Leah Medin is a visual artist working in fibers, sculpture, installation, painting and photography. She received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has attended artist residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Monson Arts, and Kunstkollektivet 8B. She is currently the weaving studio supervisor at Gateway Arts in Brookline, MA.
Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris
Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris (Sayler/Morris) work with photography, video, writing and installation to examine our changing notions of nature, culture, and ecology. Their work is often place-based and focused on historical research. Their work has been exhibited broadly in the U.S. and internationally, including at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Belvedere Museum, the Museum of Capitalism and the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art. They have been awarded numerous fellowships including the New York Artist Fellowship, the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, the Center for Art and Environment Research Fellowship, and the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of Design. They currently teach in the Transmedia Department at Syracuse University, where they co-direct The Canary Lab. Their archives are collected by the Nevada Museum of Art / Reno, Center for Art and Environment. In 2006, Sayler/Morris co-founded The Canary Project - a studio that produces visual media and artworks that deepen public understanding of climate change and other ecological issues.
Sayler/Morris, La Selva archival pigment print, 2019, 40x50.
Mara Poliak
Mara Poliak is a dancer, artist, writer, collaborator, and teacher living in Oakland, California on unceded Ohlone land. Their performance, practices, and pedagogy center the commons, human and non-human lineages, queer solidarities in decolonizing and liberation work, and the body as a complete site of knowing. Long-term collaborators include Layton Lachman, Margit Galanter, Frances Rosario, Chani Bockwinkel, Abby Crain, and the Cave Coast Collective. Mara is a founding member of SALTA, a collective that hosted a free monthly mobile performance series for four years, and now organizes a yearly residency with a group of interdisciplinary artists in rural Northern California.
Talk_performance_2016_CounterPulse Photo by Robbie Sweeney. Snake Talk was created and performed by mara poliak, Layton Lachman and Abby Crain, with sound design by Samuel Hertz and lighting design by Elizabeth Ardent. Snake Talk premiered at CounterPulse Theater, (San Francisco, CA) in 2016, and toured to Performance Works NW (Portland OR), Ponderosa Tanzland (Stolzenhagen, Germany) ACUD Macht Neu (Berlin, Germany), Quarter Block Party (Cork, Ireland), and Links Hall (Chicago, IL).
Antonio Ramos
Antonio Ramos was born and raised in Puerto Rico where he trained in jazz, salsa and African dance. He later received a B.F.A. in Dance from Purchase College/SUNY. Antonio began his career performing with Ballet Theatre of Puerto Rico, Ballet Hispanico of New York, Ballet Concierto and Ballet Municipal (Puerto Rico). More recently, Antonio has performed with choreographers Mark Dendy, Neil Greenberg, Kari Hooas, Luis Lara Malvacias, Jeremy Nelson, Stephen Petronio, Merian Soto, Kevin Wynn, Ori Flomin and Donna Uchizono, among others. Antonio has taught at the University of Puerto Rico, Ballet de San Juan; Ballet Teatro de Puerto Rico; Ballet Municipal of Puerto Rico; Ballet Concierto; Danza Jazz of Puerto Rico; Dance Space Center; BAAD!/Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance; Latin Dance Festival in New York City; Princeton, Cornell, Wesleyan and Marymount Universities; Barnard College; SUNY/Purchase; The New School; NYU; The International School of Bangkok; Den Norsken Ballett Hoyskole in Oslo, Norway; and The Paluca Shule in Dresden, Germany.
