FOUNDED IN 2011, INSTITUTE FOR VISUAL ARTS (IVA) OFFERS A CORE PROGRAM OF ONGOING COURSES THROUGHOUT THE ACADEMIC YEAR AS WELL AS SHORT TERM SESSION CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS FOR STUDENTS OF ALL AGES

IVA’s approach to learning in and through the visual arts centers instruction on the foundational disciplines that contribute to the creation, understanding and appreciation of art. IVA’s curriculum is designed sequentially and provides students with deep and meaningful learning experiences in a broad array of multifaceted art concepts, styles, methods and media. Students are provided with specific project-based learning objectives while being encouraged to develop their own voice and generate original ideas and subject matter from their personal experiences, observations, imaginations and memories.

IVA students study the visual arts in an in-depth, sequential, academic, rigorous manner; learn vocabulary, history, concepts, elements, principles; develop creativity, self-expression, independent and critical thinking skills; explore processes, materials, tools, techniques; expand artistic knowledge, skills and abilities; create original artworks in varied and mixed media; learn within a small, diverse, creative peer group.

SHANNON RAE FINCKE

FOUNDER/EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
IVA IS DIRECTED BY SHANNON RAE FINCKE, A VISUAL ARTIST, ART ADMINISTRATOR AND EDUCATOR, AND CURATOR—WITH OVER 25 YEARS OF ART PROGRAM LEADERSHIP, CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT, AND TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Prior to founding IVA in 2011, Shannon designed and implemented original PreK-12 art programs in numerous schools and nonprofit organizations and instructed visual arts to students of all ages and levels in a wide variety of capacities. Shannon spent 8 years providing art education and professional development as a Visual Arts Specialist for Los Angeles Unified School District. She also gave private lessons and conducted custom-designed classes, workshops, and camps at residences throughout Los Angeles for over a decade. Shannon formerly served as a Visual Arts Examiner for the International Baccalaureate, an art instructor at Wildwood School and Windward School in Los Angeles, and a Project Arts Coordinator and Art Department Head in New York City high schools. She has also worked as a museum educator and teaching artist for various organizations including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY, Henry Street Settlement Abrons Art Center in New York City, and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Shannon was selected to attend the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts in high school and completed her undergraduate studies in Studio Art at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania and The Marchutz School of Art in France. She holds a Master's Degree in Painting and Art Education from New York University, where she was the recipient of a Gallatin School Dean’s Scholarship and studied intensively with the renowned artist Arnold Mesches. Her teacher training was completed at New York City’s LaGuardia High School of Music & Art & Performing Arts and Hunter College Elementary and Secondary Schools for gifted and talented students. Shannon holds PreK-Adult Art teaching credentials in New York and California.
Shannon’s artwork has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Los Angeles, New York, and Internationally, is in private and public collections throughout the U.S., and has been featured in print, film, and television. Originally from the East Coast, Shannon moved to the Silverlake/Los Feliz area of Los Angeles in 2002, where she currently lives with her husband and three daughters.

DOUGLAS JENNERICH

MANAGING PARTNER
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
IVA IS MANAGED BY DOUGLAS JENNERICH, A POET, CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHOR, AND PHOTOGRAPHER WITH OVER 25 YEARS OF MANAGEMENT, SALES AND CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE—AND A DECADE OF EXPERIENCE AS SHANNON’S PARTNER

ADJUNCT FACULTY

KELLY LYNN JONES

Children Experientials

Kelly Lynn Jones is an artist and educator in Los Angeles. Jones earned her BFA and MFA with an emphasis on painting from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She has shown her paintings globally and is represented by The Pit in Los Angeles. Referencing her own daily life, Jones paints imagined spaces at the intersection of the real and whimsical. Looking for tender moments of reflection, she uses her own mythology to create lush, colorful and pattern filled environments full of flora and fauna. Jones’ textured strokes create the building blocks to interpret her memories through a theatrically lit color palette that often seems like a page out of a children’s book. Being a child of an LAUSD teacher, Jones always had an interest in education. After running her own art business, Little Paper Planes for 14 years where she worked with artists in various ways, Jones started an after-school arts program. Soon after, she realized teaching art is a passion and began working in elementary schools. Since 2018 Jones has created and taught a dynamic TK-5th grade Arts Program that is student-centered, developmentally appropriate, and scaffolds from grade to grade. Her curriculum fosters creativity focusing on individual voice and exposure to artistic skills by exploring a wide variety of mediums through the lens of both historical and contemporary art.

