GUILD OF ARTISTS

Earned his MFA in double bass from the University Of Cincinnati and a Professional Diploma in Orchestral Studies from the Chicago College of Performing Arts. He’s a member of the Evansville Philharmonic, plays in jazz groups, rock bands, and teaches with the New Harmony Music Studio. Music Director of NHAG.

After a career in product design, she moved to New Harmony to pursue painting as a self-taught artist. She depicts the ordinary within still-life and landscapes. The ongoing process of painting has become a way of life, freed her voice, connecting with others and enabled her to discover new influences.

A conceptual artist currently residing in New Harmony. Inspired by the Cobra Avant Garde surrealist movement, his creative process reveals the friction between art and fiction. His current series “The Not Books” uses censorship poetry, painting, and collage to explore the works of John Baldessari, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Rene Magritte.

Rarely using preliminary drawings, Ben draws with chalk directly onto the wooden board. Chisels leave a unique cut, much like brushstrokes. Old first-growth timber from barns and buildings are used, to honor the memory of these lost trees, with themes about trees and nature.

Writer and designer, his polymathic interests engage art, design, scholarship, and popular culture. Subjects range from visionary house design, primitive geometry, labyrinths, gardens, firearm culture, and political satire.

A psychotherapist, group facilitator, former pastor, singer songwriter and musician currently living in New Harmony.  Special interests include Joseph Campbell,  Jungian studies, and understanding the creative process as it relates to symbols of the unconscious rendered in art, music/lyrics, poetry, movies, and the troubadour, now singer songwriter traditions. 

A pure Bloomington, Indiana native. His career started with building 40 houses, buying a team of horses. and dairy farming for 30 years. Moving to New Harmony in 1998, he builds furniture, restores books, tells stories, and digs graves. He has touched our lives with his joy of helping others.

An avid observer and sometime chronicler of the human condition, he expresses himself in photography and videography. He has spent the last 40 years studying and working in wood, learning to understand the medium and create vernacular objects that reflect the values of the utopian ethos.

Curt Schmitt designs and builds studio furniture.  His work, influenced by the elegant simplicity of Shaker and Japanese styles, reflects his many years studying and teaching philosophy, religion, and art.  Over forty years, his pieces have found homes in New Haven, Memphis, Chicago, and Louisville, as well as New Harmony.

Posey County native, he learned the craft of photography in adolescence. Aged 18, worked at Schmitt Photo in Evansville for 20 years. In 1995, he founded Studio B Photography. When he’s not serving his discerning clientele, he enjoys nature and swimming. He’s rarely seen without a camera on his shoulder.

A former fashion illustrator, she has a broad background in teaching, weaving, art journaling, free-lance writing and dream doodling. Author of “Posey People”, she currently enjoys creating collages and assemblages. She is an active member of the NHAG figure drawing group in New Harmony. 

Donna and Wes Griffin have performed for the past thirty years in state parks and community events throughout Indiana with folk and contemporary music on hammered and mountain dulcimers, melodeon, concertina, guitar, ukulele, banjolele, and bodhran.  Having moved on from careers in teaching, they relocated to New Harmony and are finding new ways to share the music they love.

An acute observer of Posey County wildlife, who has carved birds, fish, and flora for 30 years. His art ensures correct anatomy as well as authentic poses of the animal in action. His work is in important private collections and has won Ducks Unlimited Carver of the Year and others.

A Minnesota native, she studied music and foreign languages at the University of Minnesota and graduated from Webster University in St. Louis. She has released nine albums, appeared on numerous national broadcasts, and has toured the United States, the UK, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Erin enjoys writing, cooking and hiking.

Her interest in calligraphy began in grade school, and she is now  the “Town Calligrapher”. Starting in graphic design (College degree) she makes signs and broadsides. She draws and make paper (Twinrocker apprentice), and shares through teaching. “It’s important to keep work by the hand alive—even in everyday handwriting.”

Born & raised in China, trained at the University of Illinois, and practiced as an architect in Chicago. Retired to New Harmony with late wife Claudia Elliott and has provided the Artists Guild a new home at Elliot Farm. Now draws landscapes & portraits for the sheer joy of it.

Kelsey Georgesen holds her Bachelor of Science in instrumental music education from Ball State University. Kelsey is an educator and performer who has taught music all over the world. Kelsey is co-founder of the New Harmony Music Studio. 

Professor Emeritus of Perdue University. An Architect who renovated the Lincoln Memorial and Pentagon. He designed New Harmony’s revered Cathedral Labyrinth & Sacred Garden. He is a Board Member of the Blaffer Foundation and Chairman of its Buildings & Grounds Committee. Awarded New Harmony’s 2024 Volunteer of the Year Award.

A textile artist known for weaving formal gardens, farm-scapes, wildflowers, vegetables, and architecture, as well as our ecological plight of flaming oil wells. Forty years in the studio  has refined her interlacing of color and pattern in brocade weaving.  Work is included in major museums and corporate and private collections. 

An internationally known ceramic sculptor and Professor Emeritus at University of Southern Indiana (USI). He has had nearly 100 invitational exhibitions, and his work is included in public and private collections, including the Smithsonian Institute of American Art. He established the New Harmony Clay Project in the Fall of 2015.

