seARTS 2008 Board of Directors

My career has been focused on working with large financial institutions and their clients. I started my career following graduate school as an attorney representing regional Boston-based banks, back when they still existed. After eight years of that I spent the next twelve years in investment marketing and portfolio management starting with the small then-partnership Kidder Peabody and then moved onto larger global institutions including Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America. I am now working as a Private Banker in the Boston office of Pittsburgh-based PNC bank.

The fun part of the job is working with the clients to manage their assets to the best possible use over the course of several generations, whether in the now highly visible area of charitable gifting or for the more personal legacy purposes of maintaining the wealth of the estate over time. Family offices tend to house both attributes under one roof, the philanthropic organization that promotes a family’s values and the asset management business that maintains the wealth so that descendants and future beneficiaries. Whether you are Warren Buffet making a 39 billion dollar donation or the people who sold their “labor of life” business, you want to have an endowment-like perspective on how that wealth will work its hardest and do its best.

Several years ago, with the encouragement of a senior New England based editor and publisher, I began a project which involved researching, writing and presenting about how the communities of Salem, Beverly and Gloucester evolved with the help from the original participants in the Dorchester Corporation which started in Gloucester and was recreated in Beverly under the management of Roger Conant. The research goes all the way through the incredible series of events that led to laying the foundation of the United States Shoe Machinery Company in 1906.

The project has led me into various historical societies, hundreds of conversations with local residents who have a connection to the recent history of the Shoe and the surrounding communities and presentations on the community. With the daily commute to Boston every day, two young boys seeking recreation every week; there has not been a great deal of opportunity to complete the work. I look forward to its completion at some point during my lifetime!

A nearly lifelong resident of Essex County, I have an all-New England education from kindergarten on up, having grown up in Wenham, then spending four years in high school in Concord, New Hampshire then attending Bowdoin College in Brunswick Maine, and graduated from Suffolk University School of Law in 1983 and shortly thereafter and passing the Massachusetts Bar of which I have been a member since 1984.

Anne's career with public television and independent media focused on bringing new and little-known work to new audiences. While in the Programming Department at the PBS National Office (1986-2001) she worked with independent producers, local public television stations, and international producers and distributors to develop and acquire programming for PBS's national schedule. The programming she oversaw included signature series, cultural documentaries, biographies and travel, history, and how-to programming.

Prior to PBS Anne was a fellow in the Media Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts where she worked with applicants for institutional media arts funding and gained insight into the funding process in several disciplines. Earlier, at the Boston Film/Video Foundation, she directed the Boston Film/Video Regional Fellowship Program which awarded NEA/AFI production funds to independent film and video makers in New England. She secured matching funds from the six New England Arts Councils as well as funding from NEFA to tour completed Fellowship films and videos throughout New England. The highly acclaimed independent film "Sherman's March" received first funding from this Fellowship. While at BF/VF Anne also co-directed the New England Film Festival.

Anne has served on numerous awards and funding panels including the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, Fulbright Media Fellowship, CableACE Awards, International Emmy Awards, and CINE Awards; and as a programming consultant for FILMFESTDC. She received a BA, Legal Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Originally from the Boston suburbs, Anne moved to Rockport in 2007 from Washington, D.C. with her husband, Bill Palmer, a writer. She has known and loved the Cape Ann area since childhood.

Laura Tapley is Information Technology Operations Officer at Rockport National Bank. Having begun her professional life as a commercial artist, many unexpected opportunities--full of learning experiences and challenges--led her to her current position. Serving on the Board of SeARTS makes it possible for her to use the diverse skills she learned along the way in an organization that supports her passion for integrating the arts into the economic and social framework of a community.

Laura originally studied graphic art in college and used these skills doing freelance advertising art while raising three children. Her love of learning and a natural curiosity about the world around her, prompted her to home-school two of her children for several years while living in California. Later she went back to school at Salem State College to study history and geology. While there, she shared her enthusiasm for learning with other students by working as a supplemental instructor and tutor.

