Soomi Kim

Soomi Kim Performing artist 2015 production of Chang(e) at HERE Arts Center Photo by Bryce Cutler

Soomi Kim is an actor/movement artist. As a performer and lead artist she has created a trilogy of hybrid plays inspired by Asian American visionaries, whose lives were cut short. Chang(e) (2015, based on Kathy Change, a political activist and performance artist), Dictee: bells fall a peal to sky (2012- adaptation of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee) and Lee/gendary (2008, based on Bruce Lee and 3 NYITA wins). All three shows were featured workshops at the 1st, 3rd and 4th National Asian American Theater Festivals and were directed/collaborated by Suzi Takahashi. Kim’s career expands from downtown and regional theater, indie film to live staged martial arts industrials. Soomi has been featured in The Drama Review (MIT Journal), Huffington Post, NYTimes, Timeout NY, The Philadelphia Inquirer, NPR’s WHYY radio, KoreAm Journal, The Korea Times and the L.A. Times. Other artist in residencies: HERE Arts Center (2012-2015), Mabou Mines (2014), the Hemispheric Institute (Performance and Politics, 2013) and Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia (2011 & 2012). Kim is a 2015 NPN Creation and Forth Fund recipient for Chang(e). Guest artist appearances include: Harvard U., NYC Asian American Student Conference and Oregon State University. Kim’s autobiographical solo show MLCG (My Little China Girl) was commissioned by Dixon Place (November 2017) in NYC. 

www.soomikim.com

Alexis Lathem

Alphabet of Bones, book cover.

Alexis Lathem is an environmental journalist and author of the poetry collection, Alphabet of Bones and two chapbooks. Currently a Black Earth Institute fellow, she is a recipient of the Chelsea Award for Poetry, a Vermont Arts Council grant, and a Bread Loaf scholarship. Her poems and essays have appeared in About Place, AWP Chronicle, Beloit Poetry Journal, Chelsea Review, Hunger Mountain, Gettysburg Review, Saranac Review, Spoon River Review, and other journals. She has reported extensively on Indigenous environmental movements, has worked as a staff writer and organizer in environmental and food justice organizations. She received her MFA in poetry from Vermont College, and teaches writing at the Community College of Vermont. She lives on a small homestead farm in Vermont. 

alexislathem.wordpress.com

Tessa Liebman

Tessa Liebman_Oysters with Dulse and Rosepetals, after MAINE by MCMC Fragrances_photographer Caroll Taveras_2018_this was a collaboration with photographer Caroll Taveras. I art directed and styled the photo which is an abstract plating of a dish that was created for a dinner with the perfumer Anne McClain of MCMC Fragrances and is based on her scent MAINE. Tessa Liebman_2018_Photo is by Caroll Taveras and art directed/styled by Tessa Liebman_the photo is a fantasy plating scheme for a dish based on a fragrance created by Anne McClain of MCMC Perfumes called MAINE. The fragrance was inspired by falling in love with her (now) husband on a beach in Maine and contains notes of beach rose, pine, briny air and beach plum which I mimicked with ingredients such as umeboshi, dulse and other sea plants, pine essential oil and rose petals.

Tessa Liebman is a chef, event producer and native Brooklynite. After spending over ten years in restaurants, as the Executive Chef of Shiraz Events and teaching a culinary program she began working for herself and started the dinner series Methods & Madness in 2012. "Dinner with my Creative Crushes" is how Tessa describes her Methods & Madness dinners. Having studied a combination of Sociology and Art History at SUNY Purchase before becoming a chef she had a community of artists whom she longed to collaborate with. With the dinners she celebrates their work and enjoys shaking up her kitchen routine. Tessa has worked with typographers, painters, photographers, perfumers and foragers to produce interactive events/menus informed by the artists’ work, their “methods” (tools, processes, etc.) and their “madness” (their inspiration and motivation). In the past few years she has collaborated with more and more perfumers, translating their stories and ingredients into food experiences.

www.methodsandmadness.net

www.scentsofplates.com  

Le'Andra LeSeur

Le'Andra LeSeur_brown carmine and blue_Durational Performance_2018_Grand Rapids Michigan

Le’Andra LeSeur (b. 1989 in Bronx, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist working and living in Jersey City, NJ. Her work explores black identity informed by the effects that regulated systems of oppression have on black women, specifically. Through visual media, installation, and performance, her hope is to reclaim and dismantle stereotypes surrounding black female identity through the reworking of conventional art forms and mundane objects - ultimately reshaping the context of spaces where the lives of the oppressed are silenced and celebrated in the same breath. LeSeur has participated in exhibitions throughout the Southeast including On Being Black at Arnika Dawkins Gallery in 2015. LeSeur was the recipient of the 2017 Contemporary Black Art award at Artprize 9 in Grand Rapids, MI for her piece, Searching, and the recipient of the 2018 Time-Based Category Award and Juried Grand Prize at Artprize 10 in Grand Rapids, MI for her piece, brown, carmine, and blue. Outside of creating her own work, LeSeur has made notable contributions to the arts through her active participation in curating exhibitions and workshops for women of color that speak to the power in existing through expression in a world that shuns black women for these exact actions.

lleseur.com

Krystal Mack

KrystalMack_StrawberrySemiFreddoRhubarbFlossGoatsMilkCrumb

I am a Culinary Artist, Creative Consultant, and Writer. My work focuses on food at the intersection of emotion and consumption. Some of my past works include an experimental frozen desserts concept, KarmaPop; the creation of Baltimore’s first food vending tricycle, The PieCycle; and conceptual pop-up dinners. I have assisted at the annual Icon Dinner at The James Beard House, was named a “Woman To Watch” by the Baltimore Sun, and had the honor of being listed in Cherrybombe Magazine’s Cherrybombe 100 as a “Change Agent” in the food industry. I currently work and reside in Baltimore, Maryland.

krystalcmack.com