Featherstone Center for the Arts Featherstone
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About Featherstone - Our Staff

The staff keep Featherstone running day-to-day.


Staff Member:
Francine Kelly
Executive Director
francine@featherstonearts.org
Francine Kelly
A graduate of Oberlin College; University of Cincinnati graduate school; Docent Training-- art history at Indianapolis Museum of Art and at Boston Museum of Art. Francine has worked with The Children's Museum of Indianapolis for twenty years in a variety of capacities including Director of Community Initiatives, Director of Programs. She has served as Coordinator of Very Special Arts Central Indiana Annual Arts Festivals. She has served on numerous art boards as well. A summer resident of Martha's Vineyard for many years, Francine looks forward to enriching the arts on the Island.

Staff Member:
Tom Dresser
Office Manager
featherstone@featherstonearts.org
Tom Dresser

Tom Dresser has lived on the Vineyard since he followed his high school classmate Joyce Cournoyer here in 1997. He taught elementary school for a decade in central Massachusetts and was a nursing home administrator for twenty years. Now he spends his semi-retirement between school bus driving, freelance writing and office management at Featherstone.Tom has two daughters and three step-children. He likes to read, write, walk, jog, play tennis and kayak in the Vineyard waters.

In 2005 Tom self-published Tommy's Tour of the Vineyard, a booklet that describes the bus tours he drives in the summer.  It includes poetry, essays and photographs by his wife Joyce.  The book has been revised and an updated version available in 2008.

Tom's latest book, published by History Press in the spring of 2008, is titled Mystery on the Vineyard, Politics, Passion and Scandal on East Chop.  It is a non-fiction account of the 1940 unsolved murder, known locally as the Rice School Murder.  Available in bookstores now. 


Staff Member:
Genie O'Donnell
Program & Gallery Assistant
Genie O'Donnell
Genie O'Donnell has a master's degree in nursing. While she has worked as a hospice nurse and with Alzheimer patients, she has a passion for the arts which has served to balance her demanding nursing career. She has worked in local gift shops, encouraged her daughter's career as an artist, and found infinite joy in painting her own watercolors.

Staff Member:
Jim Bedard
Jim Bedard