Board of Directors

Kim Draper, Director

For more than 25 years, Kim owned and managed an alternative health center offering massage, chiropractic, and acupuncture, all the while working full-time as a massage practitioner.  She retired in 2017 to devote more time to her love of family, friends, and travel.  Once retired, she also threw herself into her art creating polymer clay jewelry, bowls, and hanging mobiles.

Kim joined Hull Artists in 2019 and soon after joined the board.  Besides her board responsibilities, Kim volunteers for HA primarily managing HA’s website as well as organizing membership events, hanging exhibits, and promoting HA, and members’ art through social media.  She believes that HA provides a perfect element to her life.

Malee Nuesse, Director
Malee is a ceramic artist who grew up in Massachusetts. She studied art at Pitzer College in
California, moved back East to New York City and ultimately settled in Hull, Massachusetts.
In Malee’s professional career, she concentrated on marketing design, audience development
and circulation management for several legal, business and real estate publications across the
country. As a volunteer, Malee held several local board positions, including Our World Children’s
Museum, South Shore Charter Public School, Hull Village Association, and Hull Yacht Club.
After becoming an empty nester, Malee was able to explore the many dimensions of pottery and
expand her love for design, graphics and color. She is a member of several art associations and
shows in local venues.
Malee became a member of Hull Artists in 2018, started exhibiting at Gallery Nantasket in 2020,
and joined the HA board in 2025.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Taylor, Director

Betsy is a 1974 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration. Her first few professional jobs were as an advertising illustrator before becoming a freelance illustrator.  Joining a painting class at a local studio with a friend led her in a new artistic direction: painting and teaching.

In 1994, with a group of professional artists, Betsy took the reins of the Earth & Arts Center, an art school in upstate New York.  The Center then merged with the existing Mill Gallery which was reorganized as the Mill Art Center & Gallery, a nonprofit with art classes and a fantastic gallery.   She managed the Art Center, installed exhibits, and sold her works and the art of hundreds of artists.

During her time in New York, Betsy was active in her community, serving 20 years on the Village Planning Board and many school and arts committees.  Concurrently, while raising her family, Betsy taught drawing, figures, and painting classes, working with children and adults.  

She and her husband, Scott, have lived in Hull since 2014.  She joined Hull Artists as a starting point to connect with their new community.  As a board member since 2018, she has found an exciting role in helping to manage Gallery Nantasket along with curating its art and other HA exhibit venues.  Betsy has played a key role in HA’s pursuit of a permanent home for Hull Artists that will serve as a regional Art Center.

Lauri Waldner, Director

Lauri and her husband Mike moved from Indiana to Hull in the spring of 2023 and she joined Hull Artists within her first week anxious to continue her volunteer and community service work that she’d performed in Indiana.

Lauri retired after 30 years in the education field as a school psychologist, counselor, and adjunct professor at Butler University in Indianapolis.  Traditionally, her volunteer interests have centered around children of all ages, serving for 20 years on her local Boys & Girls Club Board of Directors.  She also worked within the court system as a guardian-ad-litem, and partnered with her therapy dog, Gus, to provide services to those who have experienced trauma and mental illness.  While not an artist, Lauri has viewed first-hand the positive impact of art within schools, communities, and mental health facilities.

Lauri’s background and expertise working with community programming, fundraising, membership development, planning, and marketing, as well as her enthusiasm and energy, made her a very strong candidate to join the board, which she did in the summer of 2023.  Within just a couple of months, she took on several projects including organizing a strategic planning process, writing an MA Cultural Council grant application for an event geared toward elementary-age children, and chairing the Membership Engagement Committee that implemented a membership survey to identify volunteers.

Sandra Weeks, Secretary/Clerk

Sandra grew up in the small seaside town of Fairhaven, MA.  She graduated with a BFA in Industrial Design from Massachusetts College of Art (MASS ART).  Throughout her career, she worked in corporate interior space planning and project management. 

Sandra joined HA in 2014 and was president from 2016-2017.  She was on the planning team that formed the initial Board of Directors and since then has served on the Board as Secretary/Clerk.   She was instrumental in reorganizing Gallery Nantasket in 2018 and is the gallery’s Operations Manager.  Sandra also Chairs the Exhibits Committee.

Her artistic medium is colored pencils and she frequently displays her flora and fauna pictures at local exhibitions.  Her wonderful drawings of commissioned pet portraits are sought-after treasures.

Lara Williams, Director

Lara is a contemporary abstract painter, and printmaker born and raised on Long Island, NY, now living in Hull, MA.  She studied Art History, Painting, and Printmaking earning a BA degree in fine arts, from SUNY Plattsburgh.  Her first couple of jobs were with Pearl Art & Craft, as a customer service representative and later as a bookkeeper.   All the while she maintained her artistic practices, showing her artwork publicly in Boston, Cambridge, and juried shows throughout Massachusetts.   Since 1997 Lara has been a licensed real estate agent and is currently a sales agent and manager.

In 2004, she took a hiatus from showing her art publicly following the birth of her twin sons.  In the spring of 2019, she re-emerged with her nature-inspired, emotionally charged encaustic paintings and works on paper.   Later that year, she also joined Hull Artists, eager to find a community of artists and creatives closer to home; especially excited by the opportunity to join and show at Gallery Nantasket.

She joined the Board in 2020 and led the initiative for HA to look beyond its membership to produce an annual Regional Juried show, open to all MA artists, first held in 2022.  She plays a key role in marketing HA and its members handling most of the social media posting.  Lara sees her position on the HA Board as an opportunity to give back to the community that continues to embrace and support her artistic journey.