Returning to the work force as her children began reaching college-age, she was employed by Rockport National Bank in the bookkeeping and loan administration departments, then at Mellon Bank in the asset management department. For three years she served as General Manager for the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, where she learned many of the challenges and rewards of working in the non-profit sector. Finally, she returned to Rockport National Bank where she has been able to blend technological knowledge, gained while working in a range of environments, with her desire to make that knowledge accessible and useful in supporting organic growth.

The one constant throughout these varied experiences was the opportunity to explore new fields while observing the common underpinnings of a diversity of organizations—creativity, cooperation, motivation, and productivity.

Aria McElhenny, Secretary

Aria oversees all communications and public information aspects of NEFA's grant making and research programs and also works closely with NEFA’s research and learning team on cultural economic development research and creative economy-related projects and partnerships.  She is also charged with helping to expand NEFA’s scope of services to include more ways of serving the cultural field through sharing the organization’s knowledge-based assets.
 
Before coming to work at NEFA in January of 2001, Ms. McElhenny worked in arts curriculum development for Boston Public Schools and as a special event producer for Aids Action Committee.  She received her Bachelor's Degree in painting and printmaking from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her Master's Degree in Arts Education from Harvard University.  Aria moved to Cape Ann from Boston in July of ’03, and lives in Gloucester with her freelance writer husband John.

Mary Beth Bainbridge
Peabody Essex Museum

Mary Beth Bainbridge is Assistant to the Chief Curator at the Peabody Essex Museum. She holds a BA in Art History from the University of Michigan.

Mary Beth’s most recent projects at the Museum are related to the major retrospective and publication Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination, co-organized by the Peabody Essex Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She serves as the main contact for the show’s curator, Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, coordinating details for all three venues for the traveling Cornell exhibition, as well as facilitated docent trainings and presented tours for the show while it was at PEM. She is currently working on the upcoming exhibition catalogue Wedded Bliss: The Marriage of Art and Ceremony.

Her volunteer activities include coordinating the inaugural exhibition Ode to Cornell: What Would Joseph Do? with the Salem Arts Association this past August. She also juried and curated the inaugural exhibition for Celebrate Gloucester at Cruiseport, with an auction benefiting seARTS and the Schooner Adventure in May. Mary Beth resides in Salem, MA.

Vicki Diez-Canseco is a painter, Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioner, and organization development consultant. Her consulting and executive coaching roles with Fortune 500 health, insurance, investment and technology clients and not-for-profit organizations have included assessing needs, designing and facilitating breakthrough multi-day retreat meetings which focus on strategic planning, process improvement and team development. Her executive coaching work helps prepare executives and senior team leaders to deal with new realities of leadership, and helps them work with others in new ways.

Vicki uses Jin Shin Jyutsu energy balancing to work with some individual clients. Her interest in this healing art evolved from her career in organization development. She observed that optimal success with workplace challenges usually requires some form of personal change or transformation. Providing balance to body. mind and spirit actively supports such change, as well as minimizes stress.

Vicki has recently developed an interest in plein air painting. She is a member of local art associations, studies with local painters, and had her first solo show in 2006. Although she minored in Art History at Mt. Holyoke College, and has always been interested in photography, she only put brush to paint since moving to Cape Ann. She credits her active Jin Shin Jyutsu practice with supporting her own personal change. She is grateful every day for having found a community which supports her ongoing explorations and learning adventures.

Ana Isabel (Bela) Marannhas

Bela is a former Financial Services Executive with over 26 years—her entire career—dedicated to one company: Investors Bank and Trust (IBT). While helping IBT ascend to prominence, as the leading fiduciary bank for processing derivative securities, Bela discovered her own niche: a talent for creating strategic departments that provide innovative solutions and a penchant for developing productive employees. As a result, Bela has consistently hired, trained, managed, and motivated elite teams of high octane professionals.

Upon graduating, cum laude, from Tufts University with a B.A. in Economics, Bela was hired by IBT as an hourly paid clerk. Within nine years, she was a Vice-President.

Bela’s career can be viewed in three stages:

In her mid-twenties, Bela managed a department that provided fiduciary services for retirement plans offered by institutional clients. To enhance such services, Bela envisioned, designed, managed the development of, then marketed a Mainframe system that automated the reporting of retirement plans information. She also published monthly newsletters, which explained regulatory changes in simple terms to clients, and presented monthly seminars to senior management at client institutions.

