CVPA faculty

Joe Mullins

Pam Muirheid — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 19:36:22 +0000

Joe Mullins Pam Muirheid Thu, 11/21/2024 - 14:36

Adjunct Faculty, School of Art, CVPA

Contact Information

Campus: Fairfax
Building: Art and Design Building
Email: lmullin5@gmu.edu

Read About Prof. Mullins' Forensic Figure Sculpting Class

Biography

Joe Mullins is a forensic artist since 1999 with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He has helped identify and trace long term missing children, approximate unknown skeletal remains, and reconstruct faces and soft tissue, paving the way for law enforcement to solve their investigations. A Washington-based forensic imaging specialist, Mullins does workshops and demonstrations of his work across the globe, inspiring and training future forensic artists.

Mullins trained as a graphic designer and fine artist before becoming a forensic imaging specialist. He studied at Savannah College of Art & Design, James Madison �鶹�� and attended The FBI Academy for his forensic skills training.

Mullins also works with talented students to help solve crimes or answer questions for families with missing relatives as an Adjunct Professor at the New York Academy of Art where he teaches a unique Forensic Sculpture course. Joe is a certified Forensic Artist by the International Association for Identification. For a decade, he has been teaching a Facial Reconstruction class to graduate students in Mason’s Forensic Science Program. In the spring of 2022, he started teaching a forensic figure sculpting class at George Mason's School of Art.

Bobby Lacy II

Pam Muirheid — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 15:43:06 +0000

Bobby Lacy II Pam Muirheid Tue, 10/22/2024 - 11:43

Associate Director of Green Machine Ensembles, CVPA
Alumnus, Dewberry School of Music, '16 and Arts Management Program, '21

Biography

Bobby Lacy II is a singer, songwriter, producer, professor, musician, director and award winning spoken word artist. Born in Waco, TX but made a name for himself in the DMV area as an audio visual specialist working closely with the Mayor's office in Washington DC right out of high school. After six years of working in DC he decided to make a major investment in his studies and resigned from his good government job to finish his degree at George Mason �鶹��. He was successful in completing his BA in Music Voice in 2016 and a few years later completed his Masters in Arts Management at GMU in 2021

Along the way he spent 8 years a the Director of AV Production at Alfred Street Baptist Church, responsible for managing a fast paced audio and visual production department thats services millions of worshipers monthly and designing full scale church production for various venues such as the Kennedy Center, Strathmore, Capital One Hall and Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Although his AV career took off quickly, he has found his way back to his passion of music and helping others find their voice in life. Throughout his journey he has always been a member of the Green Machine under the mentorship of Doc Nix and his time in the band developed his artistry past that of just a singer as he became the creator and director of The Green & Gold Soul and eventually Associate Director of Green Machine Ensembles where he can be a teacher, mentor, role model for the next generation of students.

Regina Schneider

Pam Muirheid — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:57:35 +0000

Regina Schneider Pam Muirheid Thu, 09/19/2024 - 10:57

Marketing & Communications Coordinator, Mason Community Arts Academy, CVPA

Contact Information

4260 Chain Bridge Rd, Fairfax, VA 22030
Tel: 703-993-9889
Email: rschnei@gmu.edu

Biography

Regina serves as the Marketing and Communications Coordinator at the Mason Community Arts Academy. With a higher education background, Regina uses her knowledge and skills to help the Academy to fulfill its mission. Regina graduated with a Bachelor’s in Anthropology and a Master’s of Education from Louisiana State �鶹�� and is specialized in marketing, communications, and graphic design. She previously worked in different university focus areas, including Housing and Enrollment Management.

Regina is passionate about the arts and loves to explore creative outlets. She enjoys painting, interior design, and playing the ukulele and piano.

Mallory Kimmel

Pam Muirheid — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 16:15:19 +0000

Mallory Kimmel Pam Muirheid Tue, 08/22/2023 - 12:15

Adjunct Faculty, School of Art, CVPA

Contact Information

Campus: Fairfax
Building: 2050 Art and Design Building; MSN: 1C3
Tel: 703-993-8898

Biography

Kimmel is a Washington-D.C.-based artist, who makes conceptual furniture to address exclusionary design practices. She focuses on disrupting loopholes used to deny human rights. Placing the focus on object-centric forms of possession, exclusion, objectification, and consumption helps to unravel the exploitation of objects to address the same forms of abuse applied to people. Kimmel believes if you liberate objects, you liberate people. Kimmel looks to objects and people as co-facilitators to democratize comfort-based privilege. Shifting hierarchical presentations in space to communal-based comfort will reshape public institutions in both form and practice. The use of sculpture, performance, critical writing and gathering as practice are employed to subvert capitalism and promote rest and community development. Formally trained in the arts, Kimmel received her MFA in fine art from California College of the Arts and degrees in studio art and ecology from Susquehanna �鶹��. She teaches as an adjunct professor at the Corcoran School of Art and Design at George Washington �鶹��, George Mason �鶹��, The �鶹�� of Maryland, Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) and Prince George’s Community College.

