Mark Foss

Artist Statement

I am interested in the intersection of fiction and creative non-fiction (CNF), past and present, and absence and presence. In my novel, Spoilers, an apocryphal narrative is punctuated by factoids that tell the larger story of two once-famous personalities. In my novel Molly O, the disappearance of their younger sister in childhood pushes one brother to remember, the other to forget. Keeper of the Records, a novel in progress, draws on archival records and private letters to bring the daughter of a long-forgotten literary figure in Canada into history for the first time. Since the pandemic, I have been increasingly drawn to CNF, which explores grief, loss and resilience through lyrical essays and more whimsical flash. At Marble House, I will be finalizing a collection under the working title of Slow for Dust—a memoir in pieces.

Mark Foss_Molly O_Novel_2016

Bio

Based in Montreal, Mark Foss writes fiction and creative non-fiction. He is the author of Kissing the Damned, a collection of linked short stories, and two novels, Spoilers and Molly O. Recently, his words have appeared in journals such as The New Quarterly, Star 82 Review, JMWW, Hobart and Bending Genres. His short fiction and essays are also featured in several Canadian and American anthologies. A novel in progress, Borrowed Memories, was a finalist for the 2020 Guernica Prize in Canada for innovative fiction. His background in film studies often informs his writing. Spoilers draws on the silent film era, while Molly O offers self-mocking “close readings” of experimental remakes of Mary Pickford films. In addition, he has worked in film production and post-production, including Spoon, a poetic and political exchange between the writer/director Michka Saäl and Spoon Jackson, a Black American poet sentenced to life in California without possibility of parole. In 2021, he collaborated with Jackson on The Book of Judith (New Village Press, 2022), an homage to the life of poet, writer, and teaching artist Judith Tannenbaum and her impact on incarcerated and marginalized students.

www.markfoss.ca

Tessa Holmes

Artist Statement

I became a chef by accident on my way to pursuing a career in fine arts. When a position in the kitchen at the commune I was doing work exchange at opened up I took it and discovered a world where my skills, passions and personality traits intersected. A wonderful insular place where precision and science meet art and chaos. A realm where timing and organization support play, creativity and beauty. I also love that I’m able to artistically express myself while simultaneously nourishing others. I quickly found that, like fine art, I could learn the basic tools and rules before taking what interested and excited me in any direction. I have come to understand that the craft of cooking for oneself and/or others is indeed another form of art that incorporates all the senses while combining aesthetics, community, pleasure and consumption. To me it covers all the basic human needs. It is an art form that is love itself, full of constant decay and where no finished product will last. What a happy surprise to have found such high level of creative expression and inspiration for myself. What a gift to to have and share.

Tessa Holmes -Tomato Dill Goat Cheese Tart with Walnut Oat Crust - Made, Photographed and Eaten 2021

Bio

Tessa Holmes has been cooking professionally for over 24 years. She specializes in vegetarian comfort whole food meals inspired by dishes from around the world. In California, she was a Head Cook in the kitchen at Heartwood Institute, a healing arts school in Garberville. She moved back to her home state, Vermont, and was the Kitchen Coordinator and Head Chef at Common Ground Center for 10 years before holding the same title at Farm and Wilderness Camps for two summers. In 2012 she started the hot lunch service and helped to launch the Farm Food Forest program at The Schoolhouse Learning Center in South Burlington. In 2015 Tessa decided to start her own business, Blossom Whole Foods Kitchen and Catering, that began with a Meals to Go pick up service and soon led to opening her own store front serving lunches and a weekly Community Dinner in WInooski, VT. In 2019 she decided to move her kitchen to a flower farm to focus on personal chef jobs, business lunches, retreats, farm events, and cooking experiences. Today Blossom is based out of Common Ground Center, again, where Tessa is mainly a retreat chef for hire, hosting events and teaching plant based/vegetarian cooking classes. Tessa is proud to be a seventh generation Vermonter who was born and raised in South Burlington and now lives in Hinesburg. When she is not cooking she runs a photography business specializing in portraiture. She is also a professional artist who paints with oils.

