Artists in residence

Oct 20

At ARTS we feel lucky to work and share our space with incredible Teaching Artists and our Artists in Residence while providing a safe, upstanding and pleasant space where kids and youth can explore creativity. A team lead by Chris Schaie, ARTS lead teaching artist, and community artists: Rob Tobin, Omar Quintero, and Beau Trifiro work to support ARTS. They give back to the community and to ARTS by assisting in various facilities projects that are fundamental to ARTS programming and community events. Apart from carrying out projects here at ARTS they all each have their own fascinating projects. Read below to find out more about them!

Chris Schaie

Chris Schaie has been leading one of our fall programming classes Imagine, Explore, Build: Fundamentals of Design and works hard to keep the ARTS Maker Workshop in running order. The first project In this class tasked middle school students to create Robots built out of found objects.

This week he has helped to equipped the ARTS maker workshop space with a new welder machine. His dedication to ARTS and leadership helps us thrive and succeed in serving our community!

Omar Quintero (Furvo)

Omar is finishing an art installation on 8th and B at the new Parco development. He is creating a mural that represents community and diversity to represent merging cultures as a result of living in community.

Omar can’t wait to start teaching again, in his upcoming class he will be teaching highschool students from Sweetwater High School how to make lamps using repurposed metal scraps from cars, motorcycles etc. This class will have an emphasis on sustainability and will teach students how to make furniture using repurposed materials.

Rob Tobin

Rob Tobin is celebrating 20 years of being involved with ARTS. He began volunteering in 2001 providing outreach programs. Rob served many years as ARTS’s Director of Creativity and when you are around him you cant help but feel inspired!

Outside of ARTS, Rob is currently working with the Pacific Beach Community creating a massive mosaic sculpture installation at the Pacific Beach Recreation Center.

Mockup of Pacific Beach Recreation Center

Mosaic Flower being created at the ARTS Center

Beau Trifiro

Beau actively works on making boards from local urban lumber provided by Lumbercycle. He is constantly updating his website and the skateboard design software SK8CAD, making and shipping Nanodek fingerboard build kits, making custom skateboards and skateboard molds for skaters and board builders all over the world, He also creates YouTube videos around designing, building, and skateboarding.

We can’t wait to schedule more board building workshops through his collaboration with ARTS!