Our Staff

  • Director

    Sheila Fontanive (she/her) is a licensed art therapist and arts-in-health program leader serving as Director of The Creative Center at University Settlement. Her work focuses on the integration of arts-based interventions into healthcare and community systems to support individuals affected by chronic illness, caregiving, and aging. With experience as both a clinician and program director, Sheila has led the development, implementation, and evaluation of arts-in-health and creative aging programs across nonprofit and healthcare settings throughout New York City. Her professional interests include trauma-informed and person-centered practice, health equity, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the sustainability and scalability of creative health interventions within complex systems.

    Sheila earned a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Barnard College and a Master’s degree in Art Therapy from the School of Visual Arts. Prior to her clinical training, she worked as a commission-based mural artist, an experience that continues to inform her approach to large-scale program development and creative process. In addition to her role at The Creative Center, Sheila maintains a private art therapy practice and serves as a consultant to the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she supports student well-being through creative and reflective interventions. She also maintains an independent art practice.

  • PROGRAMS & PARTNERSHIPS COORDINATOR

    Liz Rubel (she/hers) is the Program Coordinator at The Creative Center (TCC), serving patients, loved ones, and healthcare workers in hospital and community settings across New York City. As the Hospital Artist-In-Residence Programs & Partnerships Coordinator, Liz supports and facilitates creative programming, collaborates with local museums and cultural institutions, and connects our organization, participants, artists, partners, and communities to one another and to additional creative opportunities in our city. Liz is a former TCC workshop instructor and Hospital Artist-In-Residence at multiple sites. Liz has a Masters of Arts in Museum Studies, certification in Trauma-Informed Creative Arts Therapy, and a trained background in jewelry design and production from NYC's famous Diamond District. Liz believes in the power of creative exploration as a conduit for expression and healing.

HOSPITAL
ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

  • NORTH BRONX / MOUNT SINAI DOWNTOWN AND NEW YORK PRESBYTERIAN

    VIEIRA, a Brazilian artist, combines images, sculptures, and movement in her work, exploring social and political themes. Her art has been displayed in NYC galleries like Petzel, Front Room, and Christopher Henry, as well as in Brazil at Ateliê 397 São Paulo. Her pieces are also held in collections at notable institutions, including the Ado Malagoli Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum in Brazil, and the Kiyosato Museum in Hokuto, Japan. She received grants from the NYC Corps in 2021 and the Queens Council on the Arts in 2020.

    Cibele is an artist who values art's ability to connect and build communities. She believes artists should share and educate the public about contemporary art while also recognizing the healing power of art. Cibele's work aims to bridge the gap between art and society, emphasizing how art can bring people together, facilitate conversations about our diverse experiences, and serve as a tool for healing and self-expression.

  • SOUTH BROOKLYN HEALTH

    Ariel is an NYC based Actor, Director, and Mindfulness Artist with a background in Arts in Medicine and focus on Disability Arts. 

    As an artistic leader, Ariel aims to curate consent-forward and accessibility-driven creative spaces rooted in compassion that foster community care, empathy, and empowerment.  She recently made history as the first ever Accessibility Liaison for HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO on Broadway, for which she also worked on the Directing team.

    Ariel was last seen on stage in the Tony Award winning musical, THE BAND’S VISIT. In addition to her work in the Broadway community,

    Ariel is on the Teaching Artist Faculty of the Mark Morris Dance Group's Dance for PD (Parkinson's Disease) program, as well as the 92NY Himan Brown Senior Program, Program for Cognitive Strength and Ability, and the JCC of Manhattan’s Parkinson’s program with PD Movement Lab.  She appears annually in Heidi Latsky Dance's ON DISPLAY GLOBAL disability dance sculpture installations as part of the UN's International Day of Persons with Disabilities.  Ariel is proud to be a product of the UF Center for Arts in Medicine. For the last 10+ years, she has devoted her life to working at the intersection of the Arts and Healthcare, both as a researcher and practitioner. Her “Suicide Prevention through Theatre Intervention” research was internationally recognized in 2017 by the Culture, Health & Wellbeing research conference in Bristol, UK, and she is currently developing and facilitating Creative Arts and Mindfulness based practices for people with cognitive loss and developmental disabilities.

    In all aspects of her work, Ariel hopes to make people feel less alone and cherishes every opportunity she has to show up in supportive capacities to uplift higher standards of care and wellbeing for creative coping and thriving.  She loves hats.. and wears many- to learn more, visit www.arielreich.com

  • MOUNT SINAI WEST, OUTPATIENT ONCOLOGY

    Helen Dennis is a British artist based in New York. She received her MFA at Hunter College. Prior to moving to America she studied her BA (honours) in Fine Art at the University of the Creative Arts in Canterbury, UK.

