Thomas Beale

Artist Statement

I am interested in what may occur at the meeting point of the natural and the intuitive- how the process of art-making can transform the common, physical stuff of the natural world into something which resonates with one’s subjective, interior state, and thus, in a circular way, bring a refocused consciousness to the physical world at hand. I work with found, natural materials- wood, shells, moss. The end-products of lives, these materials possess their own sensorial properties. I am interested in using these qualities, intensifying them, so that a viewer’s final experience of the work is one in which there is no element of artifice- all the information is on the surface- and yet, the familiar has suddenly become strange and new.

Thomas Beale Untitled (Ascension) Found wood, ladder 2021 16 x 15 x 16 inches

Bio

Thomas Beale is a New York-based artist who works primarily with found, natural materials. He has shown his work internationally, with sculptures in the collections including the Museum of Old and New Art (Tasmania, AU), the Hood Museum (NH, USA), and The Bunker Artspace (FL, USA). He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including a National Endowment for the Arts U.S-Japan Creative Artist Fellowship, grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Kaplan Foundation, and others. In addition to his work in sculpture, he founded and directed Honey Space, an exhibition space active in Chelsea from 2008-2012, which the New York Times called “one of the city’s strangest art establishments.” Thomas is a graduate of Dartmouth College. He currently resides and works in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn.

tbeale.com

Xingze Li

Artist Statement

Each wall has its history, time, light, and dust. Since 2016 I have lived in Brooklyn, far away from hometown, walls offer me a space of reverie and relief. I envision the ambiguity and richness of the surface after looking at walls for hours. The relationship between walls and lighting creates the environments in which we inhabit, shaping our emotional well-being. My work offers my reflection on walls and their emotional undertones. It turns what I see and experience in the moment into poetic forms. I begin by photographing indoor space and then transfer the image onto a sculptural surface. Through my process, the image becomes a flat object with the sense of dimension, depth, and perspective of how it was being observed in the actual place. The various textures I employ create a new sensory surface, blurring the sense of touch, proximity, and the experience of light and warmth.

Studio view Medium: Dye sublimation on aluminum, glue 2022 Size various

Xingze Li (Yan’an, China) is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Brooklyn. He has exhibited and curated in China, America, and Denmark. Solo and two-person exhibitions have been exhibited at places such as Sweet Lorraine Gallery, Tutu Gallery, and Hunter East Harlem Gallery. He had participated in group exhibitions at the Cathouse Proper and Pratt Manhattan Gallery in New York City, Little Berlin in Philadelphia, and Carlsberg Byens Galleri & Kunstsalon in Copenhagen. Li earned his bachelor's degree in 2015 from Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts and received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute in 2019.

www.xingzeli.com

Andres Vaamonde

Artist Statement

As a fiction writer, I am drawn to semi-surreal, semi-historical stories that blend humor and pathos to examine the influence of the past on the present. I am interested in characters who are unaware, precocious, and quixotic—the charlatans, the zealots, and the independent researchers. I am keen on things like historical revisionism and generational inherited trauma, and am curious about how silence begets pain, how migration contorts selfhood, and how storytelling creates identity. Above all, I love trying to find the absurdity in the banal and the banality in the absurd. I’m inspired by contemporary authors like Rivka Galchen, Mariana Enríquez, Samanta Schweblin, and Ottessa Moshfegh, as well as late giants like Kurt Vonnegut, Roberto Bolaño, Franz Kafka, and Jorge Luis Borges. I also draw on the literary legacy of the testimonio in Latin America, the work of journalists like Tina Rosenberg, and the theory of scholars like Guillermo O’Donnell.

