Meet the Board
of Directors
David Basler | Director
A champion of the Creede community and a lifelong supporter of all forms of art, David has been a collector of Stephen Quiller’s art since the late 1990s. In 2002 David started Creede Magazine, which he owned and operated until 2008. During this time, David and his wife Amanda lived full-time in Creede and became close friends of the Quillers.
While in Creede, David founded Keep Creede Beautiful, a nonprofit to maintain the beauty of Creede, and the John David Lentz Memorial Fund, which provides funding to sponsor a play each summer at the Creede Repertory Theatre.
David and Amanda now live in Denver, where he is the Chief Strategy Officer for the National Association of Parks and Campgrounds, a nonprofit representing more than 3000 privately owned RV parks and campgrounds across the United States and Canada.
Michael Dee | director
Michael Dee is CFO of PureCycle Technologies, a recycling start-up company. He is on the Board of Veladynne Lidar, a company he brought to the public marketing’s in 2020.
He is also president and CFO of Graf Industrial Corporation. He has over thirty years experience in investment banking and has negotiated financial deals in over fifty countries. He has been coming to Creede, Colorado since the early 1990s and is an avid Creede Repertory Theatre supporter and has been collecting Quiller paintings for more than twenty years. He lives in Dallas Texas with his wife Shelly.
Prior to Dallas, they lived overseas for twenty-two years where they collected contemporary art and ancient artifacts. Michael and his wife Shelly own the historical Creede Hotel & Restaurant.
james T. stievater | director
Jim is a civil engineer and licensed Professional Engineer. He also has an MBA degree. During the first part of his career, Jim successfully completed construction and design-build projects worldwide during a 35-year career with the largest building General Contractor in the US. He then joined one of the country’s largest engineering firms to provide construction, management services on behalf of owners in the US as well as internationally. He has provided on-site management of construction activities in Brazil, Taiwan, and South Korea. The last project before retirement was the management of the 20-gate extension of Concourse C for the Denver Airport Authority.
Jim and his wife Mai, have been coming to Creede for painting workshops with Steve during the last 15 years. He looks forward to being involved with the design and construction of the Arts Center - an important addition to the community. The couple is currently living in northern Virginia.
Shelly Dee | Board chair
Shelly Dee has been coming to Creede for over fifty years and is a perennial collector of Stephen Quiller’s artwork. She is an art collector with a collection spanning Asian contemporary art, ancient Asian artifacts, and African headdresses. She is currently on the Board of the Dallas Museum of Art and has been on the Boards of the Singapore National Museum, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the Natural History Museum in London.
She is also very involved in philanthropy and sits on the Boards of KERA, Volunteer Now, The Hoglund Foundation and UNICEF in Dallas. She and her husband recently located to Dallas after twenty-two years overseas. Their four children, who live in New York, San Francisco, and Vancouver, have been coming to Creede their whole lives. Shelly and her husband own the historical Creede Hotel & Restaurant.
Bill Smith | Director
Bill Smith was born in 1944 and spent the majority of his years in Southern California. He graduated from the University of Redlands in 1966 and from the UCLA School of Law in 1969. His career of 30 years was spent with one employer, Mission Viejo Company, a developer of large planned communities – Mission Viejo and Aliso Viejo in Southern California, and Highlands Ranch south of Denver, Colorado. He retired as General Counsel when the Mission Viejo Company was acquired by another major developer.
During his years in Southern California, he had opportunities to serve on the boards of two nonprofit organizations. After relocating to his current home in Creede, Colorado, he served as a member of the Board of Creede Repertory Theatre. He also served as President of that Board during a portion of his six-year Board tenure.
Bill and his wife, Teri, have been honored to be collectors of Stephen Quiller’s works since they began their annual trips to Creede over forty years ago. They now look forward to seeing his work further honored and memorialized through the Creede Center for the Arts and sharing some of their paintings through the Center.
Dyan Sublett | senior advisor
Sublett is President of the Martin Luther King Community Health Foundation and Chief Communications Officer of the communications work for a new healthcare system serving South Los Angeles, one of the nation’s most vulnerable communities. As MLKCHF’s founding executive, Dyan’s leadership includes over 50 million in private gifts and state and national visibility for the hospital’s work.
She has been Executive Vice President of the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles, the fifth largest YMCA Association in the world. She has served as Senior Vice President for Advancement in Communications at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum; Senior Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Art Center College of Design; Vice President for Development at Sundance Institute; and Senior Development Director at the University of California Los Angeles, where she cofounded and directed UCLA’s Women and Philanthropy Program.
Allison Quiller | Secretary
Allison Quiller has had a career in film and television since 2011. After graduating from Vancouver Film School in Vancouver, British Columbia, she worked in production on many projects, including Disney’s “The Lone Ranger,” Godzilla,” and various reality series. Later, while still living in Los Angeles, she was hired to the ABC Family’s hit show, “Pretty Little Liars,” where she worked as Art Department Coordinator. In addition to this work, Allison is producing instructional DVDs with her father, Stephen Quiller.
She returned to Creede, Colorado in 2014 and started her production company, “Quiller Pictures.” She has produced three feature documentaries to date.
Marta Quiller received her B.A. in 1988 in English Education.
She is the Quiller Gallery manager, director, seminar organizer and is in charge of the Quiller Gallery mail order business. She directs marketing and sales and is vice president of the Quiller Gallery LLC.
Marta Quiller | treasurer
TIM CRANOR | Director
Tim has been coming to Creede and Spar City since 1963 (his wife Ann has come to Creede every year of her life).
Tim has spent his entire career in the food business where he retired as President/COO of Fresh Mark Inc. His career began in grain trading and progressed to flour milling, commercial baking, private equity partner (concentrating on buying food manufacturing companies), and meat processing. That career enabled him to gain vast experience in team building, supply chains, risk management, distribution/transportation, sales (domestic and export), operations/production, finance, human relations, marketing, brand management and developing strategic vision and tactics to implement the strategy, safety and quality control.
During his career Tim has served on numerous trade association boards, private company boards and currently sits on the board at Fresh Mark, Homegrown Family Foods (North Carolina) and the Board of Trustees at Kansas State University Foundation.