Meet the WindowFest 2026 Team
WindowFest brings together working craftspeople, preservation professionals, community leaders, teachers, and students who share a common interest: building the local capacity needed to care for historic buildings.
WindowFest Leadership & Hosts
The leadership nucleus holds the mission, the relationship with Uvalde, and the experience of the people who attend. Each person stewards a distinct part of the work; none of these roles is merely honorary.
Steve Quillian
Tampa, Florida | Wood Window Makeover and Artisan Army
Steve Quillian is a historic-window craftsman, educator, and founder of Wood Window Makeover and Artisan Army. For more than two decades, his work has centered on the repair, restoration, and reproduction of traditional wood windows, especially sash making, joinery, and the practical systems needed to keep historic buildings serviceable for generations. Through the Window Craft framework, Steve brings together the Trinity of Trades - joinery, carpentry, and finishing - within a teachable field system. He has led hands-on workshops, developed small-footprint Sash Factory systems, and helped craftspeople learn to take responsibility for the whole window rather than isolated repairs.
WindowFest role: Mission & Program Director - shaping the event architecture, craftsmanship standards, teaching program, WindowLympics, and the larger work of calling, uniting, equipping, and sending artisans.
Caitlin Visel
Uvalde, Texas | Director of Arts, Culture & Tourism, City of Uvalde
Caitlin Visel serves as Director of Arts, Culture & Tourism for the City of Uvalde, where her work brings together the Uvalde Grand Opera House, Main Street, tourism, historic preservation, and community programming. She is also a committed Artisan Army alumna, having completed Intro to Sash Making and participated twice in Intro to Window Craft. That combination of local leadership and hands-on training makes Caitlin an unusually strong bridge between WindowFest, the craft itself, and the Uvalde community.
WindowFest role: Uvalde Community & Host Steward - connecting the gathering with the Opera House, local institutions, historic neighborhoods, volunteers, venues, hospitality, and the broader Uvalde community.
Katie Totman
New Braunfels, Texas | Historic Preservation Officer, City of New Braunfels
Katie Totman works with property owners, the Historic Landmark Commission, and the community to protect and strengthen New Braunfels' historic buildings and districts. Her preservation career has also included work with the City of San Antonio's Office of Historic Preservation. Katie has restored the windows of her own historic home and repeatedly crossed the line between policy and hands-on public instruction: she has helped Steve Quillian teach workshops in Brooksville, Florida, and Houston, Texas, and helped arrange training through the City of San Antonio. She brings municipal perspective, practical window knowledge, and substantial workshop experience to the team.
WindowFest role: Attendee Experience & Operations Steward - coordinating communications, presenters, volunteers, meals, schedules, signage, and the day-to-day experience of the people who come to Uvalde.
Presenters, Instructors & Working Craftspeople
The people in this group do not all enter Window Craft through the same door. Their paths include academic preservation, historic-house painting, millwork, contracting, frame carpentry, finishing, teaching, and hands-on training. Their common ground is a willingness to work, demonstrate, learn, and share.
Scott Whobrey
Tampa, Florida | Austin Historical
Scott Whobrey has worked alongside Steve Quillian since 2008, helping develop, test, and refine the Sash Factory and Window Craft systems through years of real project work. Although he prefers the field, his knowledge reaches across frame carpentry, mechanics, finishing, troubleshooting, sequencing, S2G, and sash making itself. Scott rarely seeks the front of the room, yet his practical judgment, patient manner, and instinct for accepting and encouraging people make him a natural teacher and leader. He represents Window Craft as an integrated practice and knows how to move difficult windows across the finish line.
WindowFest contribution: Lead the Intro to Window Craft field lab, working with Duncan Brown, and demonstrating field techniques including Paint Shaver work and S2G.
