Our Staff

  • Director

    (she/her) is an artist, licensed art therapist and the Director of The Creative Center. Prior to joining The Creative Center, Sheila worked as an art therapist, supervisor and director at nonprofit agencies throughout NYC, providing art programming for children, adults and families. Sheila’s interest in creating and growing programs is a creative expression, reflecting her dedication and commitment to promoting health and healing through the arts.

    Sheila graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in Art History and worked as a commission-based mural artist before attending the School of Visual Arts, where she obtained her Master’s degree in Art Therapy. Sheila is currently in private practice as well as on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts. Sheila maintains her own art practice, creating figurative paintings and collage-works that provide a space for professional self-processing.

  • PROGRAMS & PARTNERSHIPS COORDINATOR

    Liz Rubel (she/hers) is the Programs & Partnerships Coordinator at The Creative Center (TCC), connecting our participants, organization, and communities to one another and to more cultural opportunities in New York City and beyond. Liz is a former TCC workshop instructor and Hospital Artist-in-Residence at NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center, Bellevue, and Woodhull Hospitals. Liz has a Masters of Arts in Museum Studies, certification in Trauma-Informed Creative Arts Therapy, and a trained background in jewelry design and production. Liz believes in the power of creativity and exploration in finding everyone's inner artist, defining art simply as a creative conduit for expression and healing.

founding director Emeritus

  • Robin Glazer, artist and art educator, is a co-founder and the former director of The Creative Center, having retired in August 2021. After completing a year of treatment for her own breast cancer diagnosis in 1992, she met co-founder Adrienne Assail at Starbucks where they sat past midnight, brainstorming about a place where women with cancer could come and make art as a way to discover their own creative resources to meet the challenges of illness. In 1994, together with psychiatric social worker Geraldine Herbert, Robin developed and implemented the art programs at The Creative Center including Arts Workshops, Hospital Artist-In-Residence programs, Creative Aging programs, the Training Institute and TCC’s online art gallery. Now living in Chicago to be near her children and grandchildren, she is attempting to balance all her artistic interests- painting, puppetry and printmaking, while helping to guide The Creative Center into the post-pandemic future.

HOSPITAL
ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

  • MOUNT SINAI DOWNTOWN AND NEW YORK PRESBYTERIAN

    Cibele is a conceptual artist who believes in the power of the arts to communicate and create communities. She also believes that part of the artist's job is to share and educate the general public about contemporary art.

    cibelevieira.com

  • BRONXCARE HOSPITAL CENTER, FAMILY MEDICINE

    Carmen Paulino is a visual artist who provides on-going community art programming in hospitals, community centers, and senior centers around New York City. Carmen was raised in the El Barrio neighborhood of New York City where she developed her love for the arts seeing inspirational murals from around her neighborhood. Carmen's artwork takes real life experiences, visuals her surroundings, and life experiences from living in a diverse melting pot of cultures. As a young child, Carmen watched her mother and grandmother knit, crochet, and sew unique traditional quilts and patterns. Carmen was also inspired by her Father who was a musician and performed in several traditional salsa bands. These experiences later inspired her to start her own techniques and to produce her own works with mixed mediums. Carmen has since crafted and created many crochet pieces, artwork, and murals which are all inspired by her upbringing in Spanish Harlem.

  • MOUNT SINAI WEST, INPATIENT ONCOLOGY

    Desi Minchillo is both architect and artist. She has practiced as an architect for twenty three years. Her projects have involved civic structures such as courthouses and schools. In 2006, she changed her focus and embarked in the art world. Her artistic style, although influenced by architectural imagery and theory focuses on the fragility of life. Her past work has involved the use of found materials to create temporal sculptural reliefs. She has applied her past artistic investigation to her current paintings. She has participated in numerous shows and has been awarded grants from the QCA, LBI foundation and the SCA percent for arts program. She has taught workshops as a visiting artist at the LBI foundation, middle village school and creative center. She has also served as a resident artist for the past twelve years for creative center at Bellevue hospital, Mount Sinai east and west.

  • BRONXCARE OUTPATIENT ONCOLOGY

    Glenys Rivas was born in the Dominican Republic where at the age of 12 developed a wild fascination with arts, colors, design, and clothing styles. After graduating from New York Fashion Institute of Technology in 2001, she remained in New York City and has built a career of 19-years as an Artist and Fashion Designer. Glenys has worked for various large designing companies like Bill Blass and in present time work for a nonprofit organization The Creative Center. In November of 2012 she founded ModaDsign.com a fashion design consulting service and an online retail shop where you can find exclusively Glenys Rivas' design creations.

    Glenys Rivas nació en la República Dominicana, donde a la edad de 12 años desarrolló una fascinación por las artes, los colores, el diseño y el estilismo de ropa. Después de graduarse del New York Fashion Institute of Technology en 2001, permaneció en la ciudad de Nueva York y ha construido una carrera, como Artista y Diseñadora de Moda. Glenys ha trabajado para varias grandes empresas de diseño como Bill Blass y en el presente trabaja para la organización sin fines de lucros The Creative Center. En Noviembre del 2012 fundó ModaDsign.com un servicio de consultoría de diseño de moda y una tienda virtual en línea donde se pueden encontrar exclusivamente las creaciones de diseño de Glenys Rivas.

  • MOUNT SINAI WEST, OUTPATIENT ONCOLOGY

    Helen Dennis is a British artist based in New York. She received her MFA at Hunter College. Prior to moving to America she studied her BA (honours) in Fine Art at the University of the Creative Arts in Canterbury, UK.