Zoë Schlanger
Zoë Schlanger is a writer and environmental journalist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, Wired, The Nation, the New York Times, Quartz, the Fader, the Village Voice, and elsewhere. She covers how climate change and pollution impact human and non-human life. She is compelled towards stories that bear witness to the ways humans are not separate from our environments, despite what we might choose to believe—and which communities ultimately suffer most from the consequences of that disjointed thinking. Right now, she is developing a book-length work that explores the world of plant intelligence research and its implications for all of us. Zoë received the 2017 National Association of Science Writers' reporting award for a Newsweek cover story on environmental racism in the most polluted zip code in Detroit. In 2019, she was a finalist for the Livingston Award, the Morley Safer Award for Outstanding Reporting, the National Academies of Sciences Award, and the American Geophysical Union journalism award for “Shallow Waters,” a series about how climate change, water politics, and rising heat is transforming life at the Texas-Mexico border. Zoë has been a guest in journalism classrooms at NYU and CUNY's journalism programs. She graduated with a BA from NYU, where she focused on ecology, political theory, and writing.
http://zoeschlanger.com
Zoë Schlanger holding a flower in the Loasaceae family, a group of flowers known to be able to store and retrieve "memories," Bonn Botanical Garden, Bonn, Germany, September 2019.
Samantha Shapiro
Samantha Shapiro writes long features and cover stories which have been internationally syndicated, reprinted in textbooks, translated into Chinese and Arabic, and nominated for the Livingston Award for journalists under 35. She has published stories in Mother Jones, the New York Times, Glamour, ESPN, Crain's, Slate, Lucky, Haaretz, The Seattle Weekly, The Jerusalem Report, and Wired among others.
Alani Santos, 11, praying at the Mount of Olives in São Gonçalo, Brazil.Credit...Sebastián Liste/Noor Images, for The New York Times
Eric Shekerjian
Eric Shekerjian is a composer and producer based in Brooklyn, NY. He studied at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College where he received his BM in Music Production and Classical Music Composition. Shekerjian’s work explores the physical form of sound as it exists between the organic and synthesized mediums. Past work has involved composing for chamber ensembles, scoring for dance and film, as well as analog and digital instrument design.
Performance Shot
Moira Smiley
Singer / Composer, Moira Smiley travels the world creating new works for voices and accompanying her performances with her banjo, accordion, piano, and percussive movement. Her recordings feature spare, vocally-driven collections of warped traditional songs and original polyphony. A vocal polyglot, her voice and compositions have been featured in TED conferences, on BBC Radio and TV, NPR, ABC Australia, and live at countless venues from Lincoln Center to Royal Festival Hall. When she’s not leading her own vocal group, moira smiley & VOCO, Moira has toured with pop artist, tUnE-yArDs; Irish super-group, SOLAS; The Lomax and Folklife Projects; and Billy Childs’ “Laura Nyro Re-Imagined”. Moira premiered her solo album ‘Unzip The Horizon’ at the Savannah Music Festival in 2018, and published it’s companion choral Songbook in 2019.
Recent recording video and session with Tune-Yards for Jimmy Kimmel Live TV show - with Tune-Yards
Bethany Springer
Bethany Springer "The New Frontier" 2019 Steel, cast stainless steel DJI Phantom 4 Advanced drone, cast bronze Klean Kanteen, fiberglass cast on CNC routed foam based on digital quadrant of Mars topographical survey, gold foil emergency thermal blanket, reversible sequin Tyvek suit 90"x50"x50"
Bethany Springer’s installations have been exhibited at venues including 21C Museum Hotel in Bentonville, AR, Maryland Art Place (MAP) in Baltimore, Boston Center for the Arts, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, CT, the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ, City Gallery East in Atlanta, the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, the Georgia Museum of Art, the Kansas City Artists Coalition, Full Tilt Creative Centre in Newfoundland, Canada, and The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington, DE. Springer received her MFA in Sculpture from the University of Georgia in 2001. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council, an Artist Mini Grant from the Iowa Arts Council, a Community Research Award from the University of Arkansas Community and Family Institute, and a Research Grant from the Center for Digital Technology and Learning at Drake University in Des Moines. Springer has been in residence at Full Tilt Creative Centre and Terra Nova National Park in Newfoundland, The Arctic Circle in the International Territory of Svalbard, Norway, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE, the Artist House at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences in Georgia, and the Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Eastport, ME. Springer currently lives and works in Fayetteville, Arkansas where she is an Associate Professor in Sculpture at the University of Arkansas.
