Our Instructors

Scip Barnhart, born in 1946, lives in Washington DC. and teaches Drawing, Printmaking and Art of the Book at Georgetown University and also is the Resident Printmaker at American University. He is director and Masterprinter for Union Printmakers Atelier and Capitol Letter Press Studio. He previously taught for GWU, The Corcoran, VCU and The National Gallery of Art.Last show of prints and drawings was at the Atlantic Gallery in NYC 2016. Work in collections of The National Gallery, Library of Congress, Phillips Collection, Georgetown University. 

Paige Billin-Frye is a Washington DC artist who illustrates for children's publishing and makes fine art that incorporates photography and hand-bookbinding. She enjoys exploring new materials and the cross-pollination of different ideas and techniques, moving between digital art and materials she can touch with her hands. Her passion for alternative photographic processes has her trying all the plants in her yard to see what colors emerge as she uses them to tone cyanotypes.

​Xavier Byrdlee is an interdisciplinary artist and educator with a BFA in Printmaking and minor in Art History from the University of North Texas. Hoping to spread a love of craftsmanship and printmaking, their work focuses on the interconnectedness of the human experience through use of traditional and digital methods. Their work has been featured in the Surface Design Association Journal and they have exhibited their work in the DFW area. Having moved from Texas in 2024, they now reside in Hagerstown, MD.

Mac Cosgrove-Davies is a self taught photographer who since 1978 has been practicing historic photographic processes including gum bichromate, cyanotype, Van Dyke, palladium, carbon printing, oil printing, and wet plate collodion. Using medium and large format antique and self-made film cameras and equipment in various formats, he seeks to make unique prints which match his images to the beauty and elegance of the selected photographic process. He currently leads the Hand Made Photo program for Photoworks at Glen Echo Park, Maryland. He is represented in public and private collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Library of Congress, Smithsonian Museum of American History, Ogunquit Museum, etc.

Alexandra Garcia is a Maryland based photographer, printmaker, and art teacher. She graduated from Shepherd University with her Bachelors degree in photography and her Masters Degree in Art Education. Her artwork is heavily influenced by nature and often focuses on the relationship between the cycle of life and the natural world.

Eric Groff is a Maryland based artist whose work explores storytelling conveyed in single images and sequential art. Eric graduated from Frostburg State University with a BFA focusing in Printmaking and Illustration and a minor in Art History. Discovering Frederick Book Arts Center in 2021, Eric has since translated his linocuts to wood and textiles, and explored monoprinting, letterpress, and bookbinding.

Charlotte Mauler Hayes is a freelance photographer and graphic designer originally from North Carolina. She graduated from Warren Wilson College with concentration on book arts, printmaking and photography.  Her bookbinding and art is influenced by historic research of  european renaissance and medieval bookbinding forms while her photography and graphic design relies heavily on the use of computers and modern technology. She has received award recognition for her historic bookbinding and historic artwork through the regional chapter of an international historical society.​​

Books have always been important to me! I love reading, learning, imagining, creating, studying, making, teaching about and sharing them! I am a mostly self taught bookbinder, printmaker, decorative paper and paper maker. I am also a metalsmith. I love to combine all of these things in my work. My work can be found in various places from the White House collection of Crafts (silver punch bowl and ladle) to many private collections (various works). Teaching happens at various places; historic sites, schools, and other venues with hands-on and deep involvement emphasis no matter how short or long the course is!

Originally from the Appalachian foothills of Northwest Georgia, Lauren G. Koch graduated in 2016 from the University of West Georgia, with concentrations in sculpture, printmaking, and art history.  She has most recently immersed herself in the DMV area, while pursuing her MFA (2020) at the University of Maryland.  She is an interdisciplinary artist, in addition to a classically trained musician, who finds herself drawn more to songwriting and playing folk instruments.  Having been steeped in the traditions and crafts of Northern Europe and Appalachia, her artwork serves as a conduit for fleeting personal and collective memories.  As a nationally and internationally exhibiting artist, she has found herself attending artist residency and teaching workshops on mark making with ferrous metals and natural colorants, throughout the United States and Europe.

My artistic journey started with scrapbooking, morphed into photography, and now, I find the perfect way to blend an interest in paper crafting and photography is through book-making of all kinds. I love creating my own custom papers with rust-dyeing, cyanotype chemicals, gelli plate printing, and image transfers, then using the results in collage, in book signatures, and in folded structures.

