About Us

Susan Fletcher King is a fiber artist who has branched out from traditional quilting.  She mixes her quilted imagery with additional media, such as paint, dyes, specialty threads and embellishments.  Susan calls upon her professional art background in graphic design and illustration to create her illustrative quilt art.  While in residency at HCCC, she plans to pursue imagery created with deconstructed screen printing, as well as a soy-wax technique to create batik imagery.  To complete her pieces, she uses an assemblage style to combine additional elements and finishes with various quilting techniques.

Susan graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston and later returned to her school to teach graphic design for several years.  After earning her BFA from the University of Houston, she worked as a graphic designer in advertising and as a technical illustrator, eventually opening her own design studio and print agency.  Prior to raising a family, Susan took forays into a wide variety of other fields, including teaching, risk management, dairy milking and horse training.

Returning to the art world has been extremely rewarding for Susan, as she brings her many life experiences to her current artwork.  She has exhibited her work in local, regional and national venues.  Susan will be at HCCC through November and will return to complete a second term of residency in the summer of 2013.  For more information, visit www.susanfletcherking.com.

Tarina Frank is a Houston-based artist and certified high-school art teacher who works primarily in metals and paper.  She began drawing and painting as a child when living and traveling on a 30-foot sail boat with her parents.  She received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin with a focus in metals and painting.

Tarina’s interest in jewelry and mechanisms has led to a series of work that revolves around ideas of constant change and identity.  She explains, “Our current generation is addicted to the fast pace and instant gratification of the internet and the ability to broadcast information about themselves on social media. In the online world, we are celebrities, and everyone can see what we ‘like,’ who we are dating, and what we are eating.  My jewelry allows you to wear your status updates, your relationships and your political views on your chest.  With a simple spin of a knob, you can change your broach relationship status from ‘single’ to ‘it’s complicated.’”

Throughout her residency, Tarina will continue to investigate ideas of status, allegiance, and kinetics to create jewelry for a more hands-on society.  Her work was recently exhibited in the Spring 2011 SNAG juried student show, and her work is included in the permanent collection of the metals department at the University of Texas.  She will be at HCCC through May of 2013. For more information, please visit www.tarinafrank.com.

Chanda Glendinning is a ceramic sculptor whose work draws from her interest in the virtual communication networks that enable us to share and acquire information on a global level.  Her thoughts on our modern communication systems are translated into formally arranged sculptural works composed of groups of softly gleaming, white slip-cast components and found objects. While at HCCC, she plans to develop a new body of work that addresses concepts of disposability within our society.

Chanda is from rural western New York, where she received her BFA from Buffalo State College, before moving to Kansas in 2008 to obtain her MFA in ceramics from Kansas State University. This past summer, she worked in the studio at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine.

Chanda’s work was recently featured in a solo show, 37 Tributes to a Bridge, at the Center Gallery in Olean, NY, and has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. She served as Student Director at Large for NCECA from 2010-2012 and organized a fundraising exhibition in April of 2011, Kansas Arts for Japan, to help raise money for tsunami victims in Japan.  Chanda will be with HCCC through August of 2013. For more info, visit www.chandaglendinning.com.

Jaydan Moore’s career began as an undergraduate student at California College of Arts, Oakland, where he earned his BFA in jewelry and metal arts. During his time there, he focused on the production of oil cans and their representation of craft and the Industrial Revolution. While studying at CCA, Jaydan worked as a machinist and bench jeweler for the high-end metal production company, Svartvik Metal Works.

At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he earned his MFA/MA in jewelry and metal arts, Jaydan began focusing his interest on the heirloom. Using the imagery of found silver-plated tableware, he fragments and reassembles these objects into new forms to challenge and commemorate the individual’s ability to designate value to his/her own valuables and memories. By fabricating a new object from stylistically and historically related wares, he creates a new image that takes all memories of its use into consideration, maintaining some semblance and evidence of their past incarnations.

Jaydan will be with HCCC through June 21, 2013.  For more information, visit www.jaydanmoore.com.

Originally from Freeburg, IL, Robert Thomas Mullen received his BFAs in metalsmithing and photography from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a MFA in metalsmithing from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.  This past summer, he worked as a studio technician at the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh and assisted Daniel DiCaprio at Penland School of Crafts.

Robert’s work is highly influenced by his current local environment and culture, as well as places he visited on family trips from his childhood:  “My jewelry is a way for me to materialize the world I have experienced.  I can take my environment and hold it in my hand, allowing me to better understand my surroundings.”

After taking two workshops in wood jewelry earlier this year, Robert has discovered his love for the material and enjoys working with both native and exotic woods.  During his residency at HCCC, he hopes to refine his techniques and combine wood and metal in unique ways to create his jewelry.

His work has been exhibited at Mesa Contemporary Arts; Society for Contemporary Craft; Cole Arts Center; Erie Art Museum; Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland; and online through SNAG.  He was published in Lark’s Showcase 500 Rings and Chimera 8 and 9.  Robert will be with HCCC through May of 2013.  For more information, visit www.robertthomasmullen.com.

Rachelle Vasquez is a Houston-based artist and certified art teacher who works primarily with fibers. She picked up crocheting on a whim in 2006, and it quickly came to feel like a natural extension of herself. Vasquez’s recent work has been more research oriented, which allows her to make lots of spreadsheets, large series of works and massive crocheted pieces. Her work is also process driven, which often requires a great deal of planning and patternmaking. Some examples of her crocheted work include large tapestries, scarves and stretched animal pelts. Most of these works are inspired by animals and history, and how the two relate and tell a story—be it fictional or non-fictional.

Rachelle graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Arts degree and a minor in art history. Prior to becoming a resident artist at HCCC, she had a residency at DiverseWorks in 2007 and a solo show at Lawndale Art Center in 2010, entitled Where Pigeons Dare. She will be with HCCC through August of 2012. For more information, visit her website at www.rachellevasquez.com.

Jessica Kreutter is a clay artist who works with discarded objects. She received an MFA from The University of Tennessee in 2010. For 10 years previous to graduate school, she worked as an artist, art teacher and social worker in Portland, Oregon.  Recently, she has exhibited at Pirate: Contemporary Art, Mütter Museum, Seattle Design Center and the Fort Collins Museum of Art, as well as in group exhibitions in Philadelphia, Washington, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina and Colorado. She has been a resident artist at ART342, Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch and PlatteForum and is in residence at HCCC through August of 2012.

In small, fragmented installations using found, discarded objects and porcelain, Jessica explores the idea of loss, memory and its transformation through time. Traces of use and decay hold time in suspension and connect these objects to memories of a body that has disappeared. In this fragile moment, Jessica imagines what materializes from these shadows left behind and the body that would exist in these ruins. In the reimaging of the body in clay, the form becomes fragmented and pliant, a combination of flesh, bone, animal and nature. The body begins to invent itself as it both absorbs and imitates its surroundings. These forms embody transformation and transition. They occupy a space of instability where other worlds intercept our own and rules have been suspended.

About her work, Jessica states, “There is a potency held within the spaces that are in-between. These spaces suggest there is something more than what our world has been divided up into, a place between reality and fantasy, a point at which opposing ideas overlap. These moments where boundaries are breached or intersect evoke the possibility of seeing the world differently.”

For more information, please visit www.jessicakreutter.com.