Bio

Andres Vaamonde has worked as a bike delivery boy, a bricklayer, a firefighter, a coffee picker, a mystery shopper, an advertising stooge, and—most recently—a literary book scout. He was named a Finalist for the Marianne Russo Award for Emerging Writers and a Finalist for the Ember Chasm Review Novel Excerpt Contest. He has earned residencies from 33 Officina Creativa, Willapa Bay AiR, and the Stadler Center at Bucknell University, where he was the Spring 2022 Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing. He is a creative writing instructor at Writopia Labs and a literary consultant for Roadmap Writers. He was born and Raised in New York City.

https://andresvaamonde.com/

Sarah K Williams & Stephanie Sugawara

Artist Statement:

Sarah: I aim for a reality where the boundary between sculpture, found object, pantry item, and couture dinner is blurred into a singular experience. Should we bite the building? Should we drink the sweater? The beautiful difference between working in food versus working in sculpture comes down to intimacy and brevity. The trust in a swallow, the fragility of temperature, the risk of melt. I want to take the best parts of food and the best parts of fine art and marry them for a brief moment before devourment. It won't be the same tomorrow, and that's by design. Sometimes we need to nibble on something that matches our insides, inspires curiosity about the natural world, or oozes our favorite shade of your favorite yellow, making our wrists soften and our hair a little static.

Stephanie: I am fascinated by opulence and decadence equally countered by comfort and simplicity (although I lean more to the latter). I love to recreate a memory with food, cook up a feeling through taste, and imagine a new experience. I love towering plateaus of fruitti di mare, grand aioli’s, bread sculptures, cornucopias, sunny picnics, an Alice in Wonderland tea party, sweets as bedazzled jewels, french calissons inspired to make a queen smile, dishes as regional celebrations, like paella, little bowls of banchan (little Korean side dishes), spices and foods from faraway. I am curious about food history, recipes from long ago, ways of cooking that are almost no more.

Sarah K Williams _ Cracker Spread _ 2021 _ 24' x 30" Based In, Chinatown, NYC

Bio

Sarah K Williams (b.1987) is a multi-disciplinary artist working between food, sculpture, and performance. Recent fellowships and residencies include NARS, Wave Hill, Target Margin Theater Institute, Studios at MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. Raised in Virginia and based in Brooklyn, she received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied experimental music at the Universität der Künste in Berlin on a Fulbright Fellowship. She is also the founder/director of Sprechgesang Institute, a research-based multi-disciplinary artist collective. In 2020 she developed a sculptural snack service called Aesthetically Complex Pies.

https://www.aestheticallycomplexpies.com/

Sonya Hayden

Artist Statement

A lifelong scribbler, my childhood creations ranged from the silly “Reindeer Droppings” song at age seven to a comedic middle school play about a disillusioned superhero in therapy. Humor still infuses my plays and musicals, but now serves to open audience members’ hearts and minds to more serious themes—such as a penguin desperate to convince Congress to combat climate change in my play Cassie Goes to Congress. My work also explores forces that constrain, shape, and liberate complex female characters. For instance, in my play There’s Always Tomorrow, protagonist Harper longs to venture beyond her conservative Southwest Virginia town but feels held back by marriage and motherhood as the years of her life slip away. I’m driven to write for theater by its power to inspire empathy, bring people together in community to share laughter and sorrow, and at its best, provoke thoughtful conversation far beyond the performance itself.

Sonya Hayden_Rehearsal of my play Cassie Goes to Congress_2022_featuring Nadia Diamond at New Perspectives Theatre

