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board of directors

Eric Forstmann, President

A lifelong artist, Eric studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston under the tutelage of Barnett Rubenstein and Henry Schwartz. In addition to his many solo exhibitions, he has had five one-man shows at the The Butler Institute of American Art; The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; The Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science; and the Mattatuck Museum of Waterbury, Connecticut. Eric was featured at the Norman Rockwell Museum in the exhibition Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World, and in Naples Collects at the Naples Museum of Art.  His work has been featured in Architectural Digest, American Art Collector, among many other publications.  Eric Forstmann’s work is proudly held in many public and private collections. The artist lives in Sharon, CT and works in Torrington, CT.

Sally Van Doren, Vice President 

A poet and artist, Sally is the author of four collections of poetry, Sibilant (forthcoming in 2023 from LSU Press) Promise, Possessive and Sex at Noon Taxes which received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry has appeared widely in publications such as The New Republic, Poetry Ireland Review and Poetry London, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and featured by The Writer’s Almanac on NPR, The Poetry Foundation and American Life in Poetry.  Since 2006, she has added one line a day to her ongoing poem, “The Sense Series” which she performed as a multi-media installation at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. 

After receiving a BA in comparative literature from Princeton in 1984, Sally began her professional life in Santa Fe, NM where she served as a radio news director, press secretary to the mayor and Director of the Santa Fe Arts Commission. Returning to her native St. Louis, she earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, taught in the St. Louis Public Schools and the Washington University Summer Writers Institute and was a curator for the St. Louis Poetry Center.  In recent years, she has taught poetry at the 92nd Street Y, studied studio art at the School of Visual Arts and Hunter College in New York and begun regularly exhibiting her art. She maintains her studio in West Cornwall CT.

Sally first came to Torrington in 1980 when she visited her future husband’s family in the nearby town of Cornwall.  In 2008, she enjoyed giving a poetry reading at the former UConn-Torrington campus for the Litchfield County Writers Project and is delighted to see how it is transforming into the new Five Points Arts Center. 

Christopher E. Wilson, Treasurer Senior Partner, Stonehill Capital Management, LLC

Chris is a senior partner at Stonehill Capital Management, an investment firm specializing in distressed situations.  As a senior partner of the firm for over 25 years, Chris helped build the company from a two-person firm with less than $100 million of capital to its current state managing approximately $3 billion, with approximately 20 employees.  Stonehill has an impressive long-term performance record, in the great majority of years a top performer among peers.  Chris is also the founder and trustee of the Wilson Sheehan Foundation, which is dedicated to increasing opportunity for underserved communities.  Chris began his career in GE Capital’s Corporate Finance Group, and then spent five years at a private equity firm before joining Stonehill.  Chris serves on the board of several private companies within the Stonehill portfolio, several philanthropic organizations, and has in the past served on the board of WCI Communities, a NYSE publicly traded company.  Chris graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1985 with a B.A. in Government, and a broad course-load in business.

Anna McKeithen Webersen, Secretary

Anna has been practicing art since receiving a BFA from the University of Georgia in 1985. Following nearly two decades of professional life as a graphic designer, sales executive, and decorative painter, she transitioned to her own creative pursuits. Her paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in numerous juried and group shows, including at the Five Points Gallery and the Annex. Currently, Anna is working on a varied series of abstract mixed-media paintings. When not in the studio, Anna devotes her time to her family and supporting education and the arts in and around her West Hartford community. Her associations include the West Hartford Public Schools, Hartford Art School Endowment Board, Hartford Golf Club, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Asylum Hill Congregational Church, and West Hartford Art League.

Mark Cavagnero Principal, Mark Cavagnero Associates, Architects

Mark has over three decades of expertise in the planning and design of  community based projects. His design-centered practice serves clients locally and internationally, generating a body of numerous award-winning, public serving projects. His work is visible in a broad range of renovation and new construction work for various building types from educational, museum, civic buildings, theaters, commercial, and residential buildings. Mark’s work has been recognized with over 100 design awards for more than 30 completed projects. Mark was personally honored with the 2015 lifetime achievement Maybeck Award and the 2010 Distinguished Practice Award from the AIA California Council. Under Mark’s leadership the firm ranked #8 in Architect magazine’s ranking of the top architecture firms in the country for design in 2014. The firm also received the 2012 Firm of the Year Award from the AIA California Council.

