Ceramics/Visual Art
David Bradley
Office: M184. Phone: 602-787-6615. 

At an early David Bradley realized that he was destined to become an artist. He began his college studies as a painting major, but quickly switched to ceramics after his first experience on a potter’s wheel. After receiving a BFA and an MFA in ceramics, Bradley apprenticed in a 100 year old pottery factory in East Texas making old fashioned stoneware crockery on the potter’s wheel. The pottery making methods he learned during this apprenticeship, which were handed down from generation to generation of folk potters, has been incorporated into his teaching methodology at Paradise Valley Community College. Since the completion of his master’s degree from North Texas State University in 1982, Bradley has continually worked as a professional clay artist and ceramic instructor. In addition to his teaching duties at PVCC, Bradley travels the world and participates in ceramics workshops and programs in Mexico and China.

One of the five faculty and three administrators who founded PVCC, and founding chair of the Division of Communications and Humanities, Rister received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; his scholarly work has been published by the University of Windsor (Canada) and by the Republic of Mexico.  Named by students to Who's Who Among America's Teachers three times, he has also been listed in Who's Who in America since 2000 and in Who's Who in the World since 2003.  He and composer Macon Sumerlin collaborated in two suites of poetry and electronic music, "The Mediac Trilogy" and "These Four Things Are to Me Too Wonderful," performed by readers and dancers for the Philharmonic Guild of the Abilene (Texas) Symphony Orchestra.  Recently he and painter Josie Taglienti have collaborated in three chapbooks of poems and paintings, "Canticles I:  Sound and Sight,"  "Canticles II:  The Golden City," and "Canticles III:  Such As Dreams Are," presented at the PVCC Art Gallery, Artissimo Gallery (Scottsdale), and Heritage Square (Phoenix).  His poems have been published in various journals.  Rister’s pencil sketches and paintings have appeared in several one-man shows, and he served three years as the illustrator of The Texas Review (Sam Houston State University Press) and the The Texas Anthology (a collection of poems and stories published by SHSU).  He has done extensive travel and research in Asia (China, Japan, and India), in Latin America (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Bolivia), in Europe, and in Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey.  He currently teaches a variety of courses involving international components and is helping to develop two academic certificates in International Studies:  Asia and Latin America.

Adria Pecora is an interdisciplinary visual artist living and working in North Scottsdale. Her work focuses on abstraction, exploring ways that form can convey meaning. Rooted in the aesthetics of Minimal Art, Fluxus, and Process Art , Pecora’s works are reductive in style and produced in series driven by concepts and formulas. Pecora’s work has been exhibited nationally at venues including The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Scottsdale; Artemisia Gallery, Chicago; and the Islip Art Museum, New York.  She is among a few abstract artists to embrace working in the public sphere. In 2007, Pecora installed two temporary sculpture projects in the metro area at The Phoenix Experimental Arts Festival, and in a public park under the commission of The City of Phoenix. Pecora’s work is represented in the collections of The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and the Franklin Furnace  Artist Book Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Pecora has taught art at New York University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Skidmore College. She held an administrative post at The Cooper Union, where she helped establish the School of Art’s international Summer Residency Program. Pecora ran a national arts mentoring program and administered college scholarships for inner-city teens interested in the visual arts. She edited a 2003 publication of the writings of Vito Acconci. Pecora has taught art at Paradise Valley Community College since 2005.

Lois Roma-Deeley's first full-length collection of poems, Rules of Hunger, earned her a National Book Award nomination as well as an Arizona Library Association Author Award nomination. She is an Emily Dickinson in Poetry Competition winner (Universities West Press), third place. Roma-Deeley has published in more than six anthologies including the American Book Award winner Looking for Home (Milkweed Editions). She has published in numerous national literary journals, including Water~Stone, Iris, Faultline, and Controlled Burn. Her work has earned her several awards for  outstanding writing, including a nomination for the Arizona Governor's Arts Awards  and a residency fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation. She has studied under the direction of many prominent poets such as Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove and Norman Dubie, Alberto Rios, Jane Hirshfield, C.D. Wright, Marilyn Nelson. Roma-Deeley holds an MFA (poetry) from Arizona State University and a Ph.D. (poetry) from the Union Institute and University . She is Poet-in-Residence at Paradise Valley Community College, Phoenix, Arizona.

Christopher Scinto's compositions have been featured on music festivals in Germany, Italy, Spain, and throughout the United States. His works, performed by the ASU Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the NYU New Music and Dance Ensemble, and the Phoenix Bach Choir, have received awards and grants from the Long Island Composer's Alliance, Meet the Composer, the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music, and the National Association of Composers, USA. He holds degrees from Arizona State University and Bowling Green State University, where his studies included composition, saxophone performance, and conducting. Currently, he is completing a work for tuba and electronics, titled Inside My Grandfather’s Clock, and is collaborating with nationally acclaimed poet (and fellow Native New Yorker) Lois Roma-Deeley on a Requiem in remembrance of the attacks on September 11th. In addition to his artistic pursuits, Scinto is the Division Chair of Fine & Performing Arts at Paradise Valley Community College and is the founder and artistic director of the contemporary music ensemble Crossing 32nd Street. 

Alan Tongret has headed PVCC's Theatre Program since 1995, where he teaches acting for stage, TV, and film, screenwriting, playwriting, theatre history, and other courses.  Tongret was in charge of the plans for PVCC's Studio Theatre, and is chair of the committee that planned the new Performing Arts Center that will open in 2005.  Tongret has an MFA degree in Acting from Ohio University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University.  For many years he worked as a professional actor at numerous theatres around the country, including the New York Shakespeare Festival and Washington, D.C.'s famed Ford’s Theatre, working with Stacey Keach, James Earl Jones, and other notables.  While living in New York he acted in TV, film, and commercials, and served as Theatre Manager at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  As a playwright Tongret has had several plays staged at PVCC.  Two of his dramas, Bronte and Treasure at the Devil's Backbone, have been produced in New York City.  His screenplay Thunder on the Moor is currently under option.  In May 2004 his Aurora will premiere at Phoenix's Herberger Theatre Center. Tongret's comedy, The World Aflame -- written on his recent sabbatical -- is slated to serve as the Grand Opening for PVCC's Performing Arts Center. 

Sonia Valle was born and raised in Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico. She began her studies in dance in 1987 at San Diego State University from where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences in International Business, and a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences in Dance.  She has been a member with numerous modern dance companies in the San Diego and the Phoenix metropolitan area.  As a choreographer Sonia has received great reviews for her work in the San Diego Union Tribune and has been invited as guest choreographer both nationally and internationally.  She has been a presenter and teacher at the American College Dance Festival teaching Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art form incorporating dance, music, and song.  Sonia graduated with an MFA degree in dance from Arizona State University, where she received numerous awards, including the outstanding choreographer award by Friends of Dance and the ASU Dance Department.  She is currently teaching and developing the dance program at Paradise Valley Community College and hopes to continue performing and producing her work as an artist.