Duncan Brown
Lawrence, Kansas | Window Restoration Lawrence
Duncan Brown entered the craft through the painting of historic houses, joining his family's Lawrence, Kansas, business at age fifteen and developing substantial skill in surface preparation and finish work. He caught the bug for historic preservation having taken a class with Bob Yapp in 2014. At the 2025 WindowFest in Arkansas, he completed Artisan Army's Intro to Sash Making and quickly proved himself a thoughtful and capable craftsman. Duncan returned to Lawrence and put that training into practice, making several sashes independently and working to incorporate the Trinity of Trades - joinery, carpentry, and finishing - into a practical, mobile field service. Today he serves as president of Window Restoration Lawrence.
WindowFest contribution: Duncan returns as an Artisan Army alumnus, developing facilitator, and working practitioner - a clear example of the movement from student, to practitioner, to returning contributor.
Jim Baxter
Lantana, Florida | Palm Beach WindowCraft, Inc.
Jim Baxter brought a foundation in millwork and woodworking into the preservation of pre-1940s wood windows and doors. A veteran Artisan Army alumnus, Jim completed sash-making training with Steve Quillian in Brooksville, Florida, in 2018. He went on to build his own Sash Factory and develop substantial professional restoration work in South Florida Tri-County areas of Palm Beach, Broward and Martin Counties. His son Josiah has joined him as an apprentice, adding another dimension to Jim's story: training becomes more valuable when it is put to work and passed forward. Jim brings a maker's mind, field experience, and close knowledge of traditional window and door details.
WindowFest contribution: Assist Steve conduct Intro to Sash Making and Advanced Window Craft Field Labs. Traditional weatherstripping, including spring bronze and its use with casement windows. Linseed Oil Paints.
Caitlin Mee
Macon, Georgia | Blue Dog Preservation
Caitlin Mee is an architectural historian with a master’s degree in historic preservation from Georgia State University and the founder of Blue Dog Preservation. Her work brings academic preservation training into direct conversation with hands-on practice. At a February 2025 workshop in Clearwater, Florida, Caitlin helped lead participants through mechanical makeovers, demonstrated glazing and other Window Craft techniques. At WindowFest 2026, she will return to demonstrate glazing and other hands on skills. One of Caitlin’s particular strengths is her ability to serve as a liaison, communicator, and connector between the hands-on approach at the heart of Window Craft and the preservation leaders and institutions whose partnership can help build lasting capacity in historic house communities.
WindowFest contribution: Glazing demonstrator and preservation liaison—helping connect hands-on practice with the leadership, institutions, and partnerships needed to build local capacity.
John Rodgers
St. Joseph, Missouri | Phoenix Preservation | Immediately Past President, Window Preservation Alliance
John Rodgers is the founder of Phoenix Preservation and the immediately past president of the Window Preservation Alliance. His path into the trades includes environmental science and management, downtown and Main Street leadership in Louisiana, plaster work, and the restoration of historic windows and doors. John has repeatedly supported hands-on training with Steve Quillian, assisting at workshops in Clearwater and Brandon, Florida, and at the 2025 WindowFest in Arkansas. He is now confirmed to complete Intro to Sash Making before joining the WindowFest team, extending an already substantial history of service into formal sash-making training.
WindowFest contribution: Alumnus trainer, facilitator, and experienced preservation practitioner. John also helped establish the WindowLympics proof-of-performance tradition by joining Steve Quillian and Scott Whobrey in the first competitive Mechanics-to-Prime Gauntlet: a six-over-six window completely restored in 3 hours 20 minutes, with John performing S2G.
You are invited to WindowFest and WindowLympics 2026, November 5–8 at the historic Uvalde Grand Opera House in Uvalde, Texas. WindowFest brings together working craftspeople, preservation professionals, community leaders, homeowners, students, and anyone interested in historic buildings for four days of hands-on demonstrations, practical classes, conversations, meals, fellowship, live WindowLympics competitions, and a shared exploration of how communities can build the local skills needed to care for their historic places. Whether you already work in the trades, own an old house, serve in preservation or community leadership, or are simply curious about how traditional windows are made and restored, there is a place for you at WindowFest. Come watch the work, meet the people doing it, learn something useful, and discover how you can become part of what is being built. Program information will be available at ArtisanArmy.com.
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