OUR MISSION AND INSTRUCTORS
Our mission is to provide an university quality art education with flexible scheduling for the adult student. Our instructors are all active working artists who strive to provide a safe, inclusive, and supportive classroom environment where you can achieve your individual goals in art at a pace that suits your lifestyle.
We hope for you to embrace your inner creativity and have fun! We believe everyone has an artist inside.
Lorelle Bacon
Lorelle Bacon has been nominated three times for “Arts Educator of the Year”. An art instructor for 30 years, she says “I love nothing better than to see when a student finds that they can do things they never thought they could.” She works in and teaches many mediums and all subjects. Including oils, acrylics, watercolor, silk painting, scratchboard, pastels, graphite, alcohol inks, pen and ink and metal clays and now special topics in wire wrapping. She teaches a variety of classes at 310 ART including beginning painting, portraiture, specialty mediums and as Studio class facilitator. She has won numerous awards for her art, including national and international competitions.
Bridget Benton
Benton has a B.A. in Studio Arts and an M.S. in Creative Studies, always learning more about artmaking and how to teach and inspire creativity in others. Benton works and teachs in a variety of art media including fiber, text, jewelry-making, collage, acrylic, assemblage, printmaking, photography, and encaustic. Benton is the lead instructor in Encaustic Methods, Nature Print, ecoprint and collage methods at 310 ART. In 2022, Benton was invited to join the faculty of the international encaustic online encaustic masterclass, Painting with Fire. She is the author of “The Creative Conversation: ArtMaking as Playful Prayer”. which won multiple awards, including a Nautilus Book Awards Gold Medal in the Creative Process category and a Nautilus Book Awards Silver Medal in the Self-Help category. Teaching credentials include at the Creative Problem Solving Institute in Buffalo, NY; the Newport Visual Arts Center in Newport, OR; Art Unraveled in Phoenix, AZ; and Collage in Portland, OR. as well as the Nature Printing Society’s Annual Workshop where she served for several years as the event’s Educational Coordinator.
James Cassara
James Cassara has been an active part of the Asheville local art scene for more than 40 years. James moved to Asheville in 1980 and after getting his art certification, began his teaching career; first at Asheville Country Day School (now Carolina Day) and, beginning in 1987, with Asheville City Schools. For 30 years James was the art teacher at Claxton Elementary. Since 2016 he has continued to substitute teach there, as well as working Claxton's After School Arts program. He has also taught numerous private lessons for kids and adults and continues to teach adult classes. He is also an artist in residence at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. James is an avid plein air painter and works in pen and ink, gouache, and watercolor are which are his preferred mediums, but he also loves painting in oils, acrylics, and working in collage. He teaches pen and ink and plein air at 310 ART.
Robyn Crawford
Robyn Crawford studied at Emerson College, Massachusetts College of Art, and Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Photographic Arts and Sciences. She has been a mixed media artist, photographer, teacher, and creativity coach for over 30 years and has exhibited work throughout the Carolinas. She loves working with new materials and finds that it shakes things up and generates new ideas in other mediums as well. She uses her own images, clay, acrylics, mosaic, handmade papers,hot glass, metal, resin, crystals, and more to create fun, colorful pieces of work that connects her to spirit.
Paul deMarrais
Paul earned an BFA from Lindenwood University with a BFA in art and studied with famed pastel artist Albert Handell in Woodstock, New York. He exhibits his paintings in galleries in TN and NC. His paintings are in many corporate and private collections. He was featured in two episodes of The Heartland Series on WBIR television in Knoxville and has written a number of instructional articles for the Pastel Journal. Paul is known internationally for his artisan made oil sticks which he sells online, in his classes and at 310 ART. A popular workshop, instructor, Paul teaches methods with oil sticks.
Nancy Coleman Grindstaff
The daughter of a crafter, Nancy has created for as long as she can remember. Making mosaic “anything” has been her favorite for over 25 years. “About 10 years ago I decided the space over my garage needed “something”. When I couldn’t find art I liked, I realized I’d have to create it myself. That’s when I discovered the joy of designing and painting barn quilts, scaled down in size for houses and gardens.” She has taught barn quilt techniques in Asheville area art centers and also creates traditional and non-traditional barn quilt designs in her Outdoorable Art business.
Miriam Hughes
is an artist, sketcher and a generally good humored person. She will guide you on a journey to discover the power of creative energy. Originally a medical illustrator, Miriam works in gouache, watercolors, pens, collage and fibers and she finds sketching almost daily to be more fun that eating ice cream, sleeping or doing real work. She has been teaching a number of years and takes a unique approach to learning. “As an instructor, I teach my students that our childlike images may never go away, but we should never judge them or even discourage them. She exhibits widely and is a resident artist and teacher at 310 ART
Erin Keane
Erin Keane is an artist working with photography, encaustic, and bookbinding.
Erin studied art at Miami University, Ohio, and graduated with an M.A. in Art Education. She taught at Brevard Middle School earning National Board Certification in Visual Arts. In 2011, Erin became a professional artist and instructor in adult programs. She teaches at 310 ART, Painting With Fire (Essence of Mulranny Ireland), Enkaustikos (Kathryn Bevier ArtWorks), Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch (EncaustiCamp / OPENStudio), Lesley Riley (Ghost Ranch and Red Thread), Penland School of Craft, Arrowmont School of Crafts, and John C. Campbell Folk School.
Linda Krupp
Linda Krupp holds a Masters, PhD and specialist degrees in Educational Leadership from the University of Florida. She is a representational landscape oil painter who seeks to represent with her brush or palette knife the beauty of nature…to evoke from viewers that same awe she experiences while painting. Linda exhibits in galleries and shows and has won numerous local awards for her art. She teaches oil painting and specializes in color mixing, theory, traditional techniques, and palette knife. Her message to all students is for them to recognize that a completed painting is not a destination: it is all about the process. It is a journey to be savored.
Gina Louthian-Stanley
Gina Louthian-Stanley received a B.A. in Studio Art and a Masters degree from Radford University Her thesis work was as a monotype printmaker, now she primarily working in wax both hot and cold and mixed media techniques including acrylic combined with many other media. She has been an exhibiting artist and instructor at 310 ART since 2014. She teaches Encaustic sculptural techniques, cold wax and oil painting, and Wabi Sabi methods. Louthian-Stanley was included in the book Cold Wax Medium: Techniques, Concepts & Conversations. She has exhibited widely, has work in many private and corporate collections and has been featured in numerous art publications including the 2018 Artemis Journal.
Susan Sinyai
Susan Sinyai earned a BA in Sociology from UNC Chapel Hill and a BFA in painting at UNCA in 1994, graduating with the highest honors. Since graduation she has been a working artist and has won numerous awards regionally and nationally for her work in oils and pastels. She was awarded the Emerging Artist grant in 2000 by the Asheville Arts Alliance. In 1999 she was commissioned to paint the official portrait of former Chancellor of UNCA. She has taught at 310 ART since 2017 where she teaches subjects in oils and pastels and exhibits her work there and in numerous shows and museum exhibitions.