WAAM Board Members, Officers and Committee Chairs 2025-2026
Amanda Russo Rubman
Chair
Amanda Russo Rubman is a Hudson Valley based artist, designer, and lifelong learner. She has spent 20+ years developing identities for iconic, heritage, and emerging brands. That time established her foundation of respect for the art of collaboration and talent in all forms. Today she leads, ar studio ny – a home for an evolving collection of her own artwork and collaborations that celebrate New York-based artists and vintage materials.
As an artist, Amanda’s expression is experiential- forever chasing the light in pursuit of inspiration. Her need to create comes out of a direct desire to capture or harness a mood and typically layered in material, texture and technique. Amanda’s work has been exhibited at Artport Kingston, WAAM, Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, Woodstock School of Art, Inness, Hinterland, Weird Specialty, Kingston Design Showhouse, and Upstate Art Weekend. In 2024, through juried review, Amanda was awarded NYCxDESIGN Award for Art & Design Installation of ‘One,’ and won Chronogram Chronogramies Readers Choice Best Artist 2024. Amanda graduated from New York University, Gallatin with a BA in Philosophy and is an ongoing student at Woodstock School of Art.
Website/ amandarussorubman.com
Instagram/ instagram.com/
Linked In/ linkedin.com/in/
Email/ amanda@
William Lanford
Treasurer
William Lanford is a Professor of Physics at University at Albany. One of his interests is the applications of physics in art and archaeology and he has taught courses on that topic at Albany and at Yale. He is a member of the Board of Directors, UAlbany Foundation. He has been an external advisor for national laboratories in the U.S. and in Canada. Dr. Lanford had a deep interest in American arts, both decorative and fine. He initiated the creation of the Riders Mills Historic District, now listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. He is currently restoring a 220-year-old house known locally as the Budd Tavern. He has a 25-year interest in the art and the artists of Woodstock and has assembled a number of Woodstock paintings and sculptures, some of which can be seen on his website: www.overbrookart.com.
Yoko Izu
Secretary
Yoko Izu is a Japanese American abstract artist and lifelong creative. Born in Woodstock, NY, she spent 20+ years calling everywhere from NYC to South Africa “home” before returning to the upstate area in 2021. She rediscovered her love for painting the following year and has since continued to explore ways to merge her American upbringing with her Japanese heritage. Her work is rooted in bridging the gaps between her cultures, countries, and languages—and creating a place of belonging in the process. Professionally, she works as a UX writer/copywriter and also volunteers for the Mid-Hudson Japanese Community Association (MHJCA), a local nonprofit dedicated to sharing and celebrating the rich culture of Japan.
Gülnar Babayeva
Gülnar Babayeva is a figurative sculptor and designer at Caspian Müse, based in the Hudson Valley, NY. She moved to New York State in 2010 to study art and design and has focused on sculpting the human form since 2012, expanding into ceramic vessel design in 2020. Her multidisciplinary practice explores the versatility of clay through the interchangeable lenses of sculptor and designer.
Babayeva is an active presence in the local arts community as an exhibiting artist, volunteer, board director, instructor, and curator, bringing representation as both sculptor and designer. In 2022, she received a NYSCA Individual Artist Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to further her mission of cultivating figurative sculpture locally. An associate member of the National Sculpture Society, her work has been shown in solo, duo, and group exhibitions and collected privately. She offers workshops and creative collaborations through Caspian Müse Studio.
Lynne Friedman
With a studio in Rosendale, Lynne Friedman has had six solo shows in the Chelsea District of NY, the James McNeil Whistler Museum (MA), and the Booth Western Art Museum(GA). Her work was chosen for 3 embassies by the US Dept of State – Art in Embassies Program most recently in Benin, West Africa. She has been awarded 9 artist residencies around the world including the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, Virginia Center for the Arts, Tyrone Guthrie Center (Ireland), and most recently in Maussane, France and Chianti, Italy. Her passion is visual inquiry based upon landscape, plants and biological forms in oil, watercolor and drawing. A former college artist/teacher at Manhattanville College, Kean University, Ulster Community College and the lifelong long learning centers she received a BA/MFA from Queens College, a Doctorate in Art Education and studied at the New York Studio School. www.lynnefriedmanart.com
Diane King
Diane King is a fine art photographer and mixed-media conceptual artist whose work is widely held in private collections, and has been exhibited at Art Basal Miami, Art Palm Springs, Art San Diego, The Oculus at the World Trade Center, the Southampton Fine Art Fair, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, WAAM, and in New York City galleries. Her creative aesthetic was formed at an early age while professionally studying ballet, and her contemplative photographic compositions explore the emotional choreography between her subject matter and the voids of negative space.
For over 15 years she worked in the publishing, film and television industries. First as a writer, then as Creative Services Director for such publications as Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, and Instyle, where she developed and led key creative initiatives and strategies for Time Warner Inc. She has studied extensively at The International Center for Photography, and finds everlasting inspiration in the Hudson Valley and its artistic community.
Matthew Leaycraft
Matthew Leaycraft has a lifelong interest in the artistic history of the Woodstock art colony. He earned a BA in Art History from Vassar College and spent 30 years in New York City commercial real estate asset management. After receiving an M.Div. from Yale Divinity School in 2010, he served in various roles within New York churches, most recently as Director of Finance and Lay Associate for Adult Formation at St. James’ Episcopal Church. He currently works as a spiritual director and supervisor.
