Instructors & Collaborators

Abraham Alvarez is a local artist with five years of experience in ceramics, having received his Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from UC Davis, he has a desire to teach and further his knowledge in ceramics. In his art practice he explores self-discovery and themes of the human condition through techniques that become a meditative process for him. Abraham believes that an important part of the creative process is allowing yourself to make mistakes and exploring where those mistakes can take you.

Abraham is the current Ceramic Technician with the Arts Education Program at the Grand who oversees the ceramic and fused glass program.

To learn more about Abraham’s classes, or the ceramic & fused glass program, please contact him at [email protected] or (209) 831-6273.

Richard has been involved with photography in excess of 40 years, including over 25 years of professional experience and skills in a variety of aspects, with 20+ years teaching, throughout in the 1980s in Livermore and at the Grand for 12+ years. Despite this strong background, he still believes he is a “work in progress.”

“I have no desire to simply sit down and rest on my laurels – I now expose more original images with both a digital camera and with smartphones consistently than I ever did with just film, continually exercising and stretching my visual experience. That’s where the fun of this image-making medium is.” – Richard

Photography remains a strong passion for Richard. He loves pushing his own visual creativity and expanding his own expressiveness further. Richard has been instructing others on the art and craft of the photographic medium since 2009 here at the Grand Theatre Center for the Arts.

* Formats – 35mm (30+ years), 6×6 square (25+ years), digital (20 years), 4×5 view camera (infrequent).

* Experience – photographer, assistant (lighting, sets, logistics, camera), instructor (classroom, field, workshops), writer/editor.

* Styles/Genres – portrait (incl fashion, figure, photojournalistic ‘environmental portraits’ – in studio & on location); landscapes, cityscapes; night imagery, b&w infrared; and abstract/expressive interpretations and photo-impressions.

* Please view examples of Richard’s photos here: Richard’s Facebook Profile.

You may contact Richard at [email protected] for more information about his photography classes!

Maria is a local artist and a member of the Tracy Art League. She is obsessed with clay; focusing on ceramic projects that blend hand-building techniques and wheel throwing to create designs that are functional and eye catching.  Drawing inspiration from nature, or personal experiences that invite both contemplation and daily use. She believes each piece of pottery is telling a story, and each project is a step in writing it.

After studying Art at Weber State College in Utah, Michelle began teaching young children in all types of Art. She has taught Art at different public and private schools over the years. Each year she enters up to 150 pieces of artwork from her students into The Haggin Museum for Annual McKee Art Exhibit.

Teaching the youth has been rewarding for Michelle, and she believes her enthusiasm for creativity will allow her to continue teaching for a lifetime.

Michelle also teaches adults of every age. She has been teaching at different locations in Folsom, Sacramento, and San Joaquin County for the past 10 years. The Grand Theatre Center for the Arts is another piece of her heart as she has been part of the Art Education Programs since 2016.

Michelle lives on a river where she finds her piece of mind, inspiration, and relaxation. Fishing, swimming, hiking, kayaking, and painting by the water is a part of her daily routine.

Jason Del Rosario is a local artist with a focus on digital drawing. He graduated with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts Degree from the University of the Pacific. Growing up, Jason was inspired by a myriad of video games, animals, and concept art giving him a penchant for creature creation and character design.

You may contact Jason at [email protected] or (209) 831-6276 for more information about his classes!

Wendy has been teaching voice for over 20 years and drums for over 12 years.

Prior to teaching, Wendy sang in bands all over California. She played in such places as the Troubadour and the Wiskey a go-go in Hollywood opening for bands: Ratt, Quiet Riot, Dokken, and many more. She was lead vocalist in a rock group that toured Asia in a USO show.

Wendy was fortunate enough to study under an opera coach in 1993, a gospel recording star in 1988, and a professor of music at Harbor College in L.A. for private vocal instruction.

When Wendy is not singing, teaching or playing drums or piano, she likes to read, knit, swim, hike and travel. She also spends as much of her time with her adult son who has become an excellent drummer. A classic example of a pupil surpassing the teacher!

You may contact Wendy at [email protected] for more information about her classes!