MOLLY SEGAL

Figure Drawing

Molly Segal is a Los Angeles based painter. Born and raised in Oakland, Segal is interested in her home state of California as a site where disaster and decadence converge. Her large scale watercolors explore fragile connections, finite resources, and the price of survival in inhospitable climates. Her paintings have been exhibited at Francois Ghebaly, Charlie James Gallery, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Track 16. She was an inaugural artist-in-residence at the Quinn Emanuel Artist Residency in Los Angeles in 2021. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Whitehot Magazine, Artillery, and Lapham’s Quarterly. She received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2013.

Molly has taught painting, drawing, and watercolor privately and at CSU Long Beach, Tufts University, The School of Museum of Fine Arts, Brentwood Art Center and Golden West College.

“It’s important to give yourself permission to make bad paintings and drawings. Like, a lot of them. My main goal as an instructor is to help students cultivate the skills, confidence, and resilience to approach art making not from a place of fear but exploration.”

CASEY BADEN

Fibers+Mixed-Media

Casey Baden was born and raised in Houston, TX and is currently based in Los Angeles. Baden is a multidisciplinary artist working with textiles, natural dye, painting, weaving, and installation. She completed her BFA at New York University, 2014 and her MFA at California Institute of the Arts, 2020. She has been awarded residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Vermont Studio Center, The Reef, AZ West, Textile Art Center, PADA Studios, at NYC Crit Club's Plum Lime Residency. Her works have been exhibited in the US and Europe, including La Loma Projects, Spring/Break Art Fair New York and LA, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Hoarders Gallery, 00LA, Other Places Art Fair, The Santa Monica Art Museum, Palos Verdes Art Center, and Palm Court Arts Complex, among others. Her work has been featured in publications including Maake Magazine, ArtForum (online), Hyperallergic, Voyage LA, and Materials and Applications. Presently, Baden is teaching Fibers: Special Topics in Art at Harvey Mudd College, and previously she has taught at Mount Saint Mary’s University and Pomona College.

LESLIE LANXINGER

Drawing in Black+White/Oil Painting

Leslie Lanxinger is a Los Angeles based visual artist, specializing in painting, charcoal drawing, and mixed media sculpture. Using paper as her primary material, her subject matter is inspired by feminism and narrative referencing anthropomorphism, literature, and theatrics such as burlesque and commedia dell’arte. Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Tokyo, London, and Miami. Select awards include the Franklin Furnace Award, the Brooklyn Arts Council Grant, the San Francisco Center for Cultural Innovation Grant, and the Brand Associate Patron Award. Residencies include The Atlantic Center for the Arts and Arteles Creative Center in Haukijärvi Finland. Museum shows include the Wexner Center, Ohio, the Harn Museum, Florida, and the Institute for Contemporary Arts in Boston and Atlanta. She received her Masters of Fine Arts from the School of Visual arts in New York and her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art.

Leslie began to develop her approach to teaching in New York City in 2002, where she taught her first sculpture workshop. Leslie believes that each young artist must find their own individual voice, and she creates a positive and creative atmosphere where students feel empowered to explore.

NAOMI WHITE

Photography+Collage

Naomi White is an artist and educator, working on ideas at the intersection of political ecology and photography. Throughout her work White addresses an array of contemporary issues, asking how we can shift our focus away from the current capitalist model of exploitation, to one of equity and collective voice, for all people, animals and the planet.