http://bethanyspringer.com
Bethany Springer "Hunter/Gatherer" 2019 Framed digital Print 53"x38.5"x3" An image of the artist and drone at Fuglefjorden, Svalbard
Kara Springer
Kara Springer is particularly concerned with armature—the underlying structure that holds the flesh of a body in place. She works with photography, sculpture, and site-specific interventions to explore systems of structural support through engagement with architecture, urban infrastructure, and systems of institutional and political power. Springer holds degrees from the University of Toronto, ENSCI les Ateliers in Paris, and Temple University in Philadelphia. Her work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, Artists Space New York, TENT Rotterdam, the Frankfurt Museum of Applied Arts, the National Gallery of the Bahamas, and the National Gallery of Jamaica. She is an alum of the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art and currently holds a fellowship with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston Core Program.
The Earth & All Its Inhabitants (detail), commissioned by Small Axe, 2019
Catherine Taylor
Book cover: You, Me, and the Violence by Catherine Taylor
Catherine Taylor is a writer, editor, and educator who works in a wide range of non-fiction forms—from documentary and literary journalism to hybrid-genre texts. She is the author of You, Me, and the Violence (Mad Creek 2017), on puppets, drones, and power, and of Apart (Ugly Duckling Presse 2012), a mixed-genre memoir and political history that combines prose, poetry, cultural theory, and found texts from South African archives. Her first book, Giving Birth: A Journey Into the World of Mothers and Midwives (Penguin Putnam), won the Lamaze International Birth Advocate Award. Her essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in The Believer, the Seneca Review, The Colorado Review, Witness, and elsewhere. Taylor was a co-founder and producer of The Human Rights Watch Film Festival and is a founding editor of Essay Press, an independent press dedicated to publishing innovative essays in book form. She is currently Co-Director of Image Text Ithaca MFA and Press, supporting work at the intersection of writing and photography. Taylor received her Ph.D. from Duke University and is an Associate Professor at Ithaca College
Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere
Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere are interdisciplinary artists whose practice spans over eighteen years of projects that actuate music and sound, radio, dissent, and the cultural complexities of the public sphere. The artists have produced works in video installation, lyric writing, and performance. Their research interests lie in the intersection between music, civic action, and historical moments that resonate through distinct musical instrumentation and sonorous traditions. Nevarez and Tevere have exhibited and screened their work at The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum, Creative Time, New Museum, and Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York; Manifesta 8/Spain; Museo Raúl Anguiano, Guadalajara, Mexico; Casino Luxembourg, LU; Henie Onstad Art Centre, Høvikodden, Norway; Taxispalais, Innsbruck, Austria, and elsewhere. The first US survey of their work was exhibited at Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia in 2016. Their fellowships and grants include a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital fellowship, an Art Matters grant, a National Endowment for the Arts project grant, and a Franklin Furnace Performance Art fellowship. Both Nevarez and Tevere were Studio Fellows at The Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, artists-in-residence at the International Artists Studio Program in Sweden, and recently at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, and Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, California. Nevarez currently teaches at Parsons School of Design, New York. Tevere is Professor of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island, CUNY.
http://www.nevareztevere.info/
https://vimeo.com/nevareztevere/video
Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere Layers of the City (installation view – interior), 2019 4K video, sound, scaffolding, window graphics commissioned by Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, CA.
David Thomson
David Thomson_Spinning a Yarn_2019_Aldrich Museum_collaboration with Analia Segal as part of her solo exhibition, Contra la Pared.