    Helen's studio practice combines drawing and alternative photography within the subject of architecture and the built environment. Her artwork can be found in public collections notably of Tiffany & Co. and Avon Inc. Helen's large scale public art works have been commissioned by the Downtown Alliance of New York, The LAB Gallery for Installation Art, NoLongerEmpty and the DUMBO Arts Festival. Helen has exhibited internationally and in the US with the support of the Queens Museum, Queens Council of the Arts, Kent County Council and South East Arts UK. She has been a Creative Capital Strategic Planning Fellow at Aljira Center for Contemporary Art and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Helen has regularly participated as a mentor in the Immigrant Artist Program with New York Foundation for the Arts.

    Helen's love for travel has taken her to several international art residencies with organizations in Beijing, Cyprus, Italy, Reykjavik with the Icelandic Arts Association, Caldera Arts in Oregon, Mission Gallery in Wales UK, and MASS MoCA in North Adams.

  • MORRISANIA HEALTH CLINIC

    Nikki Schiro is a native New York artist. She has exhibited her artwork extensively in museums, galleries, and alternative spaces both home and abroad. Nikki is a certified and practicing Reiki Master and a working Actor. Her favorite hobby is dancing Argentine Tango. Nikki has been working as a Creative Center Hospital Artist-In-Residence since 2008.

  • MOUNT SINAI OUTPATIENT ONCOLOGY AND BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT

    SASCHA MALLON is The Creative Center Hospital Artist-In-Residence at Mount Sinai Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant. Sascha grew up in Austria, and now lives in Beacon, NY with her family. Sascha studied art therapy at ISSA/ School for Art Therapy in Austria, she is adjunct faculty for painting and ceramics at Mount Saint Mary College and is a certified Meditation Teacher (from Tibet House New York). Her Ceramics and Drawings have been exhibited internationally. She is represented by Frontroom Gallery New York.

    In her work as Hospital-Artist-in-Residence she is sharing her toolbox of using art as a means for healing and Self Care. She believes that art can help us to be present and joyful even in the midst of the most difficult life situations.

  • LINCOLN HOSPITAL

    WILHELMINA GRANT is a self-taught, Harlem-based visual artist, arts instructor, and author. Wilhelmina creates assemblages using mixed-media and found objects which she repurposes into visual art. Her artistic undertakings include long-term assignments as a Creative Center at University Settlement artist-in-residence wherein she used the arts to nurture the creativity of cancer patients, their families, and staff in a healthcare setting. She also guides elder participants through arts activities at senior centers in Washington Heights, the Upper West Side and Brooklyn.

    She self-published her first book, A Feeling of Fullness: Insights of a Divinely Guided Journey Beyond Breast Cancer (2016, Xlibris Publishing Company) which chronicles the journey from the nearly-missed breast cancer diagnosis at age 37 through her present-day life as an artist/author/health awareness advocate. Her second book entitled Uplifting Cancer Survivors in the COVID Era: Expressions of Kindness and Inspiration Between Aunties and Nieces was released in October 2022.

    Some collectors of her artwork include: Alice Walker, Bill Clinton, The Heath Gallery, and Hamilton Landmark Galleries. Eleven of her assemblages appear as set dressing in Seasons 1 and 2 of the Prime Video Series HARLEM.

    Wilhelmina is an avid gardener and lives with her husband in Harlem.

    Her website is: https://sistaah.org

  • ELMHURST HOSPITAL and MAIMONIDES HOSPITAL

    Carla Torres is a visual artist, who works across several media including drawing, painting, illustration, animation, and murals. Originally from Ecuador, she relocated to New York City in 2006, looking to expand her horizons and vision as an artist. Since then her work has been exhibited in several galleries locally and internationally including the Queens Museum and the Noguchi Museum. Her work has also been awarded by the most prestigious illustration awards in the US, Canada, and Europe.  

     

    Torres has been commissioned by various city organizations, including the City of New York Department of Transportation Urban Art Program in 2013, 2017, 2018, and 2022, the Garment District Alliance, and the New York Health and Hospitals Arts in Medicine Program in 2019 and 2021. Carla has also been awarded the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement grant in 2019, 2020, and 2021.  In addition, she was a featured muralist with the HBO Max/Latinx Diaspora Campaign in 2020. Most recently she was invited to be an artist in residency for Google New York City. 

    Her work is collected by public and private bodies. 

founding director Emeritus

  • Robin Glazer, artist and art educator, is a co-founder and the former director of The Creative Center, having retired in August 2021. After completing a year of treatment for her own breast cancer diagnosis in 1992, she met co-founder Adrienne Assail at Starbucks where they sat past midnight, brainstorming about a place where women with cancer could come and make art as a way to discover their own creative resources to meet the challenges of illness. In 1994, together with psychiatric social worker Geraldine Herbert, Robin developed and implemented the art programs at The Creative Center including Arts Workshops, Hospital Artist-In-Residence programs, Creative Aging programs, the Training Institute and TCC’s online art gallery. Now living in Chicago to be near her children and grandchildren, she is attempting to balance all her artistic interests- painting, puppetry and printmaking, while helping to guide The Creative Center into the post-pandemic future.