    Helen's studio practice combines drawing and alternative photography within the subject of architecture and the built environment. Her artwork can be found in public collections notably of Tiffany & Co. and Avon Inc. Helen's large scale public art works have been commissioned by the Downtown Alliance of New York, The LAB Gallery for Installation Art, NoLongerEmpty and the DUMBO Arts Festival. Helen has exhibited internationally and in the US with the support of the Queens Museum, Queens Council of the Arts, Kent County Council and South East Arts UK. She has been a Creative Capital Strategic Planning Fellow at Aljira Center for Contemporary Art and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Helen has regularly participated as a mentor in the Immigrant Artist Program with New York Foundation for the Arts.

    Helen's love for travel has taken her to several international art residencies with organizations in Beijing, Cyprus, Italy, Reykjavik with the Icelandic Arts Association, Caldera Arts in Oregon, Mission Gallery in Wales UK, and MASS MoCA in North Adams.

  • BELLEVUE HOSPITAL CANCER CENTER

    Marika's artwork is inspired by nature and wildlife even though NYC is her home. She is passionate about teaching and painting with watercolors. Her connection to this medium defines her work. Exploring color, shapes and brush strokes with people who have never before held a paint brush inspires Marika.

    Showing patients how to "draw" with a brush is freeing. Images of seeds falling, designing a bird with decorative patterning, filling an entire page with loosely rendered flowers and leaves is relaxing. When a patient tells Marika they are not creative, I ask them to give me a few minutes of their time. Once the brush is in their hand, color gets dropped onto a wet paper and flows and blends into others colors. Patients are amazed. Everyone smiles. She am truly grateful for this work.

    marikahahn.com

  • MOUNT SINAI WEST, OUTPATIENT ONCOLOGY

    Nicole Schiro is a native New York artist. Her studies in art include an M.F.A. (2006) and B.F.A. (2002) from Hunter College, NY, as well as the Saturday Outreach Program (1997) at Cooper Union College for the Advancement of Fine Art. Schiro has exhibited extensively in galleries, museums, non-profit and alternative spaces, home and abroad, most notably in the United States and China. In addition, you can find artwork by the artist in Istanbul, at PG Art Gallery.

    Aside from her own art, Nikki is the Artist-In-Residence for Outpatient Oncology, at Mount Sinai West (formally Roosevelt). Nikki Schiro is the co-creator and director of OZANEAUX ArtSpace, a philanthropic, artist-run exhibition/project space established in 2009, with her partner, Frederic Ozaneaux. Here she volunteers her personal time, knowledge and professional experience to empower underrepresented artists and curators in her community.

  • BELLEVUE HOSPITAL CANCER CENTER AND NYU LANGONE PERLMUTTER CANCER CENTER

    Rebecca Kelly is The Creative Center Hospital Artist-In-Residence at both NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center and Bellevue Hospital Center. For over two decades, Rebecca has been on the teaching artist roster of Young Audiences of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. She feels passionately that art making deeply heals both the teacher and the student. Rebecca is a curator, storyteller, natural dyer, book and textile artist and weaves her art forms together to make new forms like innovative book arts, Japanese inspired textile art and hand dyed yarns. Her work has been exhibited at The Philadelphia Museum of Art Library, St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn and The Hunterdon Art Museum. Rebecca curated the award winning Bucks County Community ArtMobile in 2009-2011, transFORMations: Art Made from Recycled and Reused Materials which was viewed by over 40,000 individuals!

  • MOUNT SINAI DOWNTOWN RADIATION ONCOLOGY

    Regina A.E. Scudellari-Ponemon is a multidisciplinary artist & art educator based in Queens, New York.

    She has worked with blind & visually impaired public/private school children, cancer patients, seniors, teachers & at risk youth .She previously worked in cut paper, etching, silkscreen, lithography, relief print, mono print, collage, acrylic painting & photography until Greta Thunberg, Al Gore, Paul Hawkins et al inspired a radical rethink coupled with a desire to make art that is as low impact as possible. Her latest pieces are collages created out of serigraphs & a series of paintings entitled "Waste not, want not". The principals of recycle/reuse/reduce guide whatever she creates. Her work focuses on color & beauty in a desire to be a force & inspiration towards all that is good & positive.

  • MOUNT SINAI OUTPATIENT ONCOLOGY AND BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT

    SASCHA MALLON is The Creative Center Hospital Artist-In-Residence at Mount Sinai Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant. Sascha grew up in Austria, and now lives in Beacon, NY with her family. Sascha studied art therapy at ISSA/ School for Art Therapy in Austria, she is adjunct faculty for painting and ceramics at Mount Saint Mary College and is a certified Meditation Teacher (from Tibet House New York). Her Ceramics and Drawings have been exhibited internationally. She is represented by Frontroom Gallery New York.

    In her work as Hospital-Artist-in-Residence she is sharing her toolbox of using art as a means for healing and Self Care. She believes that art can help us to be present and joyful even in the midst of the most difficult life situations.

  • WILHELMINA GRANT is a self-taught visual artist and native New Yorker who uses found objects and mixed media in assemblage. As an Artist-In-Residence through the Creative Center at University Settlement, she uses the arts to nurture the creativity of patients, their families and staff in a healthcare settings. Wilhelmina is the founder of SISTAAH, Inc. (Survivors Inspiring Sisters Through Art and Advocacy for Health), an arts-based non-profit organization which seeks to inform, encourage and facilitate access to early detection of breast cancer by connecting the medically underserved to free screening services. She has self-published her first book, A Feeling of Fullness: Insights of a Divinely Guided Journey Beyond Breast Cancer (2016, Xlibris Publishing Company) which chronicles her experience from the nearly-missed breast cancer diagnosis at age 37 through her present-day life as an artist/and health advocate! https://sistaah.org/