David Thomson is a creator and collaborative artist. He has worked with a wide range of artists including Trisha Brown, Bebe Miller, Ralph Lemon, Sekou Sundiata, Tracie Morris, Meg Stuart, Marina Abramović, Yvonne Rainer, David Bowie, Maria Hassabi, Deborah Hay, Alain Buffard and Kaneza Schaal among many others. His work has been presented and supported by The Kitchen, Danspace Project at St Mark’s Church, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research, Baryshnikov Arts Center, BAM’s Next Wave Fesitival, Gibney Dance Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Invisible Dog, Mt Tremper Arts, PSNY and The Yard. Thomson has been recognized for his own work with awards and fellowships from US Artist, LMCC, Yaddo, MacDowell and Rauschenberg. He is currently a LMCC Extended Life | Lifeline Fellow (2018-21). He has served on the faculties of Movement Research, NYU/Experimental Theater Wing, Sarah Lawrence, The New School, Barnard, Pratt and Bennington. Thomson has served as an artist advocate, board member, arts administrator and mentor. In 2017, he initiated The Sustainability Project in collaboration with Kate Watson-Wallace, which serves as a platform and practice for research that seeks to expand the discourse surrounding ideas of financial, artistic, and personal empowerment within the arts community. Thomson began dancing at Haverford/Bryn Mawr Colleges and later received his BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from SUNY Purchase.
www.davidhamiltonthomson.com
David Thomson_he his own mythical beast_performance_2018premier_PSNY
Sam Torres
Sam Torres performing Canticle live in surround sound at The Linda in Albany, NY, December 2019
Sam Torres is a Troy, NY based composer, multi-instrumentalist, and audio engineer. His ongoing collaborations with pianist Sophia Vastek include a duo called Tilted Arc, and Organ Colossal, a performing, concert presenting, and musical-community-building collective. Sam has written music for saxophone and live electronics, orchestra, solo piano, and various chamber ensembles. His composition, “Ritual: Breath of a Poem” for percussion quartet and interactive multichannel electronics won the first prize in the Peabody Institute Prix d’Eté in 2018. Sam has been commissioned by Sopriola, The Witches, the Peabody Community Chorus, the public school district of Bedford, NY, Music of Reality, bassist Sam Zagnit, choir director Sonya Sutton, and Sophia Vastek. Sam’s music has been heard in house concerts and coffee shops from Washington, DC to New York’s Hudson Valley, as well as at the Thalia Theater at Symphony Space, the National Cathedral, Spectrum NYC, Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Arts Letters & Numbers, Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Manhattan School of Music, and internationally in South Africa, Germany, the UK, and after June of 2020, Latvia and the Netherlands as well. Performing woodwinds, electronics, and working as an audio engineer has brought Sam to venues across the US, including EMPAC, Town Hall Seattle, University of Chicago, SMOKE, Spectrum NYC, MIT, and others. Sam holds a B.Mus from Manhattan School of Music, and a M.Mus in from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
https://samtorresmusic.com
Sophia Vastek
Sophia Vastek_Histories_Album_2017_Innova Recordings
Pianist and keyboardist Sophia Subbayya Vastek, described as playing with "passion and profound tenderness” (Second Inversion) and with “serene strokes and lyrical beauty” (Brooklyn Rail), maintains a multifaceted life as a performer, educator, organizer, and event producer and curator. She dedicates her musical life to cultivating accessible spaces in which shared listening experiences can help build stronger communities. Sophia’s debut album “Histories” was released on innova Recordings with music by Michael Harrison, Donnacha Dennehy, and John Cage. It was produced by multiple Grammy-winning engineer Adam Abeshouse. In addition to her work as a solo pianist, collaborative projects include Organ Colossal, a nonprofit and musicians’ collective committed to producing accessible concerts that are safe and available to any musician who wishes to perform; Tilted Arc, a synth and piano-based electronic duo with Sam Torres; and The Lift Series, a series dedicated to bringing a diverse range of local and regional artists to the historic Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. Performing has taken Sophia across three continents, including tours to South Africa, Mexico, and France. In the United States, she has performed at diverse venues/series such as the Kennedy Center, the United States State Department, The Apollo Theatre, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, An Die Musik, The Linda (Albany), National Sawdust (Brooklyn), Evolution Series (Baltimore), The NoiseGate Festival (NYC), Queens New Music Festival, and Arts Letters & Numbers (NY). Sophia is based in Troy, NY, a community she loves dearly.