Donna Guzman has many years of experience with ceramics with her primary interest in hand building functional and nonfunctional pieces.  She believes everyone has a natural creative way to express themselves.  Pottery is an art form which allows you to appreciate the beauty of nature and is very satisfying to use your own pieces in your everyday life.

You may contact Donna at [email protected] for information on hand building pottery classes.

Madiha is a Textile Design graduate who merges tradition with innovation. Her work intertwines colors, textures, mediums, and storytelling to bridge art, craft, research, and design. She brings a rich spectrum of expertise spanning education, project management, research, artistry, textile design, and the preservation of crafts.

She has been curating and exhibiting her work internationally. Additionally, Madiha has taught at various Art and Design institutes and professionally worked for the Textile Industry for the last 20 years. She is an active member of the Tracy Art League. She is constantly striving to enhance her artistic and educational skills to make a positive impact.

You may learn more about Madiha and view her work on her website: https://madihaak82.wixsite.com/mahiha-khan

Sydney is a member of the Tracy Art League and an active ceramic artist at Delta College who is excited to offer ceramic classes at the Grand!

Clay has been a Tracy resident since 1982. He retired from the telephone company after a 30 year career.

After retirement, Clay became a Docent at the Haggin Museum in Stockton and a volunteer instructor at the Stockton Institute for Continued Learning at Delta College. In addition to printmaking, he enjoys travel, playing the guitar, wine making, gourd art, and stained glass.

Clay received a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco and a Master’s degree in Multimedia from Cal State Hayward.

Zoe Nelson is a local artist, having completed their undergrad with a BFA in Studio Arts Ceramics at CSU Sacramento where they explored technique, process, and cultivating one’s ever-growing love for clay. With an interest in surface design, Zoe likes to work heavily with implied texture in both the sgraffito and Mishima techniques. Using the ceramic body as a canvas for design they continue to experiment with form, firing types, and different genres of imagery in their work. They find design work to prove meditative, and enjoy pushing the bounds of the functional sculpture.

Dan is a avid salsa dancer with over 20 years of dancing experience. Dan has been teaching both Salsa and Rueda de Casino classes for adults for 15 years, primarily in the Stockton area. He is excited to offer Rueda de Casino dance classes at the Grand.

You may contact Dan at [email protected] for more information about his classes!

Carol Ponsaran is an artist, educator, and homeschooling parent with 20 years of teaching experience, providing visual arts programs to public and private schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley. She believes art to be a fundamental part of an individual’s continuous growth and development, from one’s formative childhood years throughout adulthood. “Experiences in art and art-making foster creativity, open-mindedness, confidence, and encourage us to look at the world around us from different and endlessly changing perspectives,” she says. Carol Ponsaran holds a degree in the Practice of Art from the University of California, Berkeley, and has shown her work throughout the United States, including in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Chicago, and Cleveland. Her paintings, drawings, and mixed media work can be viewed at www.ponsaran.wordpress.com.

Jenny Kini Taloa is an accomplished award winning Tahitian dancer with over 20 years experience in Polynesian performing arts. She has traveled within the islands of the pacific and beyond performing for cruise ships, NFL charities, corporate and celebrity events.

Jenny’s main focus is to bring the Polynesian culture to the community for children 5 years old and up through dance art expression.

You may contact Jenny at [email protected] for more information about her dance classes!

Maria started dancing folklorico when she was 11 years old. At the age of 19 she decided it was time to start her own group. She started it with only 7 students and slowly it started growing. Currently she has over 50 students, and 3 student teachers with 6 different classes offered in Stockton and in Tracy. She is also a teacher for one of the largest Folklorico Dance Workshop known as Danzantes Unidos Festival that happens for one weekend, once a year; this year they had over 1500 students’ patriciate in the workshops.  Aside from teaching Mexican Folklorico classes, she also works a full time job as the Registrar and soccer coach for a Charter School in Stockton CA. During her spare time she likes to spend time with her family, get involved with her church, play soccer, and travel.

For more information about Ballet Folklorico Raices Mexicanas de Maria Valdovinos, please visit www.bf-rm.org!

You may also contact Maria at [email protected].

