Featured Artists
Lee Jones, Orlando, Florida
Lee Jones grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. As a child, her father supplied her with everything she could possibly need to satisfy her creative impulses. She painted, she drew, she crafted. In high school, Lee took every art class available including an extensive one in Commercial Art. Her senior year she applied for and was accepted to the Madison Area Technical College’s Commercial Art program, which at the time was ranked 4th in the nation. Only 42 students from the entire state of Wisconsin were accepted, including Lee.
After two years of extensive and career specific technical training, Lee graduated with honors. She stayed in the Madison area for a few years doing free-lance work for area businesses before relocating to Orlando, Florida, where she worked for ad agencies, printing companies, and graphics studios before opening her own studio.
In 1994, Lee was introduced to street painting and has been creating elaborate pastel works of art on sidewalks all over the country. She has received numerous awards and has been the featured artist at many events.
Frances McDonald, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Artist, art teacher and public art facilitator Frances McDonald moved back to Chattanooga twelve years after a decade in Paris, France where she attended the fine arts school Ecole Nationale Superieure de Beaux Arts and eight years in New York City where she was primarily an easel painter exhibiting mostly on the East Coast.
Returning to Chattanooga, she began teaching. Since that time, Frances has taught throughout the school system and worked with adults in many venues including Chattanooga Parks and Recreation, Hunter Museum, Chattanooga State, Girl Scouts, Y-ME, Adventa Hospice, and the Community Kitchen.
Pulling from her background in France, she specializes in art history, paint technology, and color theory. Although preferring large collaborative work such as murals, Frances can create lesson plans that mesh with school curriculums.
Charlie Newton, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Charlie wants to involve children in an experimental way with the process that he goes through in creating a work of art. This would include experiments with diverse “styles” being juxtaposed to create a new image, i.e., abstract and realism combined with expressionism.
Charlie wants to be the artist in the community or classroom, not the “art teacher.” All projects will reflect the direction of his personal work at the time. Charlie holds a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and a M.F.A. from Norfolk State University and Old Dominion University. He has received numerous awards and shown and traveled extensively across the United States and abroad.