Deborah "Deb" Appleby
Board President
I have been in the glass field for the last 18 years. This all started with a glass weekend in New York. I then traveled to North Carolina’s Penland School of crafts where I started my training. A class at the Pilchuck glass school and a job brought me to the Pacific Northwest. The great Italian master’s class called me to Maine’s Haystack school of crafts and my first job offer in Europe. Finally settling in my home state of Delaware after years of traveling and training I hope to bring all these styles together in my one of a kind functional pieces. Drawing on the sea and the natural environment of maritime Sussex County I use glass frit, bar, powder, and in shop made murrine’s to create my patterns. Breath, hands and the day create the final shape.
Lee Wayne Mills
Treasurer
Lee graduated with Honors in Art/Art History from Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin. His works have explored a collage and mixed media aesthetic ever since – mostly on paper, but on canvas and found wood as well. In addition to his art, Lee has been an art administrator - Director of Exhibitions at Maryland Hall, Curator at the Dadian Gallery at Wesley Theological Seminary, Assistant Director of Montpelier Cultural Art Center and a recent stint as Interim Executive Director of the Rehoboth Art League. Lee has shown in galleries from Texas to Massachusetts. His work is found in numerous private and public collections including the Montgomery Contemporary Collection and IBM. Lee has written art criticism for Articulate, EyeWash, Letters from CAMP Rehoboth and other publications. Currently, Lee and his partner own and operate Coastal Frameshop and Gallery in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Jeni Barton
Jeni Barton graduated with a BFA from the University of Delaware and continues to exhibit throughout the region. Barton's passion for the arts and talent as a community organizer led to her current position as Consultant for Arts Programming in the City of Wilmington Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs where she coordinates the monthly Wilmington Art Loop and works as an advocate for artists in the region.
Jean Bowers
Jean retired as a librarian and library manager in 2009 and relocated from the Washington, D.C. area to Sussex County Delaware. Jean was drawn to Delaware by the small town atmosphere and the natural beauty found in the ocean and the woods. Many of her paintings depict the beauty found in local Delaware scenes. Jean is continuing her art studies begun in the early 1980s and has taken classes with Linda Minkowisky at Wilmington University, Sandy Moore at Southern Delaware Academy of Lifetime Learning and with Jack Wiberg at the Rehoboth Art League.
Ryan Grover
Ryan Grover, Curator of the Biggs Museum in Dover, holds degrees from the art history department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Ryan specializes in 18th-and 19th-century interiors and has additional interests in the ceramics and textiles used in early America as well as 20th-century American visual culture.
Heidi Lowe
From snail door shells she found during her wedding in Tahiti, to sugar cane fields and brightly colored clothes during a Barbados vacation, to surfing and hiking at Cape Henlopen State Park, Rehoboth Beach jewelry artist Heidi Lowe finds inspiration near and far. “Nature definitely inspires me and the history of metalsmithing inspires me like old serving spoons and antique jewelry,” she said. The talented and bubbly artist is best known for her reverse-carved clouds in powder blue acrylic to bezzled agates, jaspers, and fossilized materials in decorated sterling silver backings. Lowe is the founder of the first art jewelry gallery in Rehoboth Beach, the eponymous Heidi Lowe Gallery at 328 Rehoboth Avenue. “I would really like the gallery to be a creative hub for jewelry artists to experiment and be a place to show their work and for the public to get acquainted with art jewelry,” said Lowe, who is an adjunct professor of metalsmithing at Towson University in Baltimore. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maine College of Art in Portland and a Master of Fine Arts from the State University of New York — New Paltz.
Sandra Ridgely
Secretary
Resident of Dover since 1959. Graduate of the University of the Arts, Graduate work University of Delaware, Savannah College of Art, Delaware State University. She has exhibited art work, Watercolors, Oils and Basketmaking at various venues. Member of Delaware State Arts council, 1974-1977 (Gov. S. Tribbitt appointee). Member of the Delaware State Arts council, 1979-1981 (Gov P. S. duPont appointee). Art Educator of the Year, 1988. Order of the First State recipiant, 1979. Currently retired from teaching, she is a volunteer docent at the Biggs Museum of American Art, a mediator for the Center of Community Justice. A volunteer, Odydessy of the Mind Judge and occasionally at the Delaware Agricultural Museum in Basketmaking Education.
Marlene Sontchi
Marlene is a native of the Delaware Valley and a current resident of Pike Creek in Wilmington DE. She retired from a career as a professional purchasing agent with extensive additional experience in marketing and sales. She is a self taught artist with interests in photography, painting and fabric art with a handbag focus. For Marlene, the design of the whole piece is important, but the art is in the details. Being one of the early Delaware By Hand member artists, she has a rooted interest in DBH and a passion for promoting the arts in Delaware.
Carol Toner
Carol spent most of her professional life as a marketing and sales executive for Kodak Systems specializing in enterprise wide computer systems for the publishing industry. She also taught Middle School English in Mesa, Arizona. She is a native New Yorker and graduate of SUNY Stony Brook. She and her husband have lived in Northern Virginia, Boston, Phoenix, North Jersey, Shreveport, LA and here in Delaware.
Barbara Warden
After getting her master's degree from the University of Maryland, Barbara Warden began her career first as a painter and an instructor, then in three dimensional design, later as a freelance photographer and now as a fiber artist. In l999, she realized that working with fiber was a natural extension for her of painting and drawing. Color and line are the two formal elements that are fundamental to each unique pieced quilt.
She believes that color carries meaning and that the density of line creates three dimensional surfaces. There are many influences on her work including Japanese textile design, Native American weavings and contemporary abstract painting.
Deb Wool
Deborah Wool serves as a professor of Curatorial studies at Wesley College in Dover, DE. She holds an MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA; an MA in Studio Art from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, IL; a BFA in Studio Painting, Sculpture and Neon Art from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, IL; a BFA in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah Her studies and love of art have taken her all over Europe and the United States.