www.sophiavastek.com
Sophia Vastek_Live Performance_2019_The Linda WAMC's Performing Arts Studio in Albany
Nia Witherspoon
Chronicle Y _Theatre_2019_Workshop at Brooklyn Arts Exchange
Nia Ostrow Witherspoon is a Black Queer theatre maker, vocalist and composer, and cultural worker investigating the metaphysics of Black liberation, desire, and diaspora. Witherspoon is the Multimedia Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University, a Creative Capital Awardee, a Jerome New Artist Fellow, an artist in residence at HERE Arts Center, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and was a 2017-18 2050 Playwriting/Directing Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop. Her works, MESSIAH, YOU MINE, THE DARK GIRL CHRONICLES, and PRIESTESS OF TWERK have been or will be featured by The Shed, JACK, La Mama ETC, Playwright’s Realm, BRIC, HERE, National Black Theatre, BAAD, Movement Research, BAX, Dixon Place, Painted Bride, 651 Arts, and elsewhere. She holds a BA from Smith College and a PhD from Stanford University in Theatre and Performance Studies, and her writing is published in the Journal of Popular Culture; Imagined Theatres; Women, Collective Creation, and Devised Performance; and IMANIMAN: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands. Witherspoon has held tenure-track professorships at Florida State University and Arizona State University, and, is currently working on a manuscript tentatively titled NATION IN THE DARK: A Black femme spell for justice.
NiaWitherspoon_Witness_theatre_2018_Playwright's Realm_West End Theatre, New York, NY_Dir. Mei Ann Teo
Deborah Yarchun
Deborah Yarchun is a New York City-based playwright. Her plays have been developed by The Blank Theatre, The Civilians, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The New Harmony Project, Jewish Plays Project’s OPEN Festival, The Great Plains Theater Conference, Jewish Ensemble Theatre, Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, The Playwrights’ Center, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, TheatreSquared’s Arkansas New Play Festival, the William Inge Center for the Arts, and WordBRIDGE, and produced at places including Amphibian Stage Productions, Fusion Theatre, EstroGenius Festival, the Minnesota Fringe, the Philadelphia Fringe, The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival, Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater by Young Playwrights Inc., and Williams Street Rep. Deborah’s honors include two Jerome Fellowships at The Playwrights’ Center, a 2017-2018 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, an EST/Sloan Commission, The Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, the Kernodle New Play Award, the Richard Maibaum Playwriting Award, and Women in the Arts & Media Coalition’s 2019 Collaboration Award. Her play GREAT WHITE was an Honorable Mention for the Relentless Award. She was recently a member of the Civilians’ R&D Group and a playwright-in-residence at the William Inge Center for the Arts. Deborah earned her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. You can read more about her work at DeborahYarchun.com.
Livien Yin
Livien Yin is an artist working primarily in sculpture and photo-based practices. Yin examines artifacts that unsettle the distribution of power among humans and the natural resources we strive to control. Her recent projects center on the imperial legacies of botanical expeditions, guano harvesting and the Chinese coolie trade. Yin received her BA from Reed College and her MFA from Stanford University. She has been awarded a 2019-2020 Graduate Fellowship at Headlands Center for the Arts, the 2019 American Austrian Foundation/Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts and the 2019 Anita Squires Fowler Memorial Award in Photography. Yin lives and works in Berkeley, California.
www.livienyin.com
Reinterpretation of the Wardian case, a 19th century transport container used by botanist Robert Fortune to smuggle 20,000 tea plants from China to plantations in India.