In the late eighties, Bela identified a critical need within IBT’s Mutual Fund Accounting and Custody operations. Her reaction became one of the highlights of her career: the creation and implementation of an extensive employee training program, which eventually became the standard for the Fund Accounting Industry. In compliance with government regulations, the training program was validated by industrial psychologists, proving a high correlation between an employee’s training program score and on-the-job performance. The program’s success and far reaching reputation became obvious when the SEC asked Bela to train high level government officials from Eastern Europe (former sections of the Soviet Union), as part of the United State’s efforts to expedite capitalist reform in such regions after the fall of communism.

In the late nineties, Bela foresaw a way to significantly improve efficiency at IBT. She responded by creating and managing an internal consulting group, which integrated all departments (five offices in three countries) within the bank, to identify workflow problems and implement solutions—strategic and tactical using technological and business strategies. It was through this group that Bela developed multiple software applications that enabled IBT to expand its product offering into the most complex financial instruments (derivative securities) and establish itself as industry leader for the processing of such investment types.

After a successful corporate career, Bela hungers for opportunities that will utilize her creativity, business acumen, managerial experience, and proclivity for developing human resources; but, in an area for which she has passion: the arts. Currently, she serves on the board of several non-profit organizations and continues to explore social entrepreneurism, particularly within music and literature.

Since 1995, Bela has lived in Rockport with her husband, Mike, a retail options trader and novelist.

Ruth Mordecai
Artist www.RuthMordecai.com

Ruth Mordecai is an artist.  For 27 years her studio was in Fort Point, Boston, MA where she was an artist member and co-founder (along with 34 other artists) of the first limited equity cooperative in the United States.  She continues to serve on the Board of this 249A Street Cooperative every 3 years and has also served as its President.  Since April of 2005, her studio has been on the 2nd floor of her home, overlooking Smith Cove on Rocky Neck in Gloucester. During the last 35 years she has had one-person exhibitions, museum shows and large scale commissions primarily in Boston, New York, and Washington, DC.  Her work is in major museum collections including: the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.  The Wiggin Prints and Drawings Collection of the Boston Public Library owns 25 of her works on paper. She is represented by Soprafina Gallery in the SOWA district on Thayer Street in Boston’s South End. She has taught at the Boston University School for the Arts, the DeCordova Museum School, the Harvard University Ceramics studio, and Lesley University.  She attended Bennington College and has Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts Degrees from the Boston University School for the Arts. 

During the last 10 years Ruth has also been leading process painting workshops now called Markings 2007. She has completed one year in the graduate certificate program in leadership and expressive arts created by Shaun McNiff at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. She is particularly interested in creating safe environments where clients/ artists can experiment with their own forms of mark-making, painting and authentic movement and with the uncertainty inherent in this creative process.
 
Ruth is married to Ed Powers, a family therapist, group leader, and addictions counselor whose practice is on Main Street in Gloucester, MA and who is also a full time staff psychotherapist at Addison Gilbert Hospital. Ruth has 2 married sons (Jon and Lexi Slavet and James and Kaye Slavet) and two grandchildren (Celia and Hazel). She loves being with her husband and children and grandbabies (and being called "grandma") and being with her husband's children (Caitlin and Josh). She loves reading, dancing, yoga, walking, painting outdoors (and indoors), and being with family and friends. She also meets with and enjoys being with former students or other artists to have conversations about their or her studio work. She is a member of Temple Ahavat Achim where she has worked on arts related projects. She has been on the seArts Board for one year where she is on the Membership Committee. Her concern is with all the arts, but specifically she seeks to contribute to an environment in which a rich visual arts community will flourish.

Christy Park,
Artist http://christy-park.com

Christy Park is an artist whose career spans years in New York City, Columbus, Boston and now Gloucester. She began her career as a painter, studying at the Art Students League although she quickly began to include other and varied media in her work. In the 70's she began to work with photography doing a stint with a stock agent and photographing artists and artwork. Christy was a founding member of 55 Mercer St. Gallery and is still interested in alternative sites for artists.

