BCGC Instructors

Abby Gitlitz

Abby Gitlitz is a glass artist working with blown glass, stained glass, cast glass as well as painting on glass. She has been working in glass since the late 1980s when she first discovered stained glass in high school.  In 1997 she began to blow glass and has worked primarily with hot glass ever since. 

She founded the Bloomington Creative Glass Center in 2012. In addition, she has taught glass classes at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL, Delgado Community College, LA, Wet Dog Glass, LA, and Ivy Tech Community College Bloomington.

Anne Brahaum

Anne Brahaum started her teaching career in Bloomington in 1999.  She graduated from Indiana University with a bachelor's degree in Special Education and a minor in Outdoor Recreation.  Since her career began in 1999, Anne has taught Special Education in Monroe County and Brown County to preschoolers through high school graduates in a Self-Contained setting, Inclusion Teacher, Resource Room Teacher, and Home-bound Instructor for students too ill or with severe needs that could not be met in the public school setting.  
In addition to almost 15 years as a Special Educator, Anne has taught as a Literacy Coach, in Staff Development, and most recently as an Visual Arts instructor.  

Anne has been working with glass since high school.  She learned how to do stained glass at Bloomington HS North and used glass as her art therapy to help cope with the demands of being a Special Educator.  After her third child was born, Anne started learning how to do fused glass and found herself teaching less and less and doing glass more and more.  She then took a break from teaching to start her glass business, Brown County Glassworks.  Anne has now found a way to marry her 2 passions- art and teaching-  by working in her home studio for her business in the morning, teaching elementary and intermediate art in the afternoon, and teaching glass classes at the Bloomington Creative Glass Center evenings or weekends.  When Anne isn't busy working or being a mom taxi, she likes to run, hike, garden, read and travel.

Christy Wiesenhahn

I am a multi-disciplinary visual artist living in Bloomington, Indiana. At times I work primarily as a painter, extensively traveling with my watercolors and creating oil paintings in the studio. And for periods, the melodrama but yet playfulness of stained glass is my primary interest. In my glass work, I develop designs that play with how light interacts with dueling and friendly colors. I regularly collaborate with my husband Bart Smith to design/build skateparks, interactive sculptures, and smaller works like the bike themed stained glass with wire art. Through these collaborations, I started working in mosaic which seemed like a perfect way to enhance a concrete landscape.

I studied in the BFA Painting and Art Education programs at IU. After graduation, I taught ongoing painting classes and weekend workshops throughout the Bloomington community for 4 years. After moving to Santa Fe for 5 years, where I was able to paint in the great desert light, my family moved back to Indiana and formed the company Hunger Skateparks.  This has created an opportunity to artistically enrich the already sculptural nature of skateparks, and grow as a 3D artist. Additionally, I have worked with Cardinal Stage Company and at the IU Jacob’s School of Music as a scenic painter. I appreciate the large scale of the work, aged techniques, and the multi-disciplinary artistic collaborations that can occur in this historically enduring environment.

Erin Cerwinske

Erin Cerwinske is a sixth grade teacher at University Elementary School in Bloomington in their International Baccalaureate Program. In 2019 she was named one of five Educators of the Year by the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce’s Franklin Initiative. She has been active in BCGC first as a student and since 2018 as a glass blowing instructor. She also leads glass fusing programs.

Michal Ann Carley

After earning her MA and MFA degrees at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Michal Ann Carley was Curator of Art at the UWM Art Museum and Director of the NML Galleries and a professor of art and art history at Cardinal Stritch University in Wisconsin. While a painter for decades, she shifted to kilnformed and torchworked artglass in 2001 and began blacksmithing and sculpting in iron in 2009. Recently she relocated to Bloomington, IN where she and her partner maintain forging and fabrication, glass, woodworking, and teaching studios at Luna Song Designs.