Workshops at CNC

Victoria Brzustowicz is an award-winning painter and illustrator. A native of Rochester NY, Brzustowicz graduated from Wells College with a BA in Studio Art. At Wells, she studied with the painter Bill Roberts.

Brzustowicz focused on abstract painting for most of her career, but in 2015 she was introduced to the techniques of painting alla prima through classes with noted plein air painter Carol L. Douglas. Her work explores the line between abstraction and representation, with an emphasis on surface and mark-making.

Brzustowicz is co-founder and chair of the Greater Rochester Plein Air Painters, an inclusive, active group of painters that get together throughout the year to paint outside of the studio. She is affiliated with Flower City Arts Center where she teaches drawing, painting, and linoleum block printing, and the Art Stop, in Penfield, NY where she teaches oil painting.

Food preservation has been a part of Barb Brenner’s entire life: from helping her Mom can and freeze, to 4-H activities as a teen, to preserving her own garden harvest as an adult, to teaching food preservation classes for the NYS DEC’s “Becoming an Outdoors Woman” workshop and other local workshops.

Barb has earned Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Master Food Preserver Certification and she is passionate about food preservation and sharing techniques, tips and samples. Her daily meals are made from the contents of canning jars, freezer containers or vacuum sealed bags/jars. Fruits, vegetables and herbs are dehydrated for storage or for camping trips. Cabbage and cucumber pickles ferment in crocks and fruits harvested from her property are turned into juice. She lives in Lima, NY and has a food preservation informational/demonstration booth at the Lima’s Farmers’ Market.

Jonathan Bernard began blacksmithing at the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield, MA where he volunteered from 2000-2013 in their Colonial-era smithing shop. In 2012 Jonathan purchased a portable forge and farrier’s anvil, and began demonstrating at school programs as part of the 9th Mass Light Artillery, a Civil War reenactment unit. In 2014 he moved to the Rochester, New York, area and currently works with school groups as part of the 1st NY Light Artillery Civil War reenactment unit. For the past three years he’s been invited by the Gettysburg National Parks service to the Spangler Farm site for presentation of his craft with the unit’s traveling forge wagon.  Jonathan takes great joy in teaching blacksmithing to people of all ages and skill levels to ensure that the craft lives on.

Tami Fuller is a second-generation fiber artist and works as an educator and working artist out of East Aurora. Her work integrates the traditional foundations of hand-constructed processes with modern technique. Her workshops are designed with an eye toward revitalizing and modernizing fiber, ensuring the continuation of these skill sets by exposing the art form to new people within new contexts. She was trained in ebru marbling on fabric in her youth and has refined her process on paper and on silk. She teaches retreats and workshops throughout the North East and the Pacific Northwest, where her family has a large sheep farm that specializes in breed conservation for rare or at-risk breeds of sheep.

Her work has received awards from NY Sheep and Wool and the Carnegie Art Center. In 2022, she was defined as a WNY artist culture-maker and a recipient of the NY Council on the Arts “Creatives Rebuild NY” grant, tasked with rebuilding arts access post-COVID. She has shown in several solo and group shows locally and her work can be found in collections in the United States and Australia.