now resides in Rhode Island. She arrived in New England for graduate school at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. After earning her MFA in Ceramics/Artisanry, she stayed in the area, teaching and working with clay since then. She currently is Assistant Professor of ceramics at CT State Manchester in Connecticut. Working out of an old barn in rural Rhode Island, Kate Oggel's recent artwork focuses on hand-built sculptural ceramics with naked clay surfaces.

My primary body of work is a series of ceramic sculptures focusing on gestures of movement and fluidity. I enjoy the slow, methodical processes of hand-building as I work to shape and refine the contours, hollows and edges that comprise each piece. My recent work peels back the glaze layer to celebrate natural, unglazed surfaces as a direct link to material and touch.

Niches in the work become places of protection, metaphorically embracing solitude or sound. Soft contours invite touch by calling to mind water-smoothed stone or skin. My work references the lexicon of change in nature, much as a snow bank reshaped by wind becomes a new kind of sculptural landscape. Transitory experiences can be both preserved in memory and gone. I am fascinated by the contrast between the weightlessness of these ephemeral references and the earthy solidity of clay.

Native of Greensboro, North Carolina, spending the last 20 plus years in the New England area.  Received a bachelor’s degree, Winston-Salem State University, NC); Master of Arts, Master of Education and Doctor of Education, respectively, in music therapy/special education, guitar instruction and adult leaning, Teachers College Columbia University, NY. 

Additional studies: Summer institute on African Studies, Yale University, CT. (1988) and two week “Jazz in July’ Institute, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. (1998).  While at UMass, she studied with jazz pianist,  Billy Taylor & jazz guitarist, Ted Dunbar-mentee of Wes Montgomery and Horace Clarence Boyer.

Currently Professor of Music/Program Coordinator, Associate of Arts in Music Studies, CT State Community College- Manchester, a member in good standing with the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM.)