Lisa Coleman, Managing Director, in the Global Fixed Income, Currency & Commodities Group

Lisa Coleman is the head of the Global Investment Grade Corporate Credit team in the Global Fixed Income, Currency & Commodities (GFICC) Group. Prior to joining the firm in 2008, Lisa was at Schroders Investment Management for eight years, serving as the head of Global Credit Strategies and the head of European Fixed Income. Previously, she was at Allmerica Financial for six years, managing core and corporate bond portfolios.  Before this, Lisa was Deputy Manager of Global Fixed Income at Brown Brothers Harriman for five years, managing corporate bond, asset-backed security, mortgage-backed security and government bond portfolios.  Prior Brown Brothers Harriman, Lisa worked at Merrill Lynch in foreign exchange sales and at Travelers Insurance Company as an analyst and portfolio manager. Lisa began her career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, holding roles in the foreign exchange and foreign relations departments.  Lisa holds a B.A. in economics from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut and a M.I.A. in international banking and finance from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University, New York. She is a member of the SIPA Advisory Board. In addition, she is a CFA charter holder and holds the Investment Management Certificate from the UK Society of Investment Professionals.

Cynthia Cooper

Cynthia Y. Cooper has been an artist for as long as she can remember. Her work has been exhibited in numerous international, national, and local juried exhibitions, as well as solo shows. Her career path has included a range of unconventional jobs, from drawing flood maps of Louisiana parishes for the U.S. government to mapping electrical wires and equipment on utility poles along Connecticut roads. She even spent time picking up and packing hot cream cones straight from an oven conveyor belt. However, she is best known for running Cooper Graphics—an award-winning advertising, strategy, and graphic design studio—while also managing a successful e-commerce business specializing in antiques.

Cynthia’s artwork is held in many private collections, as well as in the permanent collections of Penn State University and The New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT. Her work was featured in Director’s Favorites at the New Britain Museum from October 2015 to January 2016 and, most recently, in From the Vault: Postwar to Contemporary Art from May to October 2023.

An active advocate for the arts, she serves on multiple arts-related boards and is a member of several regional art associations. She lives in Farmington, CT, with one other human, two plump cats, and two long-lived cockatoos, now 36 and 37 years old.

Bruce Temkin

Bruce Temkin was born and raised in Torrington and still maintains strong ties to the community. His parents and family were instrumental in the growth of the Arts in Torrington for over fifty years. Bruce heads his own small law firm in West Hartford. Among other things, he has expertise in counseling and assisting small and medium sized business including nonprofit organizations. Throughout his career, Bruce has served on the Boards of several nonprofits. He holds a B.A. degree from Tufts University and a J.D. degree from Emory University.

Judith McElhone Founder & Executive Director, Five Points

Under Judy’s leadership, FPG has grown from a small temporary storefront gallery to an arts organization that includes 3 beautifully renovated exhibition gallery spaces, a community pop-up gallery (The Annex), the Five Points Hartford Art School / University of Hartford Launchpad, and as of June 2020, the acquisition of the former UConn Torrington campus that will be converted into a world-class art center.  An exhibiting professional artist and a Connecticut Visual Arts Fellow recipient, McElhone holds and AS, BF and MFA, taught at the University of Hartford and was an adjunct instructor of art at Northwestern Connecticut Community College for over 20 years. She was honored as NCCC Alumna in 2003, received the University of Hartford Alumni Association’s 2014 Anchor Award, and in 2019 was selected as an Arts Hero by the Connecticut Office of the Arts. She has also been named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Litchfield County by Litchfield Magazine. 

Advisory Board 

Oscar Rene Cornejo | Betsy Ennis | Joe Fig | Rachel Eliza Griffiths | Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe | Michael Shortell | Deborah Seidel | Ann Temkin 

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