Meet Gerry and Greta

Gerry Melot

Gerry Melot, an artist, was designing and making jewelry, when she was asked to teach a drawing class to senior JCC adults and 20 years later she is still teaching it! Soon she was teaching adult ceramic and drawing classes through Leisure Learning and has graced their cover twice. She taught after school art and did art camps at The River School for 2 years.

Gerry spent the past 10 years with the JCC summer Art Camp, first as Art Specialist and the last 4 years as the programs Director. She was program coordinator for the Kids Create after school art program for elementary and middle school kids.

Gerry's 15 minutes of fame arrived via her work in artist Judy Chicago's participatory Birth Project. Her 20"x30" needlework was gifted to Florida State University and is used in the curriculum of the Women's Study Program, The Art History Program and the Fine Arts Dept. She also completed work on a piece with three other women for Judy's Resolutions: A Stitch in Time project which was written up by Art in America and was shown in museums all over the country.

Greta Bernitz

Greta Bernitz, originally from South Africa, has been teaching in the Houston area for over 25 years. In addition to teaching she had a successful business for many years designing hand painted clothing for children and adults. She has been teaching full time at Crossroads School for the last sixteen years specializing in art for K - 8th grades. She is constantly using art in some form to help her students learn and retain more in the other subjects. Greta has found the addition of art gets the children involved and excited about the lessons.

She is currently running an innovative after school class where students use both performing and visual art to tell a story based on a famous artist. For the last fifteen years, Greta has been the art specialist at Temple Sinai, dreaming up creative and fun projects for the kids. During the last five summers Greta has lent her special talents and magic to the Houston JCC summer Art Camps, teaming up with Gerry Melot for the last four. They eventually became known as Team G & G! Every year, Greta and Gerry also give several teacher workshops for the Jewish Federation.