Chapel Hill, NC

Beth Owens

Jeannine Borzello

Jeannine has been an educator for 30+ years working with students from preschool through college, having taught in New York, South Africa, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. After moving to NC she taught in Durham Public Schools, at Duke School, Carolina Friends School, and currently at New Garden Friends School. She has been on the Nasher Museums Teacher Advisory Council, on the board of the NCAEA (North Carolina Art Educators Association) and she is also a freelance photographer, graphic designer, and scenic designer with a long-standing relationship with theatre.

She lives in Chapel Hill, and is the proud Mom of her son, a 2022 graduate of CHHS, who is currently a Senior at Vassar College. When she is not teaching or creating, she enjoys cooking, and spending quiet time with her dog and two cats.

Elena Brown

Elena Brown is a native of Brooklyn, New York. She received a BFA in Graphic Design and Illustration from Parson’s School of Design.  After moving to Greensboro, North Carolina, she illustrated several covers for News and Record Triad Style magazine, and Fresh Fruit magazine of Mount Zion Baptist Church. In 2004, she was a freelance food illustrator for a small bakery in Greensboro.  Her community has benefited from her organizing and coordinating Multicultural festivals at Healthy Start Academy and Glenn Elementary in Durham NC.  Elena has facilitated workshops which focus on the traditional multicultural art at the African American Atelier in Greensboro.

In 2018-19 she taught summer school at the Overseas Chinese Mission church in New York. She is increasingly fascinated with Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. She currently teaches at Highland Elementary.

 In 2008, Elena was awarded the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program to go to Japan to study, research, and explore the culture and educational system. After her fieldwork in Japan, she returned to the U.S. with a passion and a plan to share her experiences with her community, local schools, and colleagues. She seeks to forge bridges between the community and schools through art.

Kelly Alexander

Kelly graduated in 2002 from Case Western Reserve University, earning a BS in Art Education in a joint program with the Cleveland Institute of Art. She went on to teach art in a year round elementary school in Cary, NC for six years. During that time she earned her MAEd in Art Education from East Carolina University. She left teaching in 2008 and spent two years in the full time MBA program at UNC Chapel Hill.

After graduation she moved to Atlanta for seven years, where she worked in marketing and corporate strategy for UPS (yes, the big brown package cars). Towards the end of 2017 Kelly and her family relocated back to NC and settled again in Chapel Hill, where Kelly left her job at UPS and pursued a real estate license. Kelly continues to work in residential real estate brokerage in Chapel Hill leading a team of three agents.

Kelly’s operation of Children’s Art Classes brings together her love of small business and art education and she’s thrilled to be bringing this school to our local community. When not at the art studio or out selling houses, you can often find her following her two children to swimming pools far and wide to watch them compete as year round club swimmers, a passion that runs in the family, as Kelly met her husband back in college on the swim team!