Luis, a native of Cuba, studied ballet, modern dance, and Latin percussion from an early age. Since he completed his formal education at the National School of Art Instructors in Havana, Cuba, Luis has taught music and dance, performed, and choreographed extensively throughout Cuba for 20 years.

Luis has enjoyed teaching music and dance to people of all ages, but he especially loved the years spent teaching dance and percussion to deaf children in Guantanamo. His teaching experience in Cuba includes being a dance professor at the Casa de Cultura (Cultural Center) and the Escuela de Arte (Art School) in Guantanamo. He also taught dance music at the Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de Guantánamo (Medical University of Guantánamo) and was a choreographer for several dance companies.

Since relocating to California in 2001, Luis has directed and taught Salsa and Afro-Cuban dance workshops throughout the Tri-Valley and Bay Area in various dance studios. He has also taught Salsa and percussion classes in many local schools, such as Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, Livermore High School, California High School in San Ramon, Acalanes High School in Lafayette, etc.

Since 2007, Luis has been an instructor at Las Positas College, teaching Salsa, Zumba, Hip Hop, and Ballroom dances.
In addition to teaching dance, Luis also plays the congas, bongos, and other Latin percussion instruments and performs in many venues throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Carrie is a member of the Tracy Art League and an active ceramic and fused glass artist who is excited to offer fused glass workshops at the Grand! Carrie has been creating with both clay and glass for over 10 years. While most of her items are created as personal gifts, she has had pieces featured in art shows and the Grand Gallery.

You may contact Carrie at [email protected] for more information about her classes!

Vince Walsh was born and raised in Oakland, California and resided in Tracy, California for over 30 years. Vince has been painting for over 35 years, mostly outdoors and in the studio. His style of painting is a blend of realism and impressionism with a preference to paint still life and landscapes in oil and acrylic. His goal is to express a realistic and painterly approach that allows the viewer to participate in the painting.

Vince was fortunate to have studied with Van Waldron, who encouraged him to develop his own style. He also studied with Delores DePharr and E John Robinson. Vince is a member of “The Valley Sun Catchers”, “Friday Painters” and “Da Group” a group of Plein Air Painters. He is also a member and past president of the Tracy art League. Vince has been offering introduction and intermediate painting classes with the Arts Education Program at the Grand since it opened in 2007.

Hailey holds a BA and MFA in Dance from Saint Mary’s College of California. Her education is complemented by studies at prestigious institutions such as the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Dance in London, the Broadway Dance Center in New York City, and the Waterfront Playhouse & Conservatory Meisner training program in Berkeley, CA. Her professional journey includes performing with Davalos Dance Company, mBody Dance company, Woodminster Summer Musicals and various other artists in the Bay Area and beyond.

As an accomplished dance educator, Hailey imparts her expertise in jazz, modern, ballet and contemporary to students of all ages. While the thrill of performance brings Hailey great joy, her deepest passion lies in nurturing and sharing the transformative power of dance with her students.

You may contact Hailey at [email protected] for more information about her dance classes!

H-ART Therapy was founded by Natasha Blakely.

Natasha always dreamed of being a professional artist, but the harsh realities of life have a way of pushing childhood dreams aside. Leaving her artistic aspirations behind, Natasha found herself working in a corporate profession. Looking for a change, she started teaching art and she loved it. Pushing aside her self-doubts, Natasha spent 15 years helping others discover their creative side. Her confidence in herself and her abilities grew.

Natasha also experienced the therapeutic benefits of art through teaching her students. With her childhood passion rekindled, she was ready to begin a transformative journey. Sketching had been her medium of choice for years. But it became too comfortable, too easy. She wanted to challenge herself. Could she paint? She’d never painted before. Now the paintbrush would express her passion, her vision.
As a self-taught artist, Natasha was determined to find her own way, her own voice. “Mistakes” and “happy accidents” were part of that journey. Now she wants to guide others to help them boost their confidence, take pleasure and heal through painting.

As an art coach and the founder of H-ART Therapy, Natasha believes that “creativity takes courage” and that everyone is an artist and has something to share. Discover the creative passion in you. Whether you’re just starting to paint, been painting for a little while or have been painting for years. We invite you to join the fun in a safe, judgment-free environment.

