Our Staff

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Survivors Art Foundation

Index of Regional Directors and Staff



Treasurer and Secretary: Michael Herships, Ph.D.
New York
https://www.survivorsartfoundation.org
Graduated Cum Laude from Princeton University in 1966 with a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering, and from Stanford University with a M.S. in Aeronautics & Astronautics. Dr. Herships has been working with computers and related engineering design equipment for the past 31 years. From 1968 through 1971 he worked at Grumman Aerospace Corporation, developing computer programs to calculate the fluid flow around the space shuttle during re-entry and low speed flight. He wrote the aerodynamic/heat transfer section of Grumman’s space shuttle proposal. He also has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and maintains a private practice on Long Island.


President and Director: Candyce Brokaw

Ms. Brokaw is a survivor of sexual abuse and rape. She founded Survivors Art Foundation after experiencing the tremendous relief and healing power of the arts directly. She used her particular art forms, illustrations and poetry, to express great feelings of pain, despair and rage. “The arts have allowed me to purge many otherwise negative feelings and turn them around into positive healing experiences.”

“I hope to help clear the path of obstacles and to better enable survivors to find the resources to market their particular art skills, thus allowing them both the monetary and emotional rewards they deserve. I would also like to introduce survivors with limited art backgrounds to new skills and a vehicle to help them process their pain, allowing them a positive and non- self-destructive path to use in their healing. Art can create a new outlet for frustration and pent-up feelings, removing old behaviors, that could in the past destroy families and further continue the cycle of abuse. The goal is to enable both parent and child with a shared appreciation of each other and the arts.”

“The Survivors Art Foundation is cause for hope and celebration, and survivor helping survivor.”

Mark Kramer
Leiden, NH, Holland
System Administrator
https://www.survivorsartfoundation.org
http://asarian-host.org
[email protected]
Mark Kramer was born in 1963, on the Isle of Korfu, in Greece. With an original background in Law, Mark, currently employed for Hewlett-Packard as netserver support agent, is owner, founder, and System Administrator of Asarian-host.org: a dedicated server for survivors, with its primary focus on providing anonymous access to the Internet. The organization offers free anonymous email accounts and website hosting along with design assistance to survivor’s of sexual abuse. He is well-versed in Perl, HTML, UNIX, assembly language, and various other computer languages. He has committed himself to helping survivors with computer related issues to the maximum of his ability. Asarian-host.org currently hosts several sites, the least of which is not Survivors Art Foundation, for whom he is the System Administrator too. “Although I leave the executive matters in the more than capable hands of Candyce, I handles the technical, administrative side of the SAF, such as the creation of user-accounts and managing their mail-server, cgi-programming, mailing-lists, and the like.” Creatively, being a naturalised Dutchman with a propensity towards English Literature, he primarily writes personalized poetry for fellow survivors: an activity which may not bring him fame and glory, but is not any less rewarding. Most satisfying poem for him so far was the one for “geode.”

Marietta Dantonio-Fryer
Deleware
Outreach Coordinator
[email protected]
Director of the Art Department and professor of Art at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, Marietta Dantonio-Fryer is a survivor of childhood abuse. She graduated Kutztown University with her BS in Art Education, and continued her education at Marywood University where she received her MS in Education. After graduating she taught in the public schools of Pennsylvania, where she was also the district art coordinator. In 1982 she opened Dantonio Art Center, which she directed until it closed in 1998. During the 16-year history of DAC she worked with chapters of the National Art Honor Society and Junior National Art Honor Society, which created many murals that have been donated to various organizations over the years. Marietta has taught at Delaware State University and Springfield College. She is currently on the faculty at Wilmington College, where she teaches art and education classes. She also is working as an Art Therapist at Elwyn, Inc. in Media, PA, where she is creating a mural with the students in the Second Chances program. She has also co-created a Therapeutic Arts curriculum, with Joel Keener, that is being used by Ferris School for boys, a maximum security prison for boys from the ages of 8 to 19. Marietta was the Art Educator of the Year for the state of Deleware for 1998. She currently holds memberships in the American Art Therapist Association and National Art Educators Association. Her expertise is in working with survivors of trauma, physical and mental; these include at risk youth, incarcerated adults, persons with AIDS, senior citizens, survivors of sexual abuse, special needs and victims of cultural cleansing. She has also worked with the US Army, by traveling to various bases, to help soldiers find creative outlets for stress and separation anxiety.

Joel T. Keener
Outreach Technology Coordinator
Professor, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania and Wilmington College

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