The People

Meet the people of the Majestic Ranch Arts Foundation! Join us in building an arts community.

Staff

Rachman Ulmer

Rachman Ulmer was made Executive Director of the Majestic Ranch Arts Foundation in 2009, bringing his leadership and passion for the arts to the Texas Hill Country.

While a student at Humboldt State University, Rachman discovered that sculpting provided a meaningful balance in his life. He adopted the philosophy that creativity is essential to well being, a philosophy that inspires his personal and professional pursuits.

Rachman has demonstrated sculpting and given private lessons throughout the US and in Europe. He supported the creation of The Centering School, a private elementary school in Northern California that incorporates the arts into its methods of education. He has also taught a successful pilot program for Upward Bound Classes through UTSA and the Institute of Texan Cultures. In San Antonio, he has taught classes at The Sculptors Dominion International, Hendricks Studio, Gevers Street Co-op, Inspire Fine Art and privately at his studio. He was awarded a grant from the City of San Antonio and Cultural Affairs Department for “ArtPeace,” facilitating the creation of peace through art classes taught to children of diverse backgrounds.

In 2008 he founded the Stone Sculpture program at MRAF, bringing the art of sculpting to the talented hands of his students.

Rene Hall Eldredge

Director of Public Relations
René spent seven years in Los Angeles, CA as a member of the cast and crew of the NBC/Walt Disney Pictures hit television show "Scrubs". René also worked for ABC, CBS, and Buena Vista television and has been a member of the Screen Actors Guild since 2001.

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Stevie Kesner Ricks

Program Director

A native of Texas, Stevie obtained her BA in Art and Education at Trinity University, San Antonio, and obtained her post-graduate studies at Trinity, Sam Houston State University and St. Mary's University. She taught in the NEISD for ten years, where the art program was recognized as the most outstanding art program in the State of Texas.

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Faculty

Gina Adams

Gina Adams' studio in York, Maine provides a window into her world. Artifacts representing her mixed heritage, including lace, beadwork, dolls, and handmade clothing abound in the space, side-by-side with the tools of this encaustic artist. Her working environment reflects the synergy between personal history, cultural influences, and the encaustic medium that drives her work.

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Roberta Buckles

Roberta is an MFA graduate from UTSA with an emphasis in painting. Her oil paintings are large, colorful and spirited, focusing on color, light and reflection, riding the border between realism and abstraction. Her interest in the abstract nature of perception and her never-ending fascination with reflection and distortion led her to this focus. You can see some of Roberta's work on her website and here.

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Dianne Click

"Fearless” is the way my painting style has often been described. There is such joy in the process that it can’t help spilling with abandon onto the canvas. My initial academic training taught me a deep respect for the early impressionists, and the works of contemporary master excite me about using form and color.

As my paintings came to life, I developed a reverence for my subject and enormous pride in my craft. The landscape is my first love and the foundation of my inspiration.

I am a colorist. Color is a language. It can speak in simple phrases. So as with words, when colors are artfully combined it is poetry. I use deftly applied color values and shapes to design a composition that moves effortless across the canvas.

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Kathleen Cook

Kathleen Cook, of Kerrville, TX, has been painting in pastel for over 35 years. She has a BFA degree from Texas Tech University and is a signature member of the Pastel Society of America. Her pastel works have been featured in American Artist, Southwest Art and Pastel Highlights magazines and consistently win major awards in national competitions, including the Grand Prize Award in Pastel Artists International magazine’s international competition in 2000. She has had three museum exhibitions featuring her work and is listed in Who’s Who in American Art. In addition to painting for gallery representation and commissions, Kathleen teaches in her studio and is a guest instructor and juror for many art groups. More about Kathleen Cook can be found on her website: www.kathleencook.com

Some of Kathleen's artwork may also be seen here.

Julie Gibson

Julie Gibson earned a BFA from Bradley University in Peoria, Ill. She is an award winning teacher, has taught workshops in photography and digital imaging, and worked very successfully with troubled inner city youth for many years. Her photographic work has been published and features specializations in nature and portrait photography. Now living in the beautiful hill country, she also volunteers altering photographs for a herbarium website in which the hill country flora is being catalogued.

