Lake Tahoe Community College

Catherine Lockner Church

Educational and career paths are rarely linear, so I wanted to share mine.

Though I had always been drawn to studio art, I chose to earn my undergraduate degree in English at UC Berkeley. The program was strong, and I was advised it would be a safer path toward future employment.

In my final weeks at Berkeley, a chance MRI study conducted by a friend in the neuroscience department revealed a brain tumor. What followed was a year of surgery and radiation, and ultimately a clean bill of health. The experience shifted my priorities. Despite having no specific career path in mind, and with very little money to work with, I enrolled in a master’s program at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco to study Illustration.

After graduating, I explored teaching through substitute work and tutoring and discovered that I genuinely enjoyed education. I moved to Tahoe and took a landscape painting class with Phyllis Shafer. Within a few months, I was hired to teach art history and watercolor painting at LTCC, where I have taught ever since.

Even so, my path has not been straightforward. Alongside teaching, I have worked on a wide range of projects, from large scale murals to book illustrations, and have taught classes across many artistic disciplines, often learning as I go. The career path of an artist is one of adaptation, but it has been continuously exciting and enriching, and I am grateful to be on it.

Kristin Boles

My journey to where I am today has been one of adventure—full of twists and turns more akin to a corkscrew than a straight line. It has been a road of learning and rich experiences that have layered together to create who I am. Raised in a house of anesthesiologists and siblings hopeful to continue in the medical field, I found myself woozy at the sight of blood and longing instead to scribble and create art in my notebooks for hours on end.

Creating art was my soul’s calling and instinct. I didn’t think about it—I simply oozed it—so when I began school at the University of Colorado as an art major, I thought my path was clearly laid out. After my first semester, however, I earned my first D in an anthropology class. This was an anomaly in my life. The large lectures left me feeling lost, and when art classes filled before I could enroll for my second semester, I decided to return to my home state of California and start a new path at Diablo Valley Community College with plans to transfer as a junior.

A year and a half later, I received my AA in Art from DVC and moved on to UC Santa Cruz to study Environmental Studies and Scientific Illustration. Art was still there, but it had taken a backseat to being “practical”—a recurring theme I would face many times in my life. After graduating, I moved to Tahoe. In 2005, knowing art was still where my heart lay, I returned to school to earn my MFA in Traditional 2-D Illustration from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Loving the learning environment, I returned to Tahoe once more and began teaching art at Lake Tahoe Community College in 2007, where I discovered my joy in sharing creativity and artistic skills with students.

Over the years, I have swayed away from art at times to balance raising children and supporting my family. I had the pleasure of running restaurants at Edgewood and helping build the Lodge, before moving into interior design and project management for commercial offices and high-end boutique hotels. Still, fine art and education always called me back.

In recent years, I have been fortunate enough to commit fully to pursuing art once again. I now have the honor of teaching at LTCC and coordinating the Haldan Gallery exhibitions, while continuing to paint and fulfill commissions. Art has always been there, quietly reminding me that it is my path. Now I am able to focus, listen, and nurture what was always meant to be, and I couldn’t be happier.

Ché Devol

Ché DeVol currently works as an adjunct professor in English and is a South Tahoe local. His pathway led him through LTCC as a student and tutor before transferring to UNR, where he earned a BA in Writing. Ché then completed a Master’s in Teaching program and later received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, NV. He has worked for Washoe County and the city of SLT, and merited a gold badge after 16 seasons with Heavenly Mountain Resort. His route from student to professor has not been without detours or the need for four-wheel drive, but his fuel has always been a commitment to his community and helping others find their way.

Mel Smothers

My art is compelled by witnessing class divisions between my subjects and the privileged politicians and corporations, who discredit scientific and social evidence for their own personal power and greed, resulting in environmental, climate and human disasters.

These subjects are inherited from our times, drawn from personal narratives, and reflecting my interest in philosophy, contemporary thought, and sources that span art history.

I exhibit at Art Lives Here, and Carter-Burden Gallery, New York City. Hay Hill Gallery, London. TAG Gallery, Los Angeles. Bob Chew Gallery, Palm Desert. Archival Gallery, Sacramento.

In 2006 I was selected to ‘Artists of Year,’ exhibition at Cooper-Union, NYC. I’ve taught Art at the University of California, University of Idaho and University of Nevada. Currently I’m Adjunct Professor of Art at Lake Tahoe Community College.

I have a hard-to-find studio along the shore in Lake Tahoe. I’m also a student of fly fishing and jazz violin.

Catalina Goralski

Catalina Pinochet Goralski, also known as Profe Goralski or Profe Cata, is a Spanish instructor originally from Santiago, Chile. She has been teaching Spanish at Lake Tahoe Community College (LTCC) for 18 years and has also taught Spanish at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). In addition, she operates a private Spanish tutoring practice.