Matthew has extensive nonprofit board experience. He served for 20 years as a trustee of the New York City Mission Society, concluding his tenure as chair. He was also a trustee of Christ Church Methodist in New York, contributing to a landmark air-rights transaction. A past trustee and interim executive director of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, he has also served the Episcopal Church at Yale. He is currently vice president of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial in New Hampshire.
Sylvia Mueller
Sylvia Mueller studied photography at the School of Visual Arts and worked for several years in advertising and magazine production in New York City. After relocating to the Hudson Valley, she found the time and space to return to a personal creative practice.
Drawing on her professional background, Mueller began working with magazines and art books in a new way, creating collages that emphasize texture and a hands-on process. This shift in medium reflects her desire for a more tactile approach to artmaking. Her love of nature—one of the primary reasons for her move upstate—is evident in the organic cuts and layered forms of her collages, which echo natural patterns translated into printed material.
Mueller has exhibited in numerous juried exhibitions throughout New York State, including shows at Upstream Gallery in Hastings-on-Hudson, Woodstock Artists Association & Museum, Muroff Kotler Gallery at SUNY Ulster, Limner Gallery in Hudson, and Gallery 40 in Poughkeepsie, among others.
Jacqueline Oster
Jacqueline Oster was born and raised in Queens, New York. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, she worked in New York City as a graphic designer and art director for a variety of advertising agencies before relocating to upstate New York. There, she continued her career as a freelance graphic designer, serving a diverse range of tri-state area clients from her home-based studio.
Alongside her design work, Oster has devoted significant studio time to creating watercolors and sculptures. Her watercolors merge graphic design precision with illustrative skill, bringing animals, objects, and people vividly to life on paper. Her whimsical sculptures reflect a love of nature, animals, and fantasy, drawing on her strengths in design, drawing, and painting.
Oster is an active member of the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum, Arts Mid-Hudson, and CIRCLE24collective. Her work has been exhibited widely at regional galleries, cultural institutions, libraries, and local businesses throughout the Hudson Valley.
Yvonne Rojas-Cowan
Yvonne Rojas-Cowan is a creative leader working at the intersection of art, strategy, and public service. A sculptor, painter, and designer, she brings an artist’s perspective to governance, balancing creativity with strategic thinking. Her professional background spans more than 25 years leading operational excellence and transformational initiatives for Fortune 500 companies, where she scaled programs and expanded reach through digital innovation. An entrepreneur, she also co-founded and managed an executive search consultancy focused on cultivating thought leaders and building high-performing teams.
Yvonne currently serves as Confidential Secretary to the Town Supervisor, supporting municipal strategy and community engagement. Her long-standing commitment to the arts includes serving as Chair of the Saugerties Arts Commission and as Exhibitions Director at the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum (WAAM). Through these roles, she has gained deep insight into institutional operations, mission-driven work, and community impact, and remains a dedicated advocate for the arts.
Angela P. Schapiro
Photographer Angela P. Schapiro, born in England and educated in France, is a former film producer and advertising executive who now makes her home in Woodstock, New York, where she established her studio in 1997. Her work is widely exhibited and published both here and internationally.
Janis Staggs
Janis Staggs is the Director of Curatorial and Manager of Publications at Neue Galerie New York, where she has worked for more than twenty years. She has prior experience at other institutions, including the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Walters Art Museum. Staggs has organized numerous exhibitions during her career and has lectured and written extensively on the intersection between modern fine and decorative arts with a special focus on the period of fin-de-siècle Vienna. She has a Master of Arts in the History of Decorative Arts from the jointly-administered program offered by the Cooper Hewitt/Parsons School of Design (a division of The New School), a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Maryland, and a Certificate in Strategic Management from the Harvard Extension School.
She would bring to the Board a professional background in the arts coupled with a strong interest in the Woodstock community and the history of the Woodstock Art Colony. She and her husband have owned a home in Woodstock since 2017, and they are active collectors of the work of historical and contemporary Woodstock artists. Staggs is passionate about the arts, the town of Woodstock and the surrounding communities, and WAAM in particular, with an enthusiasm to serve on the Board as an Associate Member.
Tom Wolf
Tom Wolf is a Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Bard College. His primary areas of research are the history of art in Woodstock, New York, art colony, and Asian American art. Recent publications include The Artistic Journey of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2015, “Woodstock Artists Association: One Hundred Years of Community and Art,” The Woodstock Artists Association, 2019, and “Doris Lee in Woodstock,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, forthcoming.
Pro Bono General Counsel
Gary M. Schuster, Esq.
Gary Schuster has been an attorney with Jacobowitz & Gubits, LLP, in Walden, New York, since 2004 and a Partner since 2016. His broad practice includes corporate, partnership, LLC and not-for-profit formation, merger, dissolution and other transactions, varied commercial transactions, guardianships, estate planning, administration and litigation, and commercial and residential real estate. His arts and entertainment practice includes copyright and trademark applications, maintenance, and transactions, and representation of painters, sculptors, photographers, dancers, musicians, songwriters, music producers, film producers, publishers, fashion models, agents, galleries and non-profit arts organizations. He also serves on several charitable and non-charitable nonprofit boards, and represents dozens of nonprofits of all kinds.