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Nancy Graham

Nancy Graham is a recognized and multi-faceted artist. She feels comfortable working in a variety of mediums including watercolors, oils and fabric. Her paintings and her craftwork demonstrate a devoted attention to detail and outstanding technical ability.

The subjects she paints range from photo-realistic images of classic cars and hotrods to cowboys, horses, and ranch life. A truly feminine viewpoint is represented in the dreamlike settings of her jeweled and patterned egg paintings. The life-size “Day of the Dead” cow she painted for the San Antonio cow parade was a stepping off point for a series of paintings and fabric pieces celebrating the well-known Mexican day of remembrance.

Nancy grew up in the prairie farmland near Chicago, Illinois. She comes from a long line of artists and car-lovers. Her formal education includes a B.A. and an M.A. in art from Eastern Illinois University. Major galleries throughout the country have represented her. Currently, she works in her San Antonio studio and teaches watercolor at the Majestic Ranch Art Foundation.

You may see some of Nancy's work here.

Paul Heaston

Paul Heaston is a painter and draftsman, compulsive sketchbook-keeper, blogger, and amateur carpenter and guitarist. He earned his MFA from Montana State University in Bozeman, and was later a member of the School of Art faculty before returning to his hometown of San Antonio. He has also worked as a freelance illustrator, a caricature artist and as an art conservation and restoration specialist, and has participated in shows in Montana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Perugia, Italy.

Paul’s portrait work explores the relationships between the sitter, the painter, and the viewer. His paintings and drawings use this three-way dynamic as a jumping off point to consider more contemporary problems. The viewer may recognize the clothes, the hairstyles, the ages and genders of his subjects or identify emotionally with a subject’s posture or gaze. Yet any attempt to otherwise know the subject is confounded by a lack of location and narrative specificity. While there is little cultural ambiguity, overt expressive and gestural aspects of identity are unclear (if present at all). The seemingly “complete” presentation of a full standing figure is undermined by the absence of expected cues. Like Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, the people Paul paints seem to wait eternally for an existential conclusion that will never appear.

Lisa Kerpoe

Lisa Kerpoe is a textile artist and facilitator. She creates artcloth, textile wallhangings and mixed media fiber collage. Lisa starts with white cloth and transforms it into a richly textured surface by layering a variety of techniques, including dyeing, printing, stitching, metal leaf and beading. Through her work, she strives to share her fascination with the beauty of our physical world and the mystery of our spiritual nature. Through her workshops, she strives to inspire others to tap into and express their creativity. Lisa is a member of the ArtCloth Network and teaches classes at the School at Majestic Ranch and other outlets. Her award-wining work has been on exhibit at numerous galleries and exhibitions nationally and internationally and is available on her website, and also here.

Janet Eager Krueger

Janet Eager Krueger grew up in San Antonio, Texas, where she and her husband George both went to school and graduated from Alamo Heights High School. She has deep roots in the San Antonio art scene: her parents, Russ and Betty Eager, were active supporters of the original Men of Art Guild that exhibited at the Art Center on Broadway, collecting works of Cecil Casebier, Mel Casas, and Alberto Mijangos. Her mother exhibited her water colors with the San Antonio Water Color Society and at the annual Starving Art Show along the river. As a girl Janet attended classes in the Old Potting Sheds of the McNay with teachers Clay McGaughy, Phil Evett and John Squire Adams. Janet obtained her BFA in Art History in 1975 from the University of Texas at Austin, and her MFA in Painting in 1998 from UTSA.

Her work is rooted in both theme and palette in South Texas. Her imagery includes the people and animals of the Brush Country going about their business in the droughty forbidding terrain, the small towns and border culture.

Susie Monday

Susie Monday makes art cloth and art quilts in her hilltop studio near Pipe Creek, TX. Her vibrant contemporary fiber art is inspired by the region's cultures, natural beauty, stories and archetypes. Often incorporating both her own fabrics and ethnic and vintage cloth into her work, her voice is clear and distinct -- a goal she has for her students, as well. She has won numerous local and regional awards, and is a member of Texas Originals, the state's select group of craft artists, and artisans.

