Board and Staff
L-R: Secretary Osmani Rodriguez Sr., President Susie Robson, and Vice-President Bob Vance.
Photo by Director Erik Gehring from the November 15, 2024 Annual Artists Meeting.
Board
President Susie Robson
Susie Robson has been a member of the Hyde Park Art Association at the Menino Arts Center for 30 years, and is the current Acting President of HPAA. She is a Principal UX Designer at Sophos Ltd. in Burlington, MA. She has 25+ years’ experience in interface/interaction design and UX research for both web-based and application-based software and mainframe software, She is treasurer and past secretary and founding board member of the Boston User Experience Professionals’ Association (UXPA) chapter. She has an M.M. in Business Management from Cambridge College.
Vice-President Bob Vance
Business Analyst, Exec Board at Hyde Park Artist Association and works at Business Analyst at The MAC and 54th MVI Regiment
Studied at Boston Business College, lives in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, from Hyde Park, Massachusetts
Self-Employed, November 8, 2018 to present, 54th Mass Regiment Company A volunteers
Hyde Park Artist Association, October 2010 – Present, Volunteer board member – support curator
Business Analyst at The MAC and 54th MVI Regiment, September 15, 2010 to present
Volunteer; Board Member. at Southwest Boston CDC, September 10, 2002 – Present
Former BA for C/L Agri, Auto, platform mergers at QBE Insurance
Former Sr. Application Developer at Intact Insurance Specialty Solutions, Most lines of Insurance including HR, Recievables & Admin
Worked at QBE, Fairmount-Indigo Collaborative
Secretary Osmani Rodriguez, Sr.
Treasurer Osmani Rodriguez Jr.
Osmani just graduated from the University of Massachusetts Boston, majoring in Management with a concentration in Accounting. He is currently living in Hyde Park with his family. Osmani has have worked with the Center for Community Health Education and Research and Service (CCHERS), researching the effects of gentrification and displacement on the health of certain communities within the Boston area. He has also worked as an Office Assistant at the Boston Public Schools Headquarters and most recently he was a Sterilization Technician working at Arch Orthodontics.
Sean Hurley
For over 15 years, Sean has been helping launch and position new businesses and taking established businesses to the next level of growth. Throughout his career he has successfully collaborated with companies with expertise in Digital Marketing Strategy.
Adele has been an HPAA member for over 25 years. She was Secretary of the Board for three years, and she has held other Board positions in the past, including a stint as Treasurer. She also chaired the Membership Committee and the Studio Users Group. She completed the paperwork for HPAA’s non-profit status and was instrumental in the acquisition of the arts center. Her education includes a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Cornell University as well as a Certificate with honors in both black & white photography and advertising from the New England School of Photography (NESOP) two-year professional program. After graduation, she taught on-camera flash and introduction to color photography at NESOP as well as being an assistant instructor in introduction to darkroom at Northeastern University. Professional photographic work includes wedding photography, portraiture, and pet photography. Currently, she is a fine artist in the mediums of photography and collage.
Staff
Director Erik Gehring
Erik Gehring is a freelance photographer who specializes in trees and natural landscapes. He is the Director at the Menino Arts Center, home of the Hyde Park Art Association in Boston, and he is a past President of the Boston Camera Club. He lives in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston with his wife Julie, sons Carl and William, dog Comet. Although Erik enjoys photographing natural environments all over New England, his favorite destination is Boston’s Arnold Arboretum.
Erik’s work has appeared in Yankee Magazine, AMC’s Outdoors, Northern Woodlands, the Boston Globe, the Boston Metro, the Cape Cod Times, E the Environmental Magazine, and other publications. He has shown his fine art prints at galleries throughout Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
Erik also has lectured and taught workshops at the Arboretum, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Photographic Resource Center in Cambridge, the Eliot School in Jamaica Plain, the Cambridge Art Association, the Concord Art Association, the Hyde Park Art Association, and at locations all over New England for BlueHour Photo Ventures.
Curator Sasja Lucas
Drawing on experiences that were nurtured by a very creative family, Sasja has involved herself in many diverse artistic pursuits: drawing, painting, printmaking, murals; graphic, interior, exhibit and stage design/productions; and 2-D and 3-D fabrication for animation. She has taught art and design at a variety of institutions, including the Massachusetts College of Art, Newbury College, the Fuller Museum, Brookline Arts Center, Menino Arts Center, and Cornwall Studios/Gallery. This has brought her into contact with students aged two to ninety-two, from whom she always seeks inspiration and sees first-hand the process of discovery on which all her art is based. Sasja received a BFA from SUNY Binghamton, and an MA in painting from George Washington University.
Poetry Coordinator Linda Carney-Goodrich
Linda Carney-Goodrich, Ed.M, is a writer and teacher from Boston. Her work has appeared in Lily Poetry, The MacGuffin, Nixes Mate, Literary Mama, Muddy River, Gyroscope, Wordgathering Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, among others. Her story, “Park Street Station” won third prize in the 2024 Boston in 100 Words Contest and another story of hers was a finalist in the 2023 Boston in 100 Word Contest. Over the years, several of her poems have been displayed at Boston City Hall as part of the annual Boston Mayor’s Poetry Program judged by the Boston Poet Laureate. Linda is the Poetry Coordinator for the Menino Art Center in Hyde Park and the owner of Home Scholars of Boston. She has a Masters in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education and has taught people of all ages and backgrounds for over two decades.