Meet Our Team

Angela Black - Owner & Director

Angela Black is an artist, illustrator, designer, community change-maker, and inspired arts educator for multiple organizations in Fredericton, including Open Your Art, The New Brunswick College of Craft and Design (NBCCD), UNB-CEL, The Charlotte Street Arts Centre, The Estey Art Initiative, Riverside Montessori Learning Centre, Veterans for Healing Inc. and many of the local public schools.

Angela also works for GNB in Organizational Development as an Inclusion Specialist, creating safe entry points for equity-deserving groups across the province.

Angela's primary creative focus has been expanding a permanent teaching workshop as Executive Director of Open Your Art, now located in the historic Charlotte Street Arts Centre. She currently offers an art atelier program for youth with a mentoring style of instruction that nurtures leadership skills and community action through the arts. Angela also has a personal calling to provide supportive art spaces and creative opportunities for adults who have experienced trauma. She feels a commitment to continually develop accessible art programs for exceptional adults and youth, as well as intergenerational programs that unite seniors and students through creative expression.

Ange describes her creative community work as a transformational teaching approach. She uses her position as a leader to gently inspire people of all ages to find and open their art with individual creativity. Angela's ultimate media is bookbinding, screenprinting, and watercolor/ink painting. She has been successfully producing and wholesaling one-of-a-kind artworks since 2007. Angela's handbound books, primarily, have found homes all over the world. She recently illustrated a locally published children's book and is about to illustrate another this fall.

Jen Pilon - Ceramic Artist & Educator

Jen is a ceramic artist - the owner of The Hive Ceramics, and educator at Open Your Art. Originally from Halifax, her background in ceramics began at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. Jen’s engagement and passion for community events was essential to her discovery of the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design where she completed her Diploma in Fine Craft and Design. Jen has gone on to share her love for ceramics and community through developing and teaching accessible programs for the better part of a decade while maintaining a growing line of production pottery.

Kaitlyn Foster - Visual Arts Instructor

Kaitlyn has worked at Open Your Art since the summer of 2020 and is the primary Visual arts Instructor of OYA programming—curriculum contributor. 

She was a previous student of Angela Black when she was a pre-teen/teenager! She works digitally and traditionally and loves to experiment with art styles. Her favorite traditional mediums are watercolor gouache, watercolor, oil, and alcohol ink markers. She mostly does character design and portraiture but loves challenging herself to do a variety of subjects and styles depending on whatever she’s currently fixated on. She admires and is inspired by many modern artists and the work they post on social media as well as well-known historic artists.

Favorite Artists: Basquiat, Francisco Goya, Mucha, John William Waterhouse, and Pieter Brueghel le Jeune.

Shinaid Jade Grace - Ceramics Specialist & Instructor

Shinaid has been a clay instructor for children and adults with Open Your Art for two years. Her favourite object to make is a teapot! She is a gentle and patient instructor who is especially passionate about teaching her knowledge of clay on the pottery wheel to new and experienced potters alike. Shinaid is the maker behind EarthSol Ceramics and began training in clay nearly a decade ago. In her personal practice, she creates clay objects for table and ritual, which embrace the earthy nature of the material itself.

Micah Pellerin

Micah’s taking his art to the next level as he heads into his first year at NBCCD fall of 2024! Since having attended classes at OYA before, he started volunteering in 2023 and became a member of the staff as a result of his interest and passion for art. Having been a member of the ESAlliance club at his school, he’s invested in helping the queer Community of NB. Micah likes to capture life with drawing and painting.

Claire Lounder - Intern at OYA

Claire is an artist, student, and staff member at Open Your Art. Claire joined OYA in May 2023 through UNB's Arts internship program; she was drawn to OYA because she’s passionate about visual art. She’s interested in the therapeutic benefits of art; she is pursuing a major in Psychology, aspiring to take up art therapy or counselling in the future. She's passionate about drawing, traditional art, illustration, cartoons, and portraiture.

Eva Palmer

Eva is a student at UNB’s Rennisance Collage just down the street from the CSAC, studying philosophy and leadership on the trajectory for a bachelor of education. She joined the team as an intern and after falling in love with the studio she couldn’t help but become a staff member. Eva is a visual artist specializing in mixed media, specifically collage works but she loves experimenting with new mediums. She is a strong supporter of ARTivism and often focuses her pieces on impactful social issues.

Sarah Eddie - Visual Art Instructor and Administrator

Sarah Eddie is a Visual Art instructor at Open Your Art. She is a local artist whose primary medium is acrylic paint. She is developing her style, but likes experimenting with the concepts of neo-impressionism, rounded cubism, and is inspired by 19th-century poetry and literature, and self-discovery through time. Sarah has had an eclectic arts career, as she studied classical music at Mount Allison University and UPEI, where she then specialized in education. She then explored the world of recording arts, releasing six original songs on streaming platforms under the guise “Sasha’s Ambulance”, which she formed to encourage femme and queer musicians in the music Industry. Sarah was awarded an Innovation PEI Arts Grant and an Emerging Artists grant from Music PEI in 2021, which supported her in releasing two music videos with Shed Sessions and an EP, entitled “Impasse”. Taking a break from her music career, she has recently changed directions to explore her love of the Visual Arts. Sarah currently teaches private music lessons and art lessons and works with the Estey Art Initiative as well as Open Your Art! You can find her art at the Boyce Farmers Market and the Garrison Night Market.