She manages the permanent art collection at CCBC; and has co-founded the Black X Collective, a grassroots organization dedicated to supporting Black filmmakers and Black musicians. Kimmel’s work has been published by e-flux, The George Washington �鶹�� Museum and Textile Museum, and The Curator’s Salon. Kimmel’s work, Quiet Companion was acquired by CCBC as a permanent outdoor sculpture. Kimmel in 2023 was selected as the Jennie Lea Knight Fellow at the Studio Gallery in D.C. (2023-2025). In 2020 she completed the artist residency at the Social Studies Residency in Northern California and in 2018, she was selected as the Curatorial Fellow at Aggregate Space Gallery in Oakland. In 2017 Kimmel participated in an artist in residency in the Arctic Circle funded by the National Science Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aboard a scientific research icebreaker ship USCG Healy.

Degrees:

MFA, California College of the Arts
Degrees in Studio Art and Ecology, Susquehanna �鶹��

Prof. Richard Leech

Lauren Beth Rigby — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 18:34:35 +0000

Prof. Richard Leech Lauren Beth Rigby Fri, 06/16/2023 - 14:34

Associate Professor of VOICE and OPERA, TENOR, Dewberry School of Music, CVPA

Contact Information

Campus: Fairfax

Building: deLaski Performing Arts Building

Mail Stop: 3E3

Email: rleech@gmu.edu

Biography

Tenor Richard Leech is the newly appointed Associate Professor of Voice and Opera at George Mason �鶹��, effective Fall 2023. American tenor Richard Leech is one of the most celebrated lyric tenors of his generation. In a performance career spanning more than four decades he has provided iconic interpretations of many of the most demanding and well-known roles of the Italian, French, and German repertoire both on disc and on the stages of the world's leading opera houses and symphonies from The Metropolitan Opera to Carnegie Hall and Vienna’s Staatsoper and Philharmonic, to London’s Royal Opera at Covent Garden and Milan’s Teatro alla Scala.

Richard Leech is featured on more than twenty recordings in many of the roles for which he is so well known including Rodolfo in La Bohème, The Duke in Rigoletto, and Riccardo in Un ballo in Maschera, and his award-winning EMI recording of Gounod’s Faust with Michel Plasson among many others. His solo release from the heart, a collection of favorite Italian arias and songs, can be found on the Telarc label and his acclaimed Deutsche Oper Les Huguenots, on Arthaus DVD.

As a passionate teacher and mentor, Mr. Leech has worked extensively with aspiring artists at all levels of their development throughout his career. Previously he served on the faculties of Rutgers �鶹��’s Mason Gross School of the Arts; Rutgers Opera Institute; and The �鶹�� of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

Director of Resident Artist Programs for Michigan Opera Theatre (MOT, now Detroit Opera) from 2015 -2021, Mr. Leech created the MOT Studio, the company’s first young artist program, offering full-time engagement, training, and experience to artists in the early stages of a professional career. In his leadership role with MOT, he also oversaw the company’s many education and community engagement initiatives.

Following his 1987 European debut with Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, as Raoul in Les Huguenots, the headline of the Berliner Morgen Post read: “A World Star is Born” and true to its forecast, Mr. Leech had soon made debuts with virtually every major opera house of the world. Of his first performance with the Metropolitan Opera in 1989, as Rodolfo in La Bohème, Will Crutchfield of the New York Times wrote: “Other than Pavarotti on his best night, I can’t think of another tenor I’d rather hear in the part.” Since then, he has sung nearly 200 Met performances in more than a dozen leading roles.

In addition to the Met, he was also a frequent guest with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the opera companies of San Francisco, LA, Washington, San Diego, and Cincinnati, as well as many other important American companies. Internationally, he was often seen in Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Florence, Rome, and at La Scala in Milan where he had the honor of singing La Bohème with the great Mirella Freni. Other countries where he has performed include Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, Canada, Russia, Cyprus, Japan, China, and South Korea.

In concert, Mr. Leech has distinguished himself with the Vienna, Prague, New York, Chicago, and LA Philharmonic Orchestras, and the National and Montréal Symphonies, among myriad others in repertoire such as Verdi’s Messa di requiem; Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and Missa Solemnis; Mahler’s 8th Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde; Berlioz’s Requiem and La Damnation de Faust; Rossini’s Stabat Mater; and Mozart’s: Requiem and Mass in C minor. In crossover repertoire, he has appeared with the Boston Pops, New York Pops, Cincinnati Pops, and with Doc Severinsen and his Orchestra. His critically acclaimed concert, An evening with Richard Leech in Tribute to Mario Lanza, in which he embraced the crossover style of his childhood hero, was the sell-out season opener for the New York Pops at prestigious Carnegie Hall, and opened Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival to an audience of over 12,000.

