Visual Arts
DANI MITCHELL
Visual Arts Director
Dani’s educational leadership is rooted in the desire to use visual arts as a tool to help support artists of all ages better understand themselves and their environment, to foster appreciation for new ideas, and to improve their ability to address and overcome the challenges of growing up in an increasingly complex world. She believes art is for everyone and takes pride in her role as an educator to lift artists from all backgrounds up in the community.
With a BFA in Photography and an MEd with an endorsement in art, Dani identifies as a multipotentialite, a person with wide interests in many creative pursuits, and finds inspiration in many mediums of art. Her background is in portraiture, performance arts, and exploratory art making. Some of her interests and personal artistic endeavors include ceramics, fibers and textile art, painting, printmaking, and photography. She enjoys experimenting with mediums and trying new techniques.
Inclusive, student centered, and comprehensive differentiation are at the forefront of her teaching, ensuring all artist learners have an enriching experience. She values education that affords artists the opportunity to feel represented in the art world, showing strength in diversity and collaboration.
jon bury
visual arts INSTRUCTOR
Jon Bury is a sculpture and mixed media artist who specializes in using wood, metal, plastics to create large scale figures and installations. Using design and construction techniques he’s been learning since his youth in rural Maryland, he creates 3-dimensional sculptures inspired by popular culture, nature, and agnostic mysticism.
He sees possibility in creation as a challenge in which he works to discover his limits and push past them. Through recent exhibitions such as his piece Forces of Nature, installed in the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in May 2023, Jon uses any and every tool and technique available to hunt for the answer to the question “what if it was real?''