A New Harmony native, she has a lifetime of singing and teaching in the region. Creator of the Under the Beams concert series and former director of Tales & Scales, she is dedicated to sharing music in schools. She sings and plays everything from opera to old time.

Holds doctorate from Adler School of Professional Psychology. A psychologist and performing vocalist living in New Harmony.  She excels in choral as well as solo and trio performing.  Her special interests include 60s and 70s female songwriters/performers such as Indigo Girls, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nero, Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt.

She studied at the Indiana University renowned Jacob’s School of Music. Maria has been entertaining audiences with her beautiful soprano voice on all seven continents. She had her first professional job in the Broadway cast of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when she was just 13.

A multimedia artist with MFA from Pratt NYC, currently living in New Harmony. Her current paintings and drawings are influenced by vintage snapshots which explore the innocence and awkwardness of family events, celebrations, and everyday life. Her work has been shown in galleries and museums including the Drawing Center, NYC.

Arriving from Oklahoma—with a passion for glass—Michael & Mary Beth opened Capers Glassporium in 2020. From there, they teach and create fused glass art. After decades of experimenting, from stained glass to glass blowing, 13 years ago they discovered glass fusion (kiln-formed glass) and made it their niche.

She has been a professional artist for over 30 years, holding exhibitions throughout the United States. She is an adjunct painting instructor at the University of Evansville and the Visual Arts Director of the New Harmony Artists Guild. Her intricately detailed floral and figurative compositions are woven through with allegory.

A self-taught painter who began her career at 11 years old when a broken arm derailed more active summer plans. Interest in life-like representation of area flora and fauna are recognized in her landscapes and bird paintings. Preservation of scenery featuring dilapidated structures is of particular interest to the artist.

Theater Director, Producer and Writer. (SDC member since 1985.) Regional Theater Experience. (LORT) Professor Emeritus of Oberlin College. Currently operating Theaterworks New Harmony, producing seasonally inspired local projects from a Christmas Carol Theatrical Puppet production to Musical Theater Cabaret to Shakespeare in Harmony and other site-specific projects.

Primarily a weaver but includes spinning, growing and using natural plant dyes, stitchery, and knitting. Inspired by studying traditional weave structures that utilize natural fibers common in the early 18th and 19th centuries. She enjoys teaching these skills in New Harmony, the site of two 19th century utopian communities. 

Randy Pease writes songs and sings them.  A native Hoosier, he has plied his trade for nearly fifty years at fairs, festivals, farmer’s markets, front porches, feed stores, coffeehouses, bars, churches, campfires and yard sales. Songs draw from varied genres, including folk, blues, country, gospel, rockabilly, and rhythm & blues.

He is an artist/musician who has run Creation Station in New Harmony for 15 years. With degrees in trumpet performance and music education, he taught music for 13 years. He composes and performs on dulcimer and cornet/trumpet. As an artist, he works in oils, acrylics, glass etchings and wood sculpture.

A multi-disciplinary artist working in watercolor, graphic design, and textiles. Her approach is often purely intuitive, drawing inspiration from the flora, fauna, and folks that surround her in New Harmony, as well as her rural life. Past representation includes New York and Chicago galleries, and collections throughout the United States.

Has served on the faculties of the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, and New Mexico State University Art Department. Recipient of NEA/Arts Midwest Grant.  Broadly experienced in several media/artwork disciplines, including the Benedictine Arbor & Mosaic Fountain in New Harmony. Works in numerous private, corporate and museum collections.    

Stanley Campbell retired from the Alexandrian Public Library August 2024 after seventeen years of
service as Head of Community Relations. His duties included coordinating all aspects relating to public
relations, providing publicity and promotion of the library, library programming and special events,
instructing drawing and painting programs, advising on craft related programing, serving as a liaison to
the Friends of the Library, coordinating the reservation of meeting rooms, providing outreach via both
print and social media, video programs, photography, organize and supervise art shows, and assisting
patrons in using the library from the circulation desk.

In March 2025 he became the Posey County Historian. He serves on the Posey County Historical Society
board and volunteers at their museum. He is also a member of the New Harmony Working Men’s
Institute board. He continues to teach art programs at the Alexandrian Public Library and he specializes
in creating pen and ink drawings of Posey County building as well as antique farm tractors and cars.

Degrees Held:
INDIANA STATE UNIVERSITY – TERRE HAUTE, INDIANA – M.S. IN FINE ART
INDIANA STATE UNIVERSITY EVANSVILLE – EVANSVILLE, INDIANA – B.S. IN FINE ART

Contact Information:
Phone: (812) 228-9792

A Posey County folk artist, working in wood and paper mache. He carves human and animal figures out of tree limbs, with anything from a folding knife to a chainsaw. A lifelong woodsman with an intimate knowledge of nature, and a visionary of the human condition as depicted on TV.

MFA in sculpture, ISU (2019). The sculptures focus on our optic nerves. 2-inch slabs of clear and colored acrylic are digitally milled and hand-polished to make concave and convex lenses. With the slightest movement, a visual play comes into being. The ever-changing composition creates mesmerizing effects on the eye/mind loupe.