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Karen McCauley

Karen began her art education studying techniques in oil from many national artists. She attended the San Antonio Art Institute to establish art basics and essentials and studied at the Southwest Craft Center and Hunter School of Art. After expanding her drawing ability, and doing courtroom illustrations, she quickly discovered other mediums and now teaches classes and workshops, encouraging her students, and providing the tools for their own self expression and creative growth. Karen emphasizes personal interpretations in her work and receives endless inspiration for her paintings in the quiet atmosphere of her studio, where she teaches and paints.

Karen has won awards both locally and nationally, and has had numerous one woman shows, including Three Winds Gallery at Sante Fe, NM, and the Whistler House, Lowell, MA. She was also honored to be selected as the featured artist at the prestigious Western Art Show in San Antonio, TX. This honor is reserved for nationally and internationally known artists. Her work hangs in many private and corporate collections including Intel Corporation headquarters in Santa Monica, CA, the Running M Ranch, and Lycx Creek Lodge.

You can see Karen's work at her website, here.

Michael Saul

Michael Saul relocated to San Antonio from Fort Worth in 1974, in order to attend school at the Southwest Craft Center. There he studied under four masters until 1979, when he left to open his own studio and gallery, Michael Saul Pottery.

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Desiree Schanding

Desiree Schanding earned her MFA in Imaging Arts from the Rochester Institue of Technology. She has also completed a Graduate Certificate in Non-toxic Printmaking and can teach both Photography and Non-toxic Printmaking. Desiree received her BFA from The University of Texas at San Antonio in 2004. She is represented by the Robert Hughes Gallery San Antonio. She lives in San Antonio, TX with her husband Zack.

Phil A. Simpson

Phil Simpson is a landscape-sensitive sculptor who masterfully forms steel that responds to the environment through sensuous and elegant expression. Created in forged and fabricated steel, his works are found in corporate, museum, university and private collections throughout the United States.

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Vicki Stephens

Vicki Stephens was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and received her early education in Washington and Michigan State. Moving to Louisiana after high school graduation she worked in the manufacturing industry for many years. During these years, her childhood interest in art found expression through drawing and painting. In 1987, after completing studies in Graphic Arts at the Shreveport-Bossier Technical Institute, she worked in the commercial printing industry for 12 years.

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Stephanie Stokes

Stephanie has been a fiber artist since moving to San Antonio 28 years ago. She loves to knit, quilt, make jewelry and hook rugs a well as dye fabric and do surface design Stephanie got into Nuno Felting ten years ago because it totally enticed her with the beautiful colors of the wool roving, great textures which are achievable with collage, and incorporation of many techniques producing both wearable unique garments as well pieces for home decor. She has been teaching Nuno felting since then, and has been delighted with the range of possibilities the students come up with as well as the excitement that comes when the pieces are completed at the end of the day.

Michele Thomas

Michele Thomas (Del Gato Loco) is an artist living in Bergheim, Texas with her husband and menagerie of cats, dogs, horses and turkeys. Having lived in Texas most of her life, she is inspired by the organic natural beauty that surrounds her Hill Country home. Each piece of Michele’s hand-crafted, fine jewelry was inspired by nature: the hot winds of a south Texas summer; the cool water of the Guadalupe River; the fire and light of precious metals and natural stones. She often uses wildlife as inspiration by duplicating the color combinations seen in nature.

With a first glance of Michele’s jewelry, you may not know that Michele is not a metal smith. She has a background in drawing and earthenware designs where she first started creating jewelry from clay before she turned to new materials. She currently works in several mediums, including: precious metals, genuine gemstones and metal clay. Many of Michele’s pieces are created with cold connections by wire wrapping. Other pieces are constructed from metal clay which is either fine silver and/or 22k gold. She wants each of her pieces to have an intrinsic value as well as NATURAL beauty.

Murielle Vallot

Framing is my first passion. It is my work.

I studied for many years in France to learn the different techniques. To become an art picture framer in France requires a minimum of one year of study in order to be certified. This is how one learns all the techniques illustrated above and many more.

A picture, an embroidery, a child's drawing, earrings...how do you turn them into works of art? By framing.

Framing can kill an expensive art work or a souvenir with no commercial value but great emotional content.

What is the difference between French Art Framing and American Framing?

French Art Framing differs from American Framing in the techniques used to create "passe-partout" (mat).

French Art Framing is a way to build a custom frame for your home and make the difference between nice and awesome.

You may see more of my work on my website.