About the Program

Bobby C. Martin is an artist/educator/facilitator who works out of his 7 Springs Studio near West Siloam Springs, Oklahoma. Mr. Martin’s artwork is exhibited and collected internationally. Mr. Martin is active in the contemporary Native American art world and his work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions, the most recent being a one-person exhibition entitled But You Don’t Look Indian… at ArtVentures Gallery in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 2018. As an independent curator, his most recent project was a national touring exhibition, Return from Exile: Contemporary Southeastern Indian Art, which was on display at various venues throughout the United States from 2015-2018. Mr. Martin’s work is exhibited in numerous museum collections, including the Philbrook Museum and Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, the Museum of the Great Plains in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the Sam Noble Museum in Norman, Oklahoma.

An enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) tribe, he currently holds a Professor of Visual Arts position at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, where he teaches printmaking and other studio art courses. He frequently leads printmaking workshops and artist retreats at his studio and at various museums and art centers in the mid-west.

Mr. Kirk Demarais is a graduate of JBU and served as an adjunct professor in the Visual Arts department since 2006. He previously worked for DaySpring cards as a member of the Web and New Media team for ten years before establishing himself as a freelance designer, artist, and writer.

Mr. Demarais's fascination with vintage toys, novelties, and 20th century pop culture has inspired two published works, "Life of the Party," a visual history book of the S.S. Adams Prank and Magic company (for whom he was employed as a package and catalog designer), and "Mail-Order Mysteries" which offers a rare look at mail-order products from vintage comic books. The latter appeared on annual best-of lists in USA Today and the Boston Globe, and placed on the Wall Street Journal Bestsellers list.

His enthusiasm for retro-culture has also manifested in an award-winning short film called "Flip" as well as "Foot," an animated film he co-created which was distributed by the toy company FunKo.

His pop-surrealist artwork is regularly shown and sold in Los Angeles and New York City galleries, and has received international attention, as well as support among the Hollywood community.

Mr. Demarais's writing has been seen in The LA Times, BoingBoing.net, and magazines including Comic Art, Make, and Reminisce. His body of work has been featured or cited in Wired, Rolling Stone, Huffington Post, Slashfilm, FastCompany, Print Magazine, Flavorwire, New York Post and many more.

Mr. Kyle Agee is the resident jack-of-all-trades. He began teaching at JBU in the Fall of 2011. While his main medium is photography, he has worked as a graphic designer, photojournalist, television editor, and offset printer to name a few.

Mr. Agee’s work has centered on exploring and documenting architectural decay. This exploration has encompassed traditional black and white photography, wet plate collodion, digital photography, and alternative process printing techniques. His latest project, DrFrankenfilm.com, is a free photographic educational resource that aims to provide comprehensive instruction for anyone wishing to explore traditional analogue photographic mediums.

Mr. Agee’s commercial clients have included the United States Air Force, the United States Navy Blue Angel Squadron, the United States Marine Corps, the Arkansas State Police, and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and the Outdoor Channel, among others.

Mr. Agee enjoys spending his free time building guitar amplifiers and effect pedals, and working in his woodshop.

Erin Shaw is a painter of borderlands, the spaces between worlds. As a visual storyteller, the child of an Oklahoma farm, Shaw tills the rich soil of dichotomy through her masterful uses of color, iconography, and story. As a Chickasaw-Choctaw artist, she creates in a state of tension, suspended between two worlds where both solemnity and humor pervade her art. She finds that truths are revealed in unanticipated ways, and trickster often appears throughout her work. The artist earned her BFA in studio art from Baylor University and her MFA from the University of Oklahoma. She is Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, AR, an international speaker, and a featured artist in Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art, among other exhibits in the U.S.

Mr. Dave Andrus received his M.F.A. degree from Syracuse University in Advertising Design. After completing his undergraduate degree in Art at JBU, he worked as a designer in the printing industry in Kansas City for five years followed by a seven-year stint in Marketing.

Mr. Andrus co-founded the JBU Visual Arts Department, along with colleague Charles Peer, in the fall of 1990. This department began with six students majoring in Art & Design. Gradually, over the years the department has grown to be the largest department at John Brown University with eight full-time faculty and close to 250 students in 4 majors.

Mr. Andrus teaches Graphic Design courses and served as the head of the visual art department for many years. He has been married for over 35 years and he and his wife, Cindy, have 4 children and 1 grandson.

Besides Graphic Design, Mr. Andrus works in oil painting, calligraphy, and digital art. He has a keen interest in travel and has led many summer travel opportunities for students. He also loves to canoe, camp, fish, garden, read, renovate old houses, and follow the Kansas City Chiefs.

View Dave Andrus' Portfolio

From his early forays into 8mm neighborhood movies and numerous social commentary film projects for school, to his work in HiDef directing corporate and commercial videos for companies like Saatchi & Saatchi X, Procter & Gamble, and Wal-Mart, Mr. Steve Snediker has developed a reputation as a visual storyteller. He fields many of the skills required to be a one-man movie studio, yet he has also discovered the greater power of collaboration and building teams.

Mr. Snediker has a B.S. in Communications (Broadcasting) from JBU and an M.F.A. in Digital Cinema from National University. Besides his award-winning narrative film “Carlisle’s Secret”, he has recently completed a documentary entitled “Amazin’Grace: Standing Room Only” and an experimental film entitled “LEVI: A Day – A Lifetime.”

Mr. Peter Pohle grew up in Berlin, Germany where he received his initial art training as an apprentice in the largest printing house in Berlin. He earned a B.A. equivalent degree in Visual Communication at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. He worked for nine years as an artist in the media department of Campus Crusade for Christ in Germany where he met his wife, Becky. Peter and Becky Pohle have three daughters.

Since 1997, the Pohle's have been living in the United States, where Mr. Pohle worked as a freelance illustrator, fine artist in oil painting, and full-time staff designer for Dayspring Cards and Hallmark Cards.

Mr. Pohle has extended experience in the traditional as well as digital art. He enjoys the range of working on the computer modeling in 3D or illustrating in Photoshop. In his free time and during summer break, he works in traditional media with oils and oil pastel. View his portfolio at steambirddesign.com

Mr. S. Neal Holland began his career at John Brown University in 1998 as the first full-time instructor in Digital Media Art. 

Mr. Holland has been a champion of non-traditional programs and study-abroad partnerships, and he continues to head a series of programs to promote off-campus study.  His work with the start-up Fields and Frames promotes that desire and helps photography students get international experience while encouraging the responsibility for Christians to engage with social justice issues.

Mr. Holland has worked for clients like Coca-Cola, Reebok, Nike and GM. He spends his free time fly-fishing and attempting to capture elusive images that might change the world.