Bio

Centa Theresa has exhibited her mixed media works in San Francisco Bay Area galleries. Her newest art-for-the-home lines of hand-crafted ceramics, printed fabrics (to come), and prints synthesize her art education with a three-year apprenticeship in textile design and the decorative arts, and teachings from some of the most inventive and inspiring ceramic artists: Ruthanne Tudball, Kurt Weiser, Jane Perryman, Mark Pharis, Jim Melchert, Robert Brady, Karen Koblitz, Peter Voulkos, Bennett Bean, Julia Galloway, Linda Arbuckle, Sandy Simon, Annabeth Rosen, Rosette Gault, and others.

Centa is a Teaching Artist. She has taught adult patients in a secured treatment area of a mental hospital; led art and writing workshops, coached artists, writers and business owners in project development. She has worked as a fabric designer, Office Manager in an Expressive Arts non-profit, as a gallery consultant for a community arts organization where she developed exhibit themes, marketing collateral, and adjunct educational events, receiving an award for her support and promotion of award-winning conceptual installation art.

Centa also writes. Her poems have appeared most recently (or will) in http://www.towerjournal.com (audio collages), Meridian Journal of Contemporary Poetry, Pisgah Review, Harpur Palate, Hurricane Review, Eclipse, DrumVoices Revue, Tiny Lights, amongst others. She has authored the letterset edition of poems, Blameless Recognition of Natural Light.

A Technical Writer for many years, Centa can write most any kind of "how-to" manual, but prefers writing poetry. Still yearning to bridge the personal with the observed (and mildly researched) world, she imagines inventing a new genre in the Lyrical Familiar Essay, or maybe the Lyrical Travelogue (if it's been done, and if it's about Spain, email her at ).

Centa is a Poet in the Schools, CBEST certified Substitute Teacher, and with her life and business partner-assistant, she is currently developing prototypes in her new studio space, and hopes to have a new line of Majolica and Porcelain dinnerware to market by Spring 2010. She envisions in the not-to-distant future possible storefront and/or gallery space.

M.A. Interdisciplinary Studies: Studio Art & Creative Writing.
B.A equivalency in Sculpture, Ceramics emphasis.
B.A. Psychology.