Mr. Leech was the 1988 winner of the prestigious Richard Tucker Award, the recipient of The Voice Foundation’s Voice Education Research and Awareness (V.E.R.A.) Award, and the Giulio Gari Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award. He has been a frequent guest teacher and presenter of masterclasses for many institutions and companies such as USC, UCSD, Beijing School of Fine Arts, Opera Lyra Ottawa Young Artist Program, Binghamton �鶹��, The Castleton Festival’s Artist Training Seminar, the New York Singing Teachers Association’s Professional Development Program, and for the Prelude to Performance program of The Martina Arroyo Foundation on whose Advisory Board he serves. He attended Eastman School of Music and Binghamton �鶹�� and credits his success to the training he received in the Tri-Cities Opera Resident Artist Training Program in Binghamton, NY under the long-term mentorship of the company’s founders, Peyton Hibbitt and Carmen Savoca.

Mr. Leech’s many televised appearances include Madama Butterfly with the Met; a “Live from Lincoln Center” Rigoletto with the New York City Opera; Les Huguenots with Deutsche Oper Berlin; and many other opera broadcasts in Europe and beyond, as well as his frequent appearances on the annual Richard Tucker Music Foundation Gala. More popular events include the lighting of the National Christmas Tree, with President Clinton, where he performed with Aretha Franklin and Trisha Yearwood; the famous tree lighting at Rockefeller Center; and the opening ceremonies of the 1995 America’s Cup in San Diego. In benefit concerts, he has appeared with such show business luminaries as Tony Randal, Kelsey Grammer, Ben Vereen, Betty Buckley, and Peter Allen. He joined Placido Domingo in a benefit for Hurricane Katrina relief which marked the reopening of the arts in New Orleans.

Michael McDermott

Pam Muirheid — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 18:14:58 +0000

Michael McDermott Pam Muirheid Wed, 03/29/2023 - 14:14

Assistant Professor, School of Art, CVPA

Contact Information

Campus: Fairfax
Building: 2012 Art and Design Building, Ffx, MSN: 1C3
Tel: 703-993-5262
Email: mmcderm8@gmu.edu

Biography

Michael McDermott is an Assistant Professor at George Mason �鶹��. He received his MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Bachelor of Architecture from Virginia Tech. He is an educator, designer, and researcher who is interested in the relationship between people and the objects they leave behind and the translation of physical experiences into digital spaces. As an educator he teaches classes primarily in the digital space such as Intro to Web Design and Motion Design and has also taught History of Graphic Design and Typography. His design practice focuses on providing thoughtful designs for print and digital projects to a range of clients including nonprofits and community organizations.

Degrees:

MFA, Graphic Design, Rhode Island School of Design
Bachelor of Architecture, Virginia Tech

Specialist Areas:

Design History
Motion Design
Typography
Web Design

Heather Green

Pam Muirheid — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 17:48:22 +0000

Heather Green Pam Muirheid Wed, 03/22/2023 - 13:48

Associate Professor, School of Art, CVPA

Contact Information

Campus: Fairfax
Building: 2016 Art and Design Building
Mail: MSN: 1C3
Email: hstreckf@gmu.edu

Personal Websites

See Heather Green's Website

Biography

Heather Green’s poetry collection No Other Rome (2021) was published in the Akron Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, Everyday Genius, the New Yorker, and elsewhere. She’s the author of the chapbooks No Omen and The Match Array.

Her translation of Tristan Tzara’s Noontimes Won, published in 2018 by Octopus Books. Her translation of Tzara’s Guide to the Heart Rail was released in 2017 in a limited-run art edition, with images by artist Pete Sculte, by Goodmorning Menagerie. Her translations of Tzara’s work have appeared AGNI, Asymptote, Guernica, Ploughshares, and several anthologies, including In the Shape of a Human Body I Am Visiting the Earth, from McSweeney’s Books.

Green was the recipient of the inaugural Albertine Translation Prize in Fiction for her in-progress translation from French: The Woman and the Falcon, by Isabelle Sorente, and her translation of Sarah Manigne’s Leaving Madrid won the 2021/2 French Voices grant. Her recent writing on poetry and translation appears in Hopscotch Translation, reviewer in 2021. Green served as a longlist judge for the NBCC’s inaugural Barrios Prize for a book in translation and currently serves as a juror for the National Translation Award in poetry.

Green holds an MA in literature from the �鶹�� of Nebraska and an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from Boston �鶹��. She works as an Associate Professor in the InterArts program in the School of Art at George Mason �鶹��.