www.blossomholmes.com

Sarah Konner and Austin Selden

Artist Statement

SARAH: My work is situated in post-capitalist ruin and ecological crisis, within which practices of grief, humor, imagination, and storytelling are desperately needed for reimagining collectively sustaining futures. I frame dance research as pathways back toward understanding reciprocal webs of entanglements and look to relationships from the more-than-human world to serve as ongoing models for repairing destructive histories. I research how we can shape our physical movements and relationships towards models of ecological reciprocity— making queer space for differences/identity within a sustaining whole. Living in a time when individualism is collapsing upon itself, our bodies have the potential to offer the wisdom of holism and mutualism; the capacity to connect us to what is beyond ourselves. I embrace the contradiction and complexity of what my body is and does, and create space for non-binary thinking within my practices, teaching, and performance.

AUSTIN: Movement and space are my natural (comfortable) mediums of artistic expression. I find writing challenging to demonstrate articulation; but thank goodness for a thesaurus! Does anyone else find this true? I enjoy viewing film, dance and other artworks with few or no preliminary explanations. I like connecting feelings and meanings in as personal of a way as possible; I like thinking in the imaginary realm that is created between art and a person. In creating work, I find that once the process has momentum, the work has its own voice and starts creating itself. My role then becomes reining the intention and its transparency, to the pulling direction the work is taking us; I prefer collaborations.

Sarah Konner This Lawn is not my Lawn Dance Smith College, 2022

Bio

Sarah Konner is a dance artist, improviser and somatic movement educator. Sarah is interested in dance as a process of evolution, a way to understand our connections, and a means of storytelling. Sarah creates dance-theater with Austin Selden and others that has been shown at performance venues, universities, and museums across the country. She has had the pleasure of working with Jeanine Durning, Jenna Reigel, ChavasseDance&Performance, Sara Shelton Mann, Shura Baryshnikov, Megan Kendzior, Alex Springer and Xan Burley, Headlong Dance Theater, and setGo Performance Improvisation Ensemble. Sarah teaches contact improvisation in New York (through Movement Research and Gibney) and internationally, and is currently on faculty at Smith College, Amherst College, and Wesleyan University. Sarah holds an MFA in Dance at Smith College, a BFA in Dance and a BS in Environmental Science from the University of Michigan, and is certified in Yoga, Pilates, and Body-Mind Centering®.

Austin Selden graduated from the University of Michigan. There he met Sarah Konner, and since 2007 they have made duets and videos together: their latest being a 30 minute trio featuring Sarah’s non-dancer romantic partner, Lance, titled, This Lawn is not my Lawn. Austin danced for Shen Wei Dance Arts for six years where he met some of his best friends. He has performed with other New York based choreographers and with Amy Chavasse, based in Michigan. Austin is a Licensed Massage Therapist and Certified Mat Pilates Instructor. He takes continuing education courses on different therapeutic techniques, most recently Visceral Manipulation. Austin uses he/him, identifies as a Dance Maker, and lives in Brooklyn, NY

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SarahandAustinDance.com

Grace McNair

Artist Statement

I'm working on a full-length poetry collection that grapples with reproductive health histories and considers my life and work in healthcare in context of historical figures in midwifery, the records they left behind, and material culture, such as art, birth control, obstetric instruments, etc. I’m particularly interested in bringing archival knowledge/historically marginalized perspectives into dialogue with contemporary reproductive health concerns.

My micro-chapbook (Inch #52) published by Bull City Press in September, 2022.

Bio

Grace MacNair is a poet, teacher, and healthcare professional living in Brooklyn, NY. She was selected by Yona Harvey as the winner of Radar Poetry's 2021 Coniston Prize and by Safia Elhillo as the winner of Palette Poetry's 2022 Emerging Poet Prize. She has received residencies and fellowships from Ragdale, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, the Carolyn Moore Writers House, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Bread Loaf Translators' Conference. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Radar Poetry, Palette Poetry, The Missouri Review, Best New Poets 2022, and elsewhere. Grace's micro-chapbook, "Even As They Curse Us," is available from Bull City Press.

gracemacnair.com

Jessie Winograd

Artist Statement

I use choreography, narrative theater, improvisation, and somatic practices to explore the way lived experiences filter through our human bodies. Story, concept, and image can all be a catalyst for a project. I focus on personal stories and details, even when the subject matter is abstract or historical, so that I, my creative partners, and our audiences can share moments of immediate connection and recognition.