Growing up in a small town in Ohio Christy spent much of her earlier life in the country, and after college she moved to New York City, eventually returning to Ohio State for graduate school. As part of her MFA program she became involved with filmmaking which still informs her studio work. She continued her interest in media for her PhD dissertation on Video Art. In the 80's she moved to the Boston area to join the faculty at Massachusetts College of Art and then moved to Gloucester. For more information on Christy's work you can visit her web site:

Allan Penn
Photographer, co-founder, Hollan Publishing

I was born in Dallas, Texas in 1961 and have lived happily in Lanesville with my wife Deanna for the past ten years. We are blessed to share our lives with our 6 year old son Griffin and his 3 year old sister Charlotte. I have been lucky enough to earn a living taking pictures for the past twenty years. I relocated my studio to 33 Commercial Street in Gloucester after spending 18 years working out my Boston studio. This move has not only significantly reduced my commute but has also enabled me to become more involved with the diverse and wonderfully talented creative community that we are fortunate to have in Cape Ann.

Over the past 20 years I have been lucky enough to work on projects with the countries best advertising agencies as well as magazines such as News Week, Fortune, People, Vanity Fair and the New York Times Magazine. These projects have allowed me to meet and photograph some of our countries most influential and creative pioneers in business and the arts. My advertising work has led me into collaborations with some amazingly talented art directors, stylists, set designers and producers. These collaborations have enabled me to develop creative problem solving skills that I find most valuable in my business, art and in many facets of my
life.

Throughout my career I have been driven to create “personal projects” that have taken me around the U.S. many times. I have won numerous awards and have been exhibited in several art galleries throughout the country but my greatest reward is the privilege to explore my great passion for photography. A passion that all artists hold unique and sacred.

The irony that comes with being a businessman and an artist is certainly not lost on me. As the saying goes “some thing has got to give”. In truth it is definitely a struggle but I feel so fortunate to have the ability to meld the two. Passion is expressed in many forms and passion, in what ever form, should always be celebrated and shared.

Richard Renehan,
Renco Corporation

Richard Renehan has lived in Manchester, MA since 1969. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Merrimack College in North Andover. He has worked as a sail maker and a teacher of ESL in Spain and East Boston. Renehan has served as President of Renco Corporation, a forty-four year old drybox/isolator glove manufacturer, since 1994. Renco’s glove systems are used widely in containment, aseptic and isolation Gloveboxes. He has been a member of the American Glovebox Society since 1991 and has presented white papers at their annual conventions and at conferences for the ISPE (International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers) and the PDA (Parenteral Drug Association). Renehan has been published in the August 2003 issue of A2C2 and in the October 2003 issue of Cleanrooms Magazine. Richard serves as Publicity Advisor to Northshore Magazine and his hobbies include writing, digital photography and yoga. He has been a “Big Brother” to a Cape Ann youth in the Big Brother Association since 2001.

Kate was born and grew up in the NY/CT area. After graduating from New York University with a BS in Education, minor in art she moved across the country to Berkeley, California. It was 1970 and she was part of the anti-war generation. In Berkeley Kate found ceramics and her husband to be, Mitch Cohen. Mitch, a native of Gloucester, and Kate married in 1977 they return to the east coast just in time for their son Aaron to be born in 1979.

Choosing Gloucester to be their home, Kate soon started a women’s collective Gallery called Center and Main. At that time she also started a porcelain jewelry company which she ran for 10 years, employing 11 people at its height. Later she started Local Colors, a collective gallery (still a fixture on Main Street) and today owns a little shop on Center Street called The Art Room where she sells clothing designed by herself and sewn by a local seamstress. She carries accessories, bags, and Jewelry created by local and international artists (including work by sea glass artist Jackie Ganim-Defalco). All three shops are dedicated to the idea of promoting local artists and helping the local creative economy.

Along with 3 shops Kate also gave birth to and raised three children. Aaron, 28, married and living in Westford, Ma; Noah, 24, in the Peace Corp and living in the Philippines; And Sasha, 19, a college student at Pitzer College in Southern California.
While her children were growing up Kate always did her own art, ceramics. Later, after she worked at Sigrid Olsen (a local clothing company), she found textile design and computer graphics. She also always found time to teach art in both private and public schools. Most recently teaching in a middle school in Lowell, Ma.

