Art mentors

Meera Agarwal is a NY-based multi-media visual artist and art instructor. Painting for more than three decades, with a keen eye for both representational and abstract forms, her award-winning art draws inspiration from nature’s marvels, diverse locales, and human stories. In 2024 she became the first recipient of The Rye Arts Center’s Visionary Artist Award for her inspirational paintings as well as her commitment to uplifting the arts in the community. Meera’s art has been juried into more than 95 prominent exhibits across the tristate area and can be found in home collections globally. She is also a certified Art-o-Mat artist, and creates art for vending machines nationwide. Meera has contributed to public art like the Rye’s Above metal butterfly installation and Rye Poetry Path in Westchester county. Dedicated to community service, Meera volunteers with the Rye Arts Center (NY), the Jay Heritage Center (NY), Greenwich Arts Council (CT) and the India Cultural Center (NY & CT).

Bendis Mani is an artist and educator born in Tirana, Albania. He studied at the renowned Artistic Lyceum High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in Stage and Costume Design from the Academy of the Arts in Tirana in 1996. He earned a Master of Science in Education from Lehman College, combining his artistic experience with his passion for teaching. Mani joined Rye High School in 2008, and since 2016, he has taught the Advanced Placement Studio Art program among other subjects of arts and design. Beyond the classroom, Mani has worked with students to organize exhibitions at venues including the Rye Reading Room, CAB offices, The Coveleigh Club, The Wainwright House, and the Rye Arts Center. Through these exhibitions, he encourages students to use visual art as a means of expression, dialogue, and community engagement.

Julia Svoboda is a New York–based artist and recent University of South Carolina graduate with a BFA in Studio Art, concentrating in Drawing. Her work explores the beauty of overlooked details in everyday life through careful observation of patterns, textures, shapes, and forms. Influenced by her background in interior design, she examines the relationship between architecture and organic forms, inviting viewers to slow down, look closely, and appreciate the visual rhythms of the world around them.

Sally Tobin is primarily a watercolorist, but works in acrylics as well. She began studying watercolor at Rye Arts Center in 1990, and has taught it to adults there since January 2022. She holds a B. A. in Studio Art from Mount Holyoke College, and sold cartoons and illustrations before working as a computer graphics artist for entertainment programs on the now antiquated Apple 2e and Macintosh home computers. A native of Rye, she has done countless house, boat, and pet portraits, and has shown her work at local libraries and at the Children's Museum in Rye.

A high school art teacher for 32 years, who’s been driven to make art my whole life, I’ve worked in ceramics, print making, painting, collages, assemblages, wood carving, and furniture repair and refinishing. As a teacher and as an artist, I endeavor to empower my students, as I endeavor to empower myself, to cultivate their innate curiosity and passions, to solve problems, and to think critically about their own work and others’. Little gives me as much joy as observing my students’ growth over their years in my studio.