White is the winner of PDN’s Objects of Desire award, and a finalist for the Hopper Prize, 2023. She has exhibited throughout North America and Europe, including art fairs Scope Miami, Spectrum Miami, and Photo LA. Her work has been published in PDN, The Brooklyn Rail, Cut Me Up, FAYN, and Uncertain States. White has lectured at the Center for Ethics at Cal Poly Pomona, Santa Monica City College, and UCLA Extension. White holds an MFA in Photography and Related Media from SVA in New York, a Post Baccalaureate in Photography from the San Francisco Art institute, and a BA in English Literature from San Francisco State.

White is the faculty chair of the photography department at NYFA in Burbank. Teaching is an essential part of her artistic practice. She teaches classes exploring theoretical and historical concerns, graduate seminars, FAYN magazine, curation, and collage.

AMANDA MEARS

Bookmaking

Amanda Mears is a British-born, Los Angeles-based painter and maker of sculptural books. Her work focuses on a deep engagement with the natural world. Amanda studied painting at Turps Art School, London, and earned her MFA at Claremont Graduate School. She is the creator and facilitator of a worldwide, eco-social, collaborative artist book project called Leaving Earth. Amanda has taught painting and drawing privately, at the University of LaVerne, and the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art. She earned a certificate of Ethical Pedagogy from Claremont Graduate University.

Amanda formerly worked as a documentary film-maker. Grounded in her documentarian’s practice of gathering and editing materials, Amanda’s work explores the idea of landscape as fragile, mediated, specific and intimate, and her process begins with drawing and photographing in nature. These gathered materials are reprocessed into paintings and books which investigate the powerful tension between the universal and the particular, and the real and the imagined. Amanda’s work engages with humans’ intertwined relationship with the natural world, investigating via materials and mark-making how we inscribe ourselves onto an idea of landscape.

NOELANI O’HARE

Teen Intensives: Graphic Arts/Printmaking

Noelani O’Hare is a rising senior at the University of Pennsylvania studying Design and Cognitive Science. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she is a proud IVA alum—having studied in the IVA Core Program year-round from kindergarten through 12th grade, as well as continuing to attend college-level classes during her summers home. Her studio practice now focuses on graphic design and printmaking—having found a love for linocuts and screen printing in high school. She currently works as a Press Assistant at the Common Press (a letterpress printing studio in Philadelphia) and hosts letterpress printing and linocut workshops. Additionally she keeps up with her passion for screen printing and all things experimental printmaking—releasing small drops of hand-printed merchandise as well as hosting screen printing events for Penn and Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. (ICA) Most importantly, Noelani is super excited to return to IVA to now conduct Materials+Techniques Intensives in Graphic Arts for teens alongside her longtime mentor!

ROSALIND BULLARD L.Ac, MSTOM

Meditative Art: Acupuncture/Herbal Specialist

Rosalind Bullard is a licensed acupuncturist and owner of City Acupuncture Silver Lake. She is board certified in the state of California and holds national certification through the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. She is also a painter and has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work in both acupuncture/herbal medicine and painting look at the connections between nature, the human body, the macroscopic and microscopic. The desire to make these connections through creativity and healing are what drives these complementary aspects of her work and life.

LISA CARTER

Meditative Art: Reiki/Aromatherapy Specialist

Lisa Carter hails from a rich celtic lineage of healers within a wide array of holistic therapeutic arts. With a keen interest in integrating natural healing practices with modern medicine, she has spent over two decades studying and practicing aromatherapy with essential oils. In 2023 Lisa became certified as an Usui Reiki Practitioner Level I & II. She trained with and continues to collaborate closely with her esteemed mentor, Ksenia Luki, in further developing and deepening her practice. After receiving her degree in French language and literature at the University of Nottingham, she went on to study acting at Mountview Theatre School in London. Most notably she has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company Fringe at The Young Vic, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and at the White House. Having studied art with Shannon in IVA’s Core Program for numerous years, Lisa is now delighted to be working with IVA’s Meditative Art Team to provide an energetic balance to the space and the individuals within it.