Mark Vadala
Vadala Realestate

Mark Vadala is a real estate broker working on Cape Ann and the surrounding areas. Mark has been selling real estate since 2001 and is consistently a top producer in Gloucester and Rockport. Mark specializes in both residential and commercial sales as well as land sales, with an emphasis on first-time homebuyers, new construction homes and antique homes. Mark is a life-long Gloucester resident, but did take time to experience New York City through its heart and soul, the travel and hospitality industry prior to resettling in Gloucester. Mark has a B.A. in Social Work from St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Mark lives in a duplex in central Gloucester with his rat terrier, Rizzo.

Peter W. Van Ness
President and CEO, Van Ness Group, Inc

Founded in 1998, Van Ness Group, Inc. is the third technology-related venture for entrepreneur Peter Van Ness. Since he founded Personal Computer Solutions in 1983, Peter has been helping people grow their businesses and realize the benefits of information technology.

During the 1980s, Personal Computer Solutions built state-of-the-art database systems for a wide variety of corporations and institutions, including Benjamin Thompson and Associates, National Association of Social Workers (Van Ness Group built their first Web site 15 years later), Kenner Parker Toys and Kaiser Engineers (working on the Red and Orange Line extensions and the Ted Williams Tunnel project in Boston).

During the 1990s, Peter co-founded StockPlan, Inc. and grew it from a tiny software startup into the largest independent provider of stock plan management services worldwide. While at StockPlan, Peter and his team (many of whom currently work with Van Ness Group) discovered the power of the Web and built the first systems for employees to exercise and sell their stock options over the Internet. According to Rodger Mastako, inventor of OptionsLink (now part of E*Trade), "Peter invented financial services outsourcing."

In 1997, StockPlan was purchased by American Stock Transfer and Trust Company in New York City and Peter served as President of the newly formed AST StockPlan for one year. Salomon Smith Barney (a division of Citigroup) purchased AST StockPlan in August 2000.

In 2000, Peter co-founded MyStockOptions.com, winner of numerous awards and the Web's most comprehensive, respected, and frequently visited resource on stock compensation for employees and executives.

An internationally recognized expert on the Internet and business development, Peter was one of an elite group of experts asked by the Pew Internet & American Life Project to comment on the evolution of the Internet and to make predictions for its Future. Peter has also spoken at conferences in the US and Europe.

Peter was a founding member of the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals. In 1984 Peter was elected to the first Boston Computer Society Member Services Council and served on its steering committee for two years.

Studied haute cuisine under Chef Eugene Bernard in New York from 1973-1974. Worked as a chef until 1983. Restaurants included Wild Goose in Quincy Market (one of the first US restaurants to offer fine wine by the glass), Federal Club, Director of food service at Prudential Center, Executive Chef at Twin Light Manor in 1982-1983.

Musician and songwriter: Play piano (very badly) guitar (a little better) and drums (pretty well). Have been a drummer in rock n' roll, blues and swing bands since 1968. Played with Mark Endresen (http://www.calypsohurricane.com/), Rockin' George Leh (http://www.rockingeorge.com/), Walker Creek Band, The Distractions
(http://www.thedistractions.com/) and others.

Peter was producer of Celebrate Gloucester
(www.celebrategloucester.com)

Board Advisors

Jack Clarke
Director of Public Policy & Government Relations
Mass Audubon

Robin Colodzin,
Computer Programing Consultant
MIT

Kevin Crosby
Director of PulseObsidian
Inependent Research

M. Kristine Fisher
Herman Miller, Inc.

Judith Hoglander
Committee for the Arts, Gloucester

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Past Presidents:

David Benjamin 2003
Cape Ann Symphony

Joan Fowler Smith 2004
Montserratt College of Art, retired

Jo-Ann Castano 2005-Oct. 2006
ArtsGloucester

Jacqualine Ganim-DeFalco
Marketing Recon & Cape Ann Designs

seARTS Staff

Sara Young, Executive Director (start date March 3rd, 07)
Sarah Slifer, GNAF Director
Jo-Ann Castano, Web site committee, NewsBlast Communications
Dianne Anderson, Arts-Biz Program Coordinator

Volunteers

Dianne Anderson,
Program Publicity Volunteer

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