Carol Moore is a Printmaker and works from her home studio in Clarksburg, MD. Her early career was in graphic design and residential mural painting. She received a certificate in Studio Printmaking from Montgomery College, Rockville, MD in 2016 after studying printmaking since 2010. Much of Carol's work is rooted in the natural world and how it relates to human experience. Carol is an award-winning printmaker both locally and nationally. 

Lee Newman is a painter and printmaker. He received his Masters of Fine Arts degree from American University in DC and continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna as a Fulbright Scholar. A dedicated educator, he founded the Washington Studio School with Joseph Kossow in 1984 and has been a visiting artist at a number of colleges and art schools.

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His work has been exhibited in various galleries and museums and is included in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the Print Collection of the Library of Congress.

Cheryn is usually found blending nature illustration with the historical calligraphy and illumination styles of medieval manuscripts. Using a variety of period-accurate media has provided her a unique perspective on the process of calligraphy, illumination, and book arts as a whole, and several of her pieces are done with historically accurate materials and gold leaf. As a lifelong learner and professional instructional designer, she also teaches workshops on painting and ink drawing techniques.

Cheryn is also an award-winning game designer and mixed media crafter; when she's not hand-painting vintage-style maps, she may be found repairing thrift store dollhouses, sculpting fossilized ichthyosaurs from clay, experimenting with floral design, or constructing a human-sized model of a horseshoe crab.

Gregory Robison is the proprietor of the Peregrinus Press, a private letterpress shop founded in 1988 near Herod's Gate, Jerusalem and now in Bethesda, MD. He has been president of the Scottish Arts Club in Edinburgh, Scotland, and executive director of The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He has exhibited relief prints and plein-air artwork and has taught the art of the circadian journal (and other forms of creative writing) through the Life Sentences Workshop, which meets primarily online now.

Linda’s passion for book binding started at John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina in the early 1990s.  An apprenticeship near her home in South Florida combined with study in Massachusetts led to the opening of her bindery, Capella Book Arts.  Linda moved her bindery to Silver Spring, Maryland, and joined Pyramid Atlantic Art Center as the Binder in Residence in 2002.

When Pyramid Atlantic moved to Hyattsville in 2016, she went with them as a studio holder and teacher.  Linda became a member of their board in 2021, continuing to teach bookbinding and box making to all levels of students

Elissa Campbell has been making books for the past 26 years and sells her work professionally under the business name of Blue Roof Designs. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania and earned her M.A. in Expressive Therapies with a concentration in Art Therapy from Lesley University. It was during her graduate studies that she was introduced to and fell in love with the book arts. She is a big believer in the power of using books for self-expression. Elissa is currently chair of the Book Arts Guild of Vermont, serves on the board of the Vermont Crafts Council, and is on the Vermont Arts Council's Teaching Artist Roster.

Elaine G. Chu has taught students of all ages, in person and online. Her work has been featured in “Greencraft” and “Somerset Studio” magazines as well as “1000 Artists’ Books.” She co-authored “Wood Paper Scissors,” a how-to crafts book. Elaine received a B.A. in music at Yale University and a B.F.A. in graphic design at University of the Arts. View more art EGChuHandcrafted.etsy.com and on Instagram @egchu1

A lifelong book lover and avid enthusiast of the book arts, Nic Heersema first became interested in understanding the structure and conservation of books while working at the Virginia Tech University library. This interest morphed into a passion for researching and recreating historical bookbinding methods which Nic pursues and teaches as part of an international historic arts society.

Between painting alongside her grandmother and watching her father build reproduction antique furniture, Rosa Leff grew up seeing no distinction between fine art and craft.  What mattered was that things were made by hand and done well.  It is with that in mind that she creates her hand cut paper pieces.  Each of Leff’s papercuts is cut by hand from a single sheet of paper using a knife.  Her cityscapes are based on photos she’s taken in her neighborhood and all over the world.  While Leff is best known for her ability to capture thin tangles of powerlines and intricate brickwork, she also enjoys experimenting with novel media such as paper plates and paper towels.  Leff delights in bringing a modern, urban perspective to a traditional folk medium. 

Leff serves on the board of The Guild of American Papercutters.  She has exhibited her work throughout the East Coast and in China.  She resides in Baltimore with her husband and chihuahuas, Chalupa and Refrito. 

Shawn Sheehy has been teaching book arts courses and workshops on the national level since 2001. His broadsides and artist book editions have been collected by such institutions as Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago, Library of Congress, UCLA, and Harvard. Sheehy's trade pop-up books Welcome to the Neighborwood (2015) and Beyond the Sixth Extinction (2018) were published by Candlewick and both won numerous awards. He holds an MFA in the Book Arts from Columbia College Chicago.