VISITING ARTISTS

MINDY SHAPERO

Lecture & Critique

Mindy Shapero was born in Louisville, KY and lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. Shapero’s work has been shown extensively in institutions across the United States in exhibitions organized by Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, KY; the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH. Mindy creates lively, meticulous sculptural and canvas works comprised of materials as various as studio scraps, spray paint, gold, copper, and silver leaf. Her works on canvas are formed by stencils sourced from discarded sculptural bits, and portions of those stencils eventually find their way back into the artist‘s sculptural work. In this process, Shapero transmutes negatives from past sculptural pieces into positive shapes that form the bedrock of her cosmic abstractions. Shapero’s repeating motifs—irregular rectangles and ovals that resemble “scars” or ruptures in the surface— are highlighted through the artist’s application of delicate gold leaf, an adornment dating back more than 8,000 years in the canon of art history. Interested in the combination of old and new techniques, Shapero’s techniques harken back to the artist’s personal history rooted in the DIY aesthetics of punk counterculture.

KYSA JOHNSON

Lecture & Critique

Kysa Johnson’s drawings, paintings and installations explore patterns in nature that exist at the extremes of scale, using them as a way to reflect on our place in the physical universe and history. Using the shapes of subatomic decay patterns, maps of the universe or the molecular structure of pollutants or of diseases and cures – in short, microscopic or macroscopic “landscapes” – it depicts a physical reality that is invisible to the naked eye. Often these micro patterns are built up to form compositions that relate to them conceptually. The Long Goodbye series uses the marks of subatomic decay patterns as a visual alphabet to create compositions based on Hubble Space Telescope imagery of the life cycle of stars. Pairing these two iterations of the same process of birth, transformation, decay and regeneration highlights the basic similarity of processes across scale, the inevitability of change and the demise of the status quo whether measured in nano-seconds or millennia. Kysa graduated with honors from the Glasgow School of Art in Glasgow, Scotland. She has exhibited at, among other venues, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, The Tang Museum, The DeCordova Museum, Dublin Contemporary, The Nicolaysen Museum, The Katonah Museum of Art, The Hudson River Museum, The 2nd Biennial of the Canary Islands, The National Academy of Science, Nancy Littlejohn Fine Art, Morgan Lehman Gallery, Von Lintel Gallery, and Halsey McKay. Her work has been written about extensively including in Art Forum, The New York Times, Interview Magazine, The New Yorker and The San Francisco Chronicle. Her work is included in many public collections including MIT, Google, Microsoft, The Progressive Collection, Deutsche Bank, and Credit Suisse. She is a NYFA fellow and Pollock Krasner Grant recipient.

JAQUELINE CEDAR

Figure Drawing/Professional Practices/Acrylic Painting

Jaqueline Cedar was born in Los Angeles, CA and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and a BA from University of California, Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include Shelter Gallery (2023), TV Projects, Brooklyn (2023), Long Story Short, New York (2023), Shin Haus, New York (2022), Smoke the Moon, Santa Fe (2022), Ladies' Room, Los Angeles (2021), 11 Newel, Brooklyn (2021), Peripheral Space, Los Angeles (2021), Hesse Flatow, New York (2020), Drawer NYC (2020), Field Projects, New York (2020), Underdonk, Brooklyn (2018), and David Risley Gallery Velvet Ropes, Copenhagen (2018). Press includes Artnet, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, Two Coats of Paint, New American Paintings, Gorky's Granddaughter, Painters' Table, and The Boston Globe. Cedar's paintings and drawings address uncanny scenarios where characters engage themselves and one another with sincerity and purpose. Moments of desire, self-reflection, and lack of control motivate postures filled with bravado and vulnerability. In October 2019 Cedar launched the curatorial exhibition program Good Naked Gallery. Projects hover around the intimate and awkward with a focus on work that engages tactility, humor, movement, and play.