ABOUT THE ARTISTS 

Palli Davene Davis developed as an artist with close affinity to both clay and wood. In 1974, after receiving her MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she opened a design studio & small business, padala ltd, to produce aesthetic objects of play  first seen in her thesis exhibition. These wood & fiber playthings sold nationwide, including the MOMA museum shop. After eight years of running the business, Palli returned to the studio, finding business too time-consuming, and she returned to the studio to exhibit her sculpture throughout the Midwest while balancing a career in public art education in art museums. Her art sensibilities remain close to the joy of contemplative play. Palli shares a studio with her partner and husband in Wakeman, Ohio. Her work has received four Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, many exhibition awards, and is represented in corporate & museum collections.   

Donna Coleman received her BFA, Honors, in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in painting from CUNY Brooklyn College, New York.  Her paintings have been exhibited extensively in Washington DC, her hometown, and in northeastern Ohio, her home since 2000.  She has been the recipient of four grants from the Ohio Arts Council; as well as the Ellen Johnson Visiting Artist Fund of Oberlin College; four grants from the DC Commission on the Arts; Art Matters, Inc.; and the George Sugarman Foundation.  Before moving to Ohio, she was the Director of the Dreamcatcher Arts Summer Camp and Middle School Art Teacher at Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC.  She has taught art to young children for many years, and continues to do so at Firelands Association of the Visual Arts in Oberlin.  She also teaches fine arts courses to adult students of all ages at Lorain County Community College. Her website is:  www.dcolemanpaintings.com 

Sarah Schuster is a painter and Professor of Art at Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio.  She is a prolific artist who has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally. In 2018 she had a solo exhibition at the Kent State, Stark Campus Gallery, in Canton, Ohio, a group exhibition at The Painting Center titled, ‘Chain Reaction,’ in New York City, and was featured in the 18th Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh at the National Art Gallery. She also participated in the Hanoi International Art Exhibition at the Exhibition Center of the Ministry of Culture in Hanoi, Vietnam, and the China Qianjiang International Art Exhibition, “Belt and Road,” in China.  Over the past several years she has been in the Ecorea Jeonbuk, the Langkawi and the Qingdoa Art Biennale. Schuster takes images from the internet, scientific illustrations, and she works directly from nature, investigating what it means to re-present the world we inhabit. 

Jean Kondo Weigl is a third-generation Japanese American artist who works in painting and drawing. She was born in Berkeley, California, after the end of World War II and her parents’ release from a government mandated internment camp for persons of Japanese descent.  Weigl obtained a BA from Scripps College, an MA from Oberlin College and an MFA from the University of Utah.  Her work has been exhibited widely at regional and national venues including solo shows at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Arts Complex (Columbus), the Zygote Gallery (Cleveland) and the Baron Gallery, Oberlin College. An Archived Artist in the Artists Archive of the Western Reserve, Weigl has received grants from the Yaddo Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council and Zygote Press. Having taught at the University of Arkansas, Old Dominion University, Oberlin College and Lorain County Community College, Weigl currently she teaches classes for adults at the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts in Oberlin where she lives with her husband, poet and Vietnam veteran, Bruce Weigl.