Craft Advisory Council

Nanette Bevan

Nan Bevan creates luminous interior landscapes with glass.  
Her larger pieces explore opalescent worlds with no boundaries and floating dreamscapes. Smaller vessels explore abstract forms and colorful patterns, inviting the viewer to bring beauty into everyday life. Her work is inspired by stories that seek to make sense out of an unknowable world, the endless color explorations of Paul Klee, and the beautiful, strange and often unpredictable changes heat will create in glass. When the kilns are full, she carries her love of color onto paper and canvas. In the past 20 years, her work has shown in exhibitions across the country. From the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, she now lives in Maryland and thinks often of snow.

Xiaosheng Bi

Xiaosheng Bi (he/him) was born in Xi’an China. After teaching ceramics at Qinghua University for eight years, Xiaosheng immigrated to USA in 1997. Now he lives in Maryland and teaches at Montgomery College and is a VisArts Studio Artist and ceramics instructor. Xiaosheng's work reflects his traditional Chinese influences, yet is infused with a contemporary aesthetic. Suffused with gentle colors, his delicate formsshine with the brillant translucency of bone china porcelain. Traditional Chinese motifs such as bamboo leaves or lotus blossoms are painted and sculptural with dynamic, nearly abstract strokes. Bii's works have been exhibited in solo and group shows in asia and the USA. His ceramic and sculpture works were collected by museums and private collectors.

Lorenzo Cardim

Lorenzo Cardim is a Brazilian-American visual artist, digital designer, and restorer. He holds a BFA in Fine Arts from the Corcoran College of Art + Design and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. Cardim’s body of work has been showcased at various museums, galleries, universities, and film festivals nationally and internationally, including New York, Milan, Paris, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Oakland, Virginia, and Maryland. He was also honored with the 2019 Denis Diderot Scholarship Award in France. Currently, Cardim is working on two significant reconstruction projects – a truss for the Notre Dame Cathedral in France and a full-scale Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome to be installed in July 2023 at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History.

Rebecca Cross

Owner and director of Cross MacKenzie Gallery since 2006, she has presented nearly 300 artists in over 150 art exhibitions, and art fairs in NYC, LA and Venice Italy. She was a guest curator for the American University Art Museum at the Katzen Center – “MORE CLAY- The Power of Repetition” and for the DC Art Center “Macho the Mask of Masculinity ”. Post college, while living in a coffee bean warehouse in Wapping, London, she assisted sculptor, Sir Anthony Caro and taught part-time at Southwark College. Her early studio practice featured solo painting shows at Addison Ripley Gallery, DC, group shows including “Hypercolorism” at Gallery D’este in NYC and commissioned work for hotels and restaurants. She designed colorful sets and costumes for Bresee Danskompani’s “Unstill Lives” performed in Oslo and the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theatre, and for City Ballet of Boston’s “Urban Nutcracker” by Tony Williams, now in its 20^thyear. A MacDowell Fellow, Cross’ public collections include the Washington Convention Center, Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery and the US State Department. Her ceramics were long sold through Barney’s New York, Costa Mesa and Japan. Cross has participated as a juror, lecturer or panelist for multiple arts organizations including The Smithsonian Craft Show, the Virginia AIA, Women’s Caucus for Art and the Washington Project for the Arts. She served on the board of the Renwick Alliance for Craft from 2007-2014.

Robert Devers

Robert Devers (he/him) is an artist with a multi-faceted practice that includes ceramics, sculpture, painting, and photography. Ceramics remains his essential focus and provides the lens through which the other mediums are engaged and ultimately brought back into play in ceramic practice. Robert Devers received his MFA degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, both in Ceramics. Previous teaching experience includes The George Washington University, Associate Professor Emeritus, The Corcoran College of Art + Design, American University, Montgomery College, and VisArts, among others. Works in public collections include Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, American University Art Gallery; Katzen Art Center, Manuel Cargaliero Foundation, Ravello, Italy, Museo Manuel Cargaliero, Castelo Branco, Portugal, International Monetary Fund, and the Washington Brain and Spine Institute.

Armando Lopez-Bircann

Armando Lopez-Bircann(Arma Dura) is a Latinx artist that engineerswearable sculptures, digital media and performances. Their Extended Reality (XR) practice is framed by immigrant narratives, genderfluid expression, digital native sensibilitiesand a Queer Ecofeminist lens. They work as an independent artist and have also designed works in collaboration with dancers, circus performers, photographers, videographers, musiciansand other artists. Notable accomplishments include an Artist Talk at the Hirshhorn Museum, being a DC Commission of Arts and Humanities fellow, and a Wherewithal Research Grant recipient. They graduated from Concordia University, the Corcoran College of Art + Design and are based in Washington DC.

Katie Macyshyn

Katie Macyshyn (they/she) is a performance artist and experiential art practitioner serving collaborative new media art. Their mixed media practice spans makeup art, wearables, installation, sound, video, and more. They are also an art instructor and songstress who specializes in the therapeutic benefits of creative play in early childhood and queering classrooms. Macyshyn holds a BFA from the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at George Washington University. She lives in Mount Rainier, MD and is from Toms River, NJ.

Rebecca Ravenal

Rebecca Ravenal is a studio artist and educator.  Originally a ceramic artist, she has expanded into mosaic and mixed media work.  Rebecca has taught children and adults at several local arts organizations, camps, and schools.  She is an associate artist at the Torpedo Factory Arts Center and currently has her studio at Artists and Makers.  In addition to making art, Rebecca is the Board President of the James Renwick Alliance for Craft and runs a family real estate business.

Vidya Vijayasekharan

Vidya Vijayasekharan is an artist, art historian, and educator, who has been teaching at Montgomery College since 1994, prior to which she worked at museums including the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institution. Originally from India, Vidya has been a resident of Montgomery County for over 30 years, and she is a spirited advocate for arts in education.

Pati Young

Pati Young is a longtime craft advocate and collector who started attending American Craft Council (ACC) shows in her early 20s. She has served as a show judge for the ACC, JRA Craft (JRA), the National Capital Glass Guild (NCGG), and the Washington Goldsmith Guild (WGG) for Metalworks 2024.  Young has served on the boards of the JRA (2009-2014), the ACC (2013-2019), and the Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+) (2018-Present). In 2023 she became CERF+ Board Secretary, and in 2024 she became an ACC Emerging Artist Cohort (EAC) coach.  Young is a supporter of the American Association of Woodturners, Archie Bray Foundation, Art Alliance of Contemporary Glass, Clay Center, Museum for Art in Wood, Collectors of Wood Art, Friends of Fiber Art, Northern Clay Center, Penland School of Craft, Pilchuck Glass School, Watershed’s Griggs Circle, and Weisser Glass.     She is proud to have contributed to the JRA’s efforts to support the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, including donating Sebastian Martorana’s Impressions(2008) for the Renwick’s 40 Under 40 show. Choosing mixed media as the focus, she sponsored the JRA’s Chrysalis Award for Emerging Artists (2019), which was awarded to Richard W. James.   Young has an MSW from the University of Maryland at Baltimore’s School of Social Work. A fifth generation Washingtonian, she lives in the DC suburb of North Kensington, Maryland.