See you in art class!

Lekha Writing Center is committed to developing a generation of children who think beyond the book! We do this by teaching them to write creatively, using a blend of time-tested and newly-developed methods that stir one’s imagination.

All of our instructors are trained in the Lekha Way, a method of writing instruction that is different than traditional writing instruction. In traditional models of writing instruction, the student is viewed as an empty vessel into which the instructor pours knowledge. This model of instruction is product-oriented, which places the value of instruction solely on “measurable” improvements in writing. Students are taught the different modes of writing, as well as the standard writing conventions. Students, then, demonstrate that they have learned this new knowledge through their writing products (creative pieces or essays), and instructors evaluate the writing to determine if the student has effectively learned to write correctly.

Consequently, this focus on “correctness” in writing often develops the “internal critic” in some students and causes them to develop a negative relationship to writing—hating, fearing, or being indifferent to writing—which hinders or stops the writing process. These students will often view writing as a tedious chore, as a test that they have been set-up to fail, or simply as something unimportant. As a result, student will try to avoid writing, will write as little as possible, or will develop writer’s block.

At Lekha, we seek to encourage a student’s relationship to writing to be one that is positive. Our model of instruction is based on Expressivist and Process pedagogies which emphasize student-oriented and process-oriented teaching. As opposed to the tradition model of writing instruction, we believe that the creative work or essay already exists in the students. What this means is that the students’ writing finds root in the students’ own experiences, education, and tacit knowledge of writing. The instructor’s role, then, is to facilitate the expression of the student’s writing, guiding the students as they work and rework a story, a poem, a play, an essay, or a journalistic piece.

The methods we use in our writing instruction are designed to free students from the internal critic. We utilize visualization and verbalization techniques, creative play, illustration, and other low stakes writing activities that help students overcome writer’s block or any fears about writing. We use these methods to guide students through the different steps of the writing process—generating ideas, pre-writing strategies, drafting, and revising. And while we do not emphasize “correctness” in writing, we do help students to address structural or grammatical issues in the writing, but only after the students have written enough to begin the revision process. At Lekha, we focus on encouraging students to write as much as they can by providing a fun and nonthreatening learning and writing environment.

To learn more about Lekha, please visit their website at www.lekhawriting.com!

Our mission at Such A Voice is to provide you with the framework necessary to thrive as a successful and profitable voice-over professional.

As one of the first voice-over training & demo production companies in the business, and with 30+ years of experience, we at Such A Voice are extremely proud of our A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, and the many positive reviews that you’ll find about us on Facebook, our website, and throughout the web. We feel that we’re rated so highly because of our deep focus on you, our customer, and our devotion to constant and never-ending improvement.

In order to fulfill on our mission, we have created what we feel is the most comprehensive voice-over training & demo production program in the industry. Over the past few years specifically, our program has evolved and improved by leaps and bounds.

Learn more about Such A Voice and their instructors at: www.suchavoice.com

The community of Tracy has a long history of community bands, dating back to the late 1880s. The current organization was started in 1982. Three of the founding members still perform in the band. The Tracy Community Band is comprised of approximately 55 amateur and professional musicians. The youngest musicians are high school students who perform at the recommendation of their high school director. And the oldest musicians are retired professionals with a long history of serving the community of Tracy. The community band includes a traditional concert band, a jazz band, and a small jazz ensemble. They meet weekly for a rehearsal and regularly perform for the community. Their season is August-May and includes concerts of various themes, including a highly popular Christmas concert. They end their season by playing for the Tracy Memorial Day Service at the cemetery each year.  The community bands are available to perform at community events and seek to provide quality arts education to Tracy and surrounding communities.

Full production house providing education, teaching and performing theater arts opportunities across the greater Tracy area.  Maggie Foresee-Griese and Grace Reinheimer are co-founders with a professional production team eager to share the insights of theater (drama and musical) performance.  Geri Neylan, with an outstanding drama instructor career thru TSD (Kimball High and Poet Christian) and Sarah McGuire, who is currently a high school choir and drama teacher. Both, as well as other experts, are actively involved in Tracy Theater Arts Collaborative as a guest director and music director.