Degrees:

MFA, Creative writing (poetry), Boston �鶹��
MA, Literature, �鶹�� of Nebraska

Specialist Areas:

Aesthetics
Art Writing
Literary Translation
Poetry and Visual Art
Writing for Artists

Benjamin Ashworth

Pam Muirheid — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 17:02:18 +0000

Benjamin Ashworth Pam Muirheid Wed, 02/01/2023 - 12:02

Sculpture and Foundations Supervisor and Adjunct Faculty, School of Art, CVPA

Contact Information

Campus: Fairfax
Building: L006B Art and Design Building, MSN: 1C3
Tel: 703-993-8651
Email: bashwort@gmu.edu

Personal Websites

Visit Benjamin Ashworth's Website

Biography

Ben curates and builds ongoing community-sourced public art projects that combine skateboarding, education, construction, music, media, and visual art as a socially engaged platform. As a process, he invites artists and community members to weekly interactive, spontaneous sessions where their combined energies and diverse backgrounds enrich the developing art spaces.

Ben is co-founder of DC’s Green Skate Laboratory and one of the founding members of the now legendary DC Fight Club, an underground skate park, gallery, and performing arts venue. In 2012 he produced Finding A Line for the DC temporary public art initiative 5×5 by building a skate/art park under a dicey DC freeway underpass and in 2015 co-developed another iteration of Finding A Line with the Kennedy Center. The Finding a Line project is now part of the DC Cultural Plan and the city’s multiyear – arts and culture forward – creative placemaking initiative, “Crossing the Street: Building DC’s Inclusive Future through Creative Placemaking”.

Ben’s community art practice has been the subject of various publications, including NPR, McSweeney’s, the Washington Post, Jazz Times, BBC, ARTnews, JUICE, Landscape Architecture, and National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He received his MFA from George Mason �鶹�� School of Art where he is also Sculpture Faculty and teaches Art as Social Action and Public Art Projects. Ben is a core member of Workingman Collective and ECRW, a loose coalition of surfer, skater, educator, builder, citizen artists.

See Ben Ashworth's C.V.

Degrees:

MFA , Sculpture, George Mason �鶹��, 2016
BA, Studio Art, George Mason �鶹��, 1999

Specialist Areas:

Art as Social Action
Public Art

Amanda Snellings

Pam Muirheid — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 15:33:49 +0000

Amanda Snellings Pam Muirheid Wed, 01/18/2023 - 10:33

Assistant Director of Development, CVPA

Contact Information

Campus: Fairfax
Mail Stop: 4C1
Email: asnelli@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-1593

Biography

Amanda Snellings joined George Mason �鶹�� in 2021. As the Assistant Director of Development for CVPA, Amanda secures philanthropic support for scholarships and academic programs related to the School of Theater, School of Dance, and the Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music. She is the liaison to community volunteer Friends groups for those academic units and leads fundraising efforts for the Dance Fête signature event.

Amanda has previously worked with the National MS Society, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, and NextStop Theatre Company in development roles as well as Forum Theatre, the Berkshire Theatre Group, Asolo Repertory Theatre, and the Virginia Theatre Association in arts administration roles.

Amanda participates in volunteer community theatre in Northern Virginia as a director, producer, and performer. She has been the Artistic Director of the City of Fairfax Theatre Company (CFTC) since 2018. In 2019, she was nominated for a WATCH Award for Outstanding Direction of a Musical for CFTC’s Beauty and the Beast, among two wins and seven additional nominations for the production.

Degree:

BA, Theatre and Dance, James Madison �鶹��

Ahmad Maaty

Nafisa Ferdous — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 18:42:49 +0000

Ahmad Maaty Nafisa Ferdous Tue, 11/01/2022 - 14:42

Adjunct Professor, School of Theater, CVPA

Contact Information

Campus: Fairfax
Building: de Laski Performing Arts Bldg
Room A407
Mail Stop: 3E6
Email: amaaty@gmu.edu

Personal Websites

www.ahmadmaaty.com

Biography

Ahmad Maaty is an Egyptian-American actor, dancer, choreographer, and singer. He holds an M.F.A. from the Actors Studio Drama School in NYC which gave him the privilege of being a finalist at the Actors Studio. He received his BA in Theater from George Mason �鶹�� where he now serves as an Adjunct Professor for the School of Theater. He has performed across the U.S. and internationally, and continues to work in the DMV and NYC in performance and mentoring artists of all ages and experience. His performances and choreography have been recognized by the Helen Hayes, Youth American Grand Prix, Broadway World, the Cappies, the Brandon Victor Dixon Awards, and the Jimmys.

Ahmad is passionate about telling stories of the human experience. His approach is rooted in realism and naturalism that is driven by an actor’s unique instrument and history. Ahmad asks his actors to find truth in every moment, and to explore, cherish, fortify, and give value to their instrument.

Degrees

MFA, Actors Studio Drama School
BA, Theater, George Mason �鶹��