Her professional focus is Spanish language instruction and cultural education, which she approaches as both a vocation and a lifelong commitment. She is dedicated to fostering linguistic proficiency and intercultural competence in her students by integrating language study with cultural perspectives. Through her courses, students develop not only communicative skills in Spanish but also an expanded understanding of diverse ways of thinking and interpreting the world. As Italian film director Federico Fellini observed, “A different language is a different vision of life.”

She teaches Spanish at all proficiency levels, including Spanish for Heritage Speakers, at LTCC.

Galina Milton

About My Vision

I didn’t come into art like a fairy tale child prodigy with a pencil in hand and destiny neatly outlined. My story is quieter, slower, and—perhaps because of that—richer. I didn’t begin painting seriously until I was thirty-five. But long before a brush ever touched my hand, I had already learned how to see.

I was born in Lugansk, Ukraine, during the complicated, restrained years of the Soviet Union. Beauty was not always loud then—but it was present, persistent, and deeply felt. As a teenager, I spent long hours in Russian museums, especially in Saint Petersburg. Those halls taught me something essential: that certain artists could stop time. They could capture a fleeting moment—someone’s glance, a breath of light, an ordinary day—and preserve it with such dignity and color that decades later, you could still see the world through their eyes. That idea stayed with me like a quiet promise.

I grew up in an artistic family—my grandfather was a sound sculptor—yet my own path to art took a winding road. I studied history at the University of Ukraine and immersed myself in Russian art history, learning how culture, people, and time weave together. That historical lens never left me; it still shapes how I think about painting as a record of “flying time,” always moving, never repeating.

When I finally stepped fully into art, I did so with gratitude and determination. In 2004, I enrolled at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco to pursue my Master’s degree. A pivotal moment came in the summer of 2006 at the Repin Academy in Saint Petersburg, where I studied under Ivan Vituk and Konstantin Grachev. Being surrounded daily by masterpieces and guided by Russian teachers with deep classical roots changed me. It expanded my understanding of discipline, observation, and respect for tradition—lessons I still carry.

I graduated with my Master’s in Fine Art, focusing on painting from life, especially people. And yet, even now—after twenty-five years of painting and seventeen years of teaching privately and at the college level—I still consider myself a beginning painter. That may sound strange, but it feels true. Art keeps opening new doors. Every canvas asks a new question.

Today, my work lives somewhere between impressionism and realism, though I don’t feel the need to name it. Styles change; principles endure. Drawing, composition, value, temperature, edges, light in color—these are my guiding stars. They ground me. They remind me that freedom grows best from strong roots.

People are at the heart of my work. My ongoing project, People on the Earth, grew from a desire to tell stories of history, tradition, and national identity through faces and posture, through what is shared and what is different. We learn who we are by looking at others. This project is far too large for ten or twelve paintings—it will likely follow me for the rest of my life.

I also return again and again to the human figure, for the beauty of the body, and to landscapes, for the quiet poetry of everyday life. I paint what calls me. I paint when a vision appears. I paint because I want to reflect the happiness I feel when I touch the brush.

Teaching has become an extension of that joy. A blank canvas still feels like a small miracle to me—a place where a world can begin. I try to pass that belief on to my students, to show them that art is not reserved for the chosen few, but open to those willing to look closely, work honestly, and stay curious.

I am endlessly grateful—for the support of family and friends, for my teachers, for museums, for time, and for the chance to live as a multicultural artist shaped by many places and many histories. My website, www.galinamilton.com, is a visual journal of this ongoing journey.

And the journey continues. The world changes. People change. Light changes. That is why I will never run out of subjects—and why I still step up to each canvas with enthusiasm, humility, and wonder.

Shiloh Flood

I grew up in South Lake Tahoe, and unfortunately for all of you, I survived. Despite the dangers of coyotes, bears and bubonic plague, I managed to graduate from our local high school with very few diseases. Though I had been pursuing art on my own since I was child, I had never stepped foot into an art class until I started attending LTCC. After beating my head against the proverbial wall of higher education for slightly too many years, I was gently encouraged to graduate and move on to the next stage of my life. And so I did! Against my better judgment, I stayed in south lake and embodied my role as a dirtbag townie. Being a jack of all trades and a master of nothing, I had a variety of jobs; from fixing rich people’s skis to fixing rich people’s houses. Eventually, I worked in a reproduction shop for a local gallery. Though my goal was to sneakily get my work up on the gallery walls (which ultimately failed), it was here where I got my first large commission. I completed this commission through the Caldor fire and life was nothing but sunshine and rainbows. Shortly after that, the gallery closed and I was out of a job. Luckily, LTCC was hiring and was foolish enough to hire me. Coming back made me embrace the sculpting world and made me realize that sculptures aren’t just something you back into when looking at a painting. Since I’ve been back, I’ve been making dirt stand in shapes it would rather not like to. We’ll see where that adventure takes me. From humble beginnings to a humble now...these are things that have happened. Cheers

Sincerely yours,
Chat GPT

Pat Leonard-Heffner

I have been a photographic artist for about 50 years. I have always loved creating Art and Music. During my time in College, I majored in Fine Arts taking classes in drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and photography. I fell in love with the Photographic process. About the same time, I also fell in love with teaching, and received a K-12 Teaching Credential in NY and NJ., as well as a BFA in Fine Arts, from Long Island University, in New York.

