Meet Our Instructors
A number of area artists teach at Purple Turtle Art Studio for both children’s classes and special events.
LeAnn Hale
LeAnn Hale is an artist, art educator and owner/founder of Purple Turtle Art Studio in Bryan, Texas.
She earned her Bachelor of Arts and Sciences from West Virginia University in 1993 and her Art Education Certification from Sam Houston State University in 1999. Her mission is to equip children with the tools of creativity, so they are able to express themselves visually with confidence.
LeAnn opened the Purple Turtle in the fall of 2000 and has been enjoying it ever since. The studio provides young artists with after-school classes, homeschool art education and programming for students with special needs. The studio is also known for its adult sessions, art parties and corporate events.
Before opening the Purple Turtle, LeAnn was the art teacher at Johnson Elementary School for five years and contributed to their designation as a Blue Ribbon School which recognizes schools where students perform at very high levels or where significant improvements are being made in students’ academic achievements. She has worked for many summer art programs: Girl Scouts, Brazos Valley Arts’ Council and Boy’s and Girl’s Club of the Brazos Valley, Camp Millican and Art’s for Everyone. Her love for summer programming continues at the studio, with routinely hosting popular sold-out Summer Art Camps. She was a classroom art instructor for One Day Academy from 2017-2022, providing high level art instruction to students.
The Purple Turtle Art Studio has grown into a fixture on the landscape of the vibrant Downtown Bryan area with LeAnn’s artistic eye contributing to the community with the addition of public art included on the Brazos Valley Art Trail and as the chair of the Downtown Bryan Arts and Culture Association. She excels at working through community partnerships, which is her true passion and can be seen annually in Downtown Bryan at the spring art exhibit and with her students displaying and selling work at the annual Downtown Art Fair. Her studio has pop up exhibits at other local venues such as the Parker-Astin, Darwin Days at Texas A&M and RX Pizza downtown, where art created on pizza boxes currently hangs on the restaurant walls. She has also facilitated the Brazos Valley Arts Council’s Art for Life program for 5 years working with teens in the Juvenile Justice System to create public works of art.
LeAnn and her students often collaborate with the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections at Texas A&M University on projects funded by the National Science Foundation, providing unique learning and interdisciplinary experiences that are a fusion of science and art. Their collaborative broader impact projects have been showcased at the SEAD Gallery in Downtown Bryan and at the Memorial Student Center’s Reynolds Gallery on the Texas A&M Campus.
Russell Marcontell
BA, Sam Houston State University
MFA, San Miguel De Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico
Russell has been teaching Drawing, Design and Art History to students from kindergarten through college level and beyond for the last 14 years. He has taught at the Children’s Museum, the Frame Gallery, Extra Education for the city of College Station and studio classes at Blinn and Sam Houston State University. I have been instructing at the Purple Turtle since 2014.
Teaching students with little or no drawing experience is one of his favorite things to do. He starts with the concept of , “there are no mistakes”. His goal is to give students the tools to understand the process of drawing and strengthen their own personal sense of creative awareness by using basic techniques and a variety of media.