Jessie Winograd_TOOTH_performance_2021_?!: New Works Festival at The Brick Photo by Barry Fertel Performers (L to R): Ira Joan Macner, Jessie Winograd

Bio

Jessie Winograd is a generative performing artist, choreographer, and director. Recent works include TOOTH (?!: New Works Festival at The Brick), about aging, decay, and the responsibility we have to our own bodies, and Chapter 1, Section 1 of The Dancing Mania (SubletSeries: Coop at HERE), based on the true story of a medieval dancing plague. As a performer, she has most recently worked with choreographers Barbara Mahler, Pele Bauch, and Trina Mannino, and music/dance improv collective The Moving Orchestra, and she has made regular appearances in the churches, theaters, basements, gymnasiums, and living rooms of the NYC independent dance and theater scene since 2002. Born and raised in the Catskill mountains, currently roaming the wide-open spaces of Brooklyn, NY. BA in Dance and Creative Writing from Hunter College CUNY. Proud Vassar dropout.

www.thedancingmania.com

Alison Smith

Artist Statement

Alison is currently writing about about the history, science and culture of hearing voices.

Cover art from Alison Smith's memoir, Name All the Animals

Bio

Alison’s first book, Name All the Animals, was s New York Times notable book and named one of People’s ten best books of the year. Other honors include the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, a Lambda Literary Award, the Judy Grahn Award and a National Magazine Award from Mental Health America. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, The London Telegraph, The Believer, Real Simple, Glamour and Public Seminar, among others. Her story The Big Empty was adapted into a short film starring Selma Blair. When she's not writing, Alison plays city planner Jane Jacobs on the television series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She has two dogs and eleven chickens. She lives in Northampton, MA.

www.namealltheanimals.com

Sophie Kahn

Artist Statement

My work investigates the complexity, and the poetics, of capturing the body in the digital age. I use a 3D laser scanner to create sculptures, prints, video and VR/AR artworks. This scanner was never designed to capture the human body in motion--when confronted with a moving form, the machine receives conflicting spatial coordinates and generates glitch, or 3D motion blur. I output this fragmented data as both physical and virtual works - they can be read as faux-historical relics, or as future artifacts. In my most recent series, The Divers, the dancers I scanned float as spectral, disembodied avatars, weightlessly tumbling through empty space. In all my artwork the human body is de-materialized, separated from the physical, and then re-materialized into a vastly altered form; mirroring the ways in which our selves interact with the many worlds we now inhabit.

Machines for Suffering I Life size 3D print (laser-sintered nylon), gesso, acrylic paint, UV varnish Photographed at bitforms gallery ny, 2018

Bio

Sophie Kahn is a digital artist and sculptor, whose work addresses technology’s failure to capture the unstable human body. She grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a BA (Hons) in Fine Art/History of Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London; a Graduate Certificate in Spatial Information Architecture from RMIT University, Melbourne; and an MFA in Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Sophie is the co-host of the YouTube channel File Exchange, and serves as a mentor with NewInc. Past residencies include the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York. Recent exhibitions include Transfigured at C24 Gallery in New York, Out of Body: Sculpture Post-Photography at bitforms gallery, New York, and Machines for Suffering (solo) at Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College, RI. Her work has been supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic, and other private funding bodies. Her work is held in public and private collections in the United States and internationally. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts Digital and Electronic Arts Fellow. Recent online exhibitions include Dematerialized with SVA, In The Bardo: Unpacking the Real on FeralFile and Synthetic Corporeality with Meet Digital Culture Centre, Milan.

www.sophiekahn.net