I moved to Lake Tahoe from N.J. in 1979, and started teaching Photography at Lake Tahoe Community College in 1980. I was also a photo instructor at Western Nevada Community College in 1993-94.

I also worked on a Master’s Degree at CSU Sacramento.

I have photographed the Sierras extensively, as well as other places, including Death Valley.

Not only am I proficient in photographing landscapes, but I also excel at portraiture and photojournalism.

Presently I am exploring the new digital technology as a viable artistic means of expression.

Other photographic mediums that I have used include traditional black and white, color, polaroid transfers and emulsion transfers, posterizations, gum prints.

Julia Schwadron Marianelli

Julia Schwadron Marianelli is a painter who has shown her work nationally as well as internationally. Schwadron Marianelli served as co-founder of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Sierra Nevada University, now UNR Lake Tahoe. She was a Javits Fellow from 2002-2003 and Joan Mitchell Fellow in 2006. She was a Visiting Professor of Painting and Artist in Residence at Chiang Mai University, and an Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of Iowa from 2007-2009. Schwadron Marianelli received her BA in Studio art from UCSD in 1998 and her MFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art in 2004. She currently lives and works in South Lake Tahoe, CA where she continues to advocate for educational access for all through Community Education at the Lake Tahoe Community College.

Ian Fabre

First camera before my teens.

From independent art studies in high school to the Individualized Major at the California College of the Arts (kinda like an honors program).

Interned at a fine arts publisher to become their production manager/master printer.

Ran into the place while on a college field trip.

I knew how to get on the roof, it was in San Francisco.

A past bio stated, “from graffiti artist to burnt out graphic designer,” not exactly true...

I’ve been a Longshoreman, Sugar Bowl ski resort was cool enough to house me and employ me.

I make work with my Mother when I’m lucky.

I got my MFA from SJSU and they too were cool enough to employ me.

I’m extremely thankful for the experiences art and education has lovingly pulled me through...

Morgan Locandro

Morgan L. Locandro is a writer who earned her MFA from Sierra Nevada University in 2019. Currently, she enjoys working with her creative writing and composition students at Lake Tahoe Community College, spending plenty of time outdoors in her native eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, and pursuing the earthly pleasures of oenology and gastronomy. Previously, she completed her BA at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2014, traveled to four continents, became a certified yoga teacher in Peru, and lived and worked on the island Corsica for three years. Her manuscript Poor Girl: Stories was a finalist for the Bridge Eight Fiction Prize.

Polo Lopez

Polo Lopez was born and raised in Sacramento, CA and took a keen interest in art from a young age. Through accolades and the mentorship of transformational teachers in high school and community college, Lopez pursued and completed his Bachelors of Art Studio (with an emphasis on painting and drawing) at California State University Sacramento in 2016. He returned to CSUS to complete his Masters in Art Studio in 2018 and went on to teach digital and traditional art media in the private high school sector of Sacramento. In the fall quarter of 2025, Lopez was hired at Lake Tahoe Community College to teach Drawing Fundamentals—a full circle moment from his junior college education at Sacramento City College.

Lopez’s work is a continued exploration of content surrounding his identity. He finds inspiration in the amalgamation of collage and mixed media and the freedom to compose therein. Drawn media, paint, found imagery, colored pencil—all combine to create pieces reflective of his life and experience as a gay man. Since his graduate work, Lopez has developed an iconography of imagery that speak to his experience: permeable barriers, idealized male forms, exploring hands, directional gazes, and fields of color all combine to create diaristic memories and projected fables.

When not creating art, Lopez enjoys running, coaching and competing in volleyball, all things Nintendo, and the occasional roller rink session.

Elizabeth Vargas

I was born and raised in the western part of the Mojave Desert and moved to South Lake Tahoe in 2016. After four years at LTCC, I earned Associate Degrees in Art, Studio Art, and Psychology, as well as Certificates of Achievement in Painting, Ceramics, Figure Studies, and Printmaking. Continuing my education with Arizona State University, I received my Bachelor’s Degree in Art Studies with a minor in Art History in 2024. In 2022, I joined the LTCC Art Department as the 2D Art Technician. It’s been such an honor to work with so many artists and help facilitate an environment for artists to learn, create, and exhibit their work. As for my own artwork, I’ve been focusing on exploring my creativity and playfulness, finding comfort in creation, and challenging myself by letting ideas choose their medium they’d like to be represented with.