Bio

Sonya Hayden (she/her) is a playwright, composer, lyricist, and librettist originally from Virginia, now based in New York. Her work includes the plays CASSIE GOES TO CONGRESS (New Perspectives Theatre), THERE’S ALWAYS TOMORROW (Finalist, Tennessee Williams Festival Play Contest), JUST LIKE MAGIC (Little Fish Theatre), THE CLUMPS (Pittsburgh New Works Festival, MainStage Series), and BAUBLES, BANGLES, AND BANKRUPTCY (ATHE New Play Development Workshop); musicals WANDA DOES THE WATER CYCLE (Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival) and THE LUCKIEST GIRL (Princeton University); and songs “If I Didn’t Know Better” (Winner, Lotte Lenya Competition Songbook, $1,500 award) and “Snow One Else for Me” (composer, Playdate Theatre Holiday EP). She is a member of the BMI Advanced Musical Theatre & Librettists Workshops, New Perspectives Theatre’s Full-Length Play LAB, the New York Songwriters Alliance, the Dramatists Guild, and ASCAP. She was previously a member of Maestra Music’s Mentorship Program (mentor: Broadway Music Director Mary-Mitchell Campbell), the Recording Academy’s Musical Theater Mentorship Program (mentor: Grammy Award-winning Music Producer Kurt Deutsch), and the Princeton University Triangle Club Writers Workshop (Milton Lyon Award for Outstanding Writing). She is the Co-Director of the Maestra Music’s Mentorship Program. Master’s in Playwriting, University of Edinburgh; A.B. Music, Princeton University. www.sonyahayden.com

www.sonyahayden.com

Anna Sperber

Artist Statement

I create performances that, through experiments with choreographic form, situate mystery, animality, and aggression within the feminine. I delve into somatic experiences and the fleshy reality of embodiment in their larger social and cultural contexts. Enacting a tension between formal clarity and chaotic wildness, each site-responsive work orients the architecture of the visceral, moving body inside the physical architecture of the space. I use raw, intuitive, improvisational scores and a deep practice of repetition to cull and distill images. Interdisciplinary collaborations with experimental composers, live musicians, and visual designers are crucial to my work, allowing me to integrate visual and sonic landscapes with the moving body. My recent works are assertive reclamations of female embodiment. In these works, I and my dancers dive into the intense physical rigor of the laboring performer, whose will and autonomy alter her surroundings. We extend our presence through the physical deconstruction and manipulation of utilitarian theatrical materials. Mining the physical and sonic elements of the theater’s poetic and emotional vibrations, our bodies emerge as a resonant, echoing force.

Anna Sperber_Bow Echo_Dance Performance_2021_Rooftop of The Old American Can Factory

Bio

Anna Sperber is a Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer. Her work has been described by The New York Times as “immediately compelling” and “wonderfully strange” with “moments of theatrical magic.” Her performances are rooted in the poetic potency of choreography and its potential for perceptual transformation, embodying a tension between formality and chaotic wildness. Sperber received a 2022 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” award nomination for Outstanding Choreographer / Creator for Bow Echo (2021). Her work has been commissioned by The Kitchen, The Joyce Theater UNLEASHED Series, The Chocolate Factory, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Roulette, Gibney Dance, and Dance Theater Workshop in New York City, as well as by the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC. Sperber has received fellowships and residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Bogliasco Foundation, Marble House Project, The Yard, Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance DiP (Dance in Process), Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on Governors Island, and Movement Research. Sperber was a co-founder of classclassclass, and was a co-curator of the 2008 Movement Research Spring Festival. She has taught as a guest artist at American Dance Festival, Movement Research, Freeskewl, Gibney Dance, Hunter College, George Washington University, and Wayne State University. Sperber founded and ran BRAZIL, a studio and intimate performance space in Bushwick, Brooklyn from 2004 to 2014 and Sunset Space from 2019-2020.

annasperber.com

Tomasz Jedrowski

Artist Statement

I write about queerness, nature, and healing, often in historical contexts. I'm fascinated by the potential that spirituality holds as an antidote to personal and collective violence, and how, despite what it may look like, humanity's struggles have remained essentially the same since the dawn of time.

Cover of my debut novel, Swimming in the Dark, published in the U.S. by Harper Collins (2020)

Bio

Tomasz Jedrowski is the author of Swimming in the Dark, a queer coming-of-age novel that has been translated into fourteen languages. He was born in Germany to Polish parents and graduated from the University of Cambridge. He currently lives in the forest in France, teaching creative writing and working on his second novel.