Owner: Marnie Delaney

Staff & Teachers:

Owner Marnie Delaney

Currently the enthusiastic owner and motivator behind doodlebug, Marnie Delaney spent over 20 years working in advertising and brand communications. Beginning in New York and working her way to San Francisco via Los Angeles, Marnie worked for many leading Advertising Agencies including Foote, Cone & Belding, McCann-Erickson and Grey. With occasional time off (to work in political and entertainment arenas) Marnie eventually found herself a Senior Vice President at Bank of America, where she was given the challenging task of consolidating all the bank's retail and brand communications efforts under one umbrella. Having met this objective, she subsequently left the bank following its merger with NationsBank, and conceived the idea for doodlebug - dedicated to providing a stimulating creative environment, an affordable array of resources and an impetus for building creative inspiration and confidence for children in Marin (as well as for adults, especially those who tend to describe themselves as "not creative!").

A native of Farmington, Connecticut and graduate of the Loomis-Chaffee School and Union College (with an Arts degree), Marnie currently is active in the Marin Needle Arts Guild, on the board of the San Anselmo Chamber of Commerce, and a member of other organizations including the Contemporary Ceramics Studio Association, the Hobby Industry Association, and the Toy Industry Association. She also recently was elected to the Board of Trustees for the Marin Art & Garden Center. Marnie and doodlebug also provide regular and generous support for School and Arts fundraising efforts throughout Marin County.

Dalene Grey
Teacher, Clay/Wheel-throwing/Mosaic, Art Adventures

A native Californian, Dalene Gray (or "Miss Deli" as she is known to hundreds of little Marin artists) graduated in the top of her class at Mills College with majors in Psychology & Art. She is an accomplished ceramicist as well as potter, sculptor and painter. Despite also lending many hours of volunteer time to the Marin Aids Project and a UCSF medical study on Lupus, she still managed to get a 4.0 AND teach some of the most popular classes at doodlebug. We also happen to know that she is an amazing pie baker, has a quirky sense of humor and consistently demonstrates she has one of the kindest hearts around.

Barsha Elzey
Teacher, Knitting, Crocheting, Sewing, Fashion Design, Felting

We think of Barsha Elzey as, if not the last, certainly the greatest of the great Home Economics teachers in America. Having chaired the Home Economics Department in Terra Linda, she taught many of Marin’s (now) moms (and some dads, too) how to run their households – from nutrition and cooking to knitting, sewing and fashion design, Barsha inspired countless students to learn new skills and to have fun while they did so.

With a B.S. in Home Economics and Art from Central Michigan University and teaching credentials both in Michigan and California, Barsha took Marin by storm and has never been known to sit still for longer than it takes to thread a needle. A Marin Teacher of the Year and winner of awards for curriculum development as part of her professional life, Barsha is also a former President of the Marin Needle Arts Guild (now Vice President), a member of the Marin Arts Council, the Marin Art & Garden Center, and a frequent judge at quilt shows and other textile or wearable art events. Barsha has taught Fashion Design at College of Marin and now teaches in various programs, including, most happily for us, at doodlebug.

Barsha is a terrific "Art to Wear" designer in her own right, recently winning many awards including "Best in Show" for Textile Arts at the 2008 Marin County Fair, as well as exhibiting and selling her work frequently. She has written a cookbook, designed and published patterns and even co-wrote a computer design program. She knits, crochets, does felting, sews up a storm, makes cards and jewelry and can conjure up the best soup in the universe. We love Barsha and so do hundreds and hundreds of former students now polishing their skills (or at least remembering the learning of them fondly) in kitchens all over the county and beyond!

Darcy Sears
Teacher, Sculpture, Mosaic, Art Adventures
view Darcy Sears' website >>

Darcy Sears teaches ad hoc adult sculpture classes at doodlebug. Working from a live model, students are taught how to sculpt the human figure using several different techniques. She also teaches weekly art classes to grades K-5 in drawing, painting and sculpture at Redding Elementary School, Sunnyside Elementary School, and San Francisco Unified School District.

Born in Southern California, Darcy received a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She began working with clay in 1988 while attending art classes at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Ms. Sears is a professional artist, member of the Schoonmaker Art Alliance and Marin Arts Council. Her sculptures are in galleries and numerous private art collections around the world.

In the summer of 2007 Darcy worked in San-Quentin-La-Poterie, France. St. Quentin is a small artist town about 30 kilometers west of Avignon. She has applied and been accepted into an Artist in Residence Program from June through August that will provide a house and studio for her and her family.

For more information, call 415.987.3422 or email Darcy Sears.

View Darcy Sears' Website >>

Prartho Sereno
Teacher, Drawing & Painting

Prartho studied drawing, oil painting, and ceramics in college, but it was many years later in India, during a meditation/creativity workshop in the Emperor’s Garden, that she found her artistic calling: watercolor.

Prartho continued to splash over the next decade, at first on greeting cards and fabrics in India and then between stints in Upstate New York as a Catskill Resort palmist and a physical education teacher at Cornell University. In the late 1990s she was juried into San Diego’s Spanish Village Artists Collective and began exhibiting and giving painting demonstrations in Balboa Park.

In San Diego and later in the San Francisco Bay Area, Prartho’s work caught the eye of various writers and musicians who chose her watercolors for book and CD covers, among them the anthologies In the Company of Women and Pieces: Of Our Lives (Old Lieutenant Press, San Diego) and Looking Out the Window (Mystical Mandala, Sebastopol, CA).

In 2007, Prartho published an illustrated book of poetry: Causing a Stir: the Secret Lives & Loves of Kitchen Utensils, to rave reviews. This January, her prize-winning collection, Call from Paris was released from Word Works (DC), with cover art by the author. In 2005 Prartho produced Salt, a CD of her songs and poems with her own painting on the cover. That same year Finishing Line Press (KY) published her chapbook, Garden Sutra with one of her watercolors as the cover art.

For the past nine years Prartho has been a full-time California Poet in the Schools, focusing on the written and spoken word, while creating lesson plans for students in grades 1 through 12 as well as senior citizens. She has won several small awards for her poetry – Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, Word Works, Rosebud, and a Marin Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.

Causing a Stir: The Secret Lives & Loves of Kitchen Utensils
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"San Anselmo poet, artist stirs it up"
Marin Independent Journal
By Leslie Harlib, November 27, 2007

"Sereno believes her book of poems is also a metaphor for human behavior."
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Emily & Katie Riedy

Emily & Katie Riedy, two of the original doodlebug crew, who helped make the store possible from its founding through fire, flood and many other crazy times!