Mary Babcock

Artist Statement

I am an Hawaii-based visual/performance artist and educator deeply interested in the intersection of art, contemplation and social activism. Mending is a central theme in my work, both as actual reparative action and as metaphor for personal and socio-environmental change. My work is driven by a need to understand and critique my culture, rooted in the desire to bridge two prevailing paradigms for art-making: art as beauty and art as social criticism. Residing in the Pacific, my current focus is on cultural and ecological sustainability in the face of climate change.

Referencing the flooding of the historical town of Vanport, OR - a largely African American community- the work is intended as a cautionary tale regarding the impacts of reckless greed, drawing parallels to current global existential threats and to our apparent acquiescence with climate apartheid.

Bio

Currently Professor of Sculpture / Expanded Practices at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I see my teaching as an act of creative resistance - a means to empower future generations. I am experimenting with ways to extend my teaching outside of the university, creating intergenerational contexts for knowledge sharing and meaning making. Recent bodies of work include Hydrophilia and Deliquesce, in which I explore concepts of absorption and dissolution in the context of sea level rise and climate change. I received my MFA from the University of Arizona and PhD in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. I have performed and exhibited work in individual and collaborative contexts nationally and internationally including Korea, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, the Ukraine, Cyprus, Algeria and Niger. My work is in numerous private and private collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the US Embassy in Niger.

www.marybabcock.com

Nicole Homer

Artist Statement

The poet's job is to bear witness without neutrality or cowardice.

Nicole Homer's Pecking Order (Cover)

Bio

Nicole Homer is an educator, poet, writer, and performer whose work can be found in the American Academy of Poets Poem-a-Day, Muzzle, The Offing, Rattle, and elsewhere. A fellow of Callaloo, Bread Loaf, Tin House, and Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Homer serves as a Contributing Editor at BlackNerdProblems. Their collection, Pecking Order, explores race and gender politics in the domestic sphere. She is honored to have shared stages with poets in slams across the country, to have been the 2018 Dartmouth Poet-in-Residence at The Frost Place, to have received a 2020 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and to be alive. She is currently working on her next project, disappearling. She lives online at nicolehomer.com and lurks on social media as @realnicolehomer

nicolehomer.com

Fatima Farheen Mirza

Artist Statement

Fatima Farheen Mirza is a novelist working on her second novel.

First Draft is a substack publication featuring essays on creativity, writing, and more

Bio

Fatima Farheen Mirza was raised in California and now lives in London. Her debut novel, A PLACE FOR US, was a NY Times Bestseller and translated into multiple languages. She is currently working on her second novel.

Your Website

https://fatimafarheenmirza.substack.com

Maya Erdelyi

Artist Statement

I’m a collagist; cutting, sourcing, and colliding ideas into hand-crafted animations, 3-D paper works and experiments. Themes interweave, ranging from: abstraction, color theory, automatic drawing, intergenerational trauma, the Jewish diaspora, motherhood, family stories, memories, and dreams. My cross-disciplinary practice has involved: experimental animation, stop-motion, puppets, geodesic domes, printmaking, curatorial projects, full moon artist salons, drawing clubs, and various collaborations. Using bold colors, patterns and found paper, the final artworks exist as animated films, collages and installations. My work aims to create conversation, evoke memories and wonder, experiment with space/time/form, and ultimately bring people together.

Maya Erdelyi Film still from "Anyuka" hybrid collage from animated documentary 2023 Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center

Bio

Maya Erdelyi is an award-winning animator and artist. Her works interweaves experimental animation, installation, drawing, printmaking and collaborative experiments. Screenings and shows include: national and international film festivals, galleries, museums and DIY venues including Lincoln Center, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, MoMA NYC, MFA Boston, REDCAT LA, Harvard Film Archives, Animation Block Party, among others. More recently: a solo show at Trustman Gallery at Simmons University (fall 2022), artist workshops at the ICA Boston (summer 2022), and a 2019 Yaddo Residency among others. Maya is a Colombian/Hungarian first-generation American. Born and raised bilingually in New York City, she is currently based in Boston where she teaches animation at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and lectures at numerous Universities and workshops. Maya received her MFA in Experimental Animation from Calarts and first studied animation at Harvard University. She lives with her husband, an animator, and their daughter Paloma, and is always working on some kind of experiment.

www.mayaerdelyi.com

Mary Simpson

Artist Statement

Activism inspires my writing and visual art practice. I volunteer each year to help low-income communities file their taxes to receive government credits and refunds. I also lead my rental building’s tenant union and advocate for affordable housing in New York. Writing helps me process these issues through personal essays and nonfiction profiles. Painting comes from a place for which I have no words—which can be a relief, because confronting unfair power imbalances often leaves me with no more words to give. I fell in love with myth as a kid, when story—told through action, archetypes, and images—became my way of understanding the world. I am always thinking about the importance of community in storytelling. I believe we share stories so that others might see themselves reflected in our experience.

Mary Simpson, nonfiction essay published in July/August 2024 issue of the Brooklyn Rail

Bio

Mary Simpson is a writer and artist from Alaska, currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Bomb, Parkett, Broadcast, JRP Editions, The Happy Hypocrite, Hoosac Institute Journal, and other publications. She earned an MFA in visual arts from Columbia University, attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She won the Rema Hort Mann prize and has had numerous solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Seattle Art Museum and the Boise Art Museum. She has shown internationally in galleries in Brussels, London, and Beijing. Her film screenings and lectures include the Artists Institute, The Kitchen, Goethe Institute, Henry Art Gallery, and CAM2 Madrid. She works as curator for the estate of Jimmy DeSana.

marysimpson.net

Sarah Hennies

Artist Statement

I am an independent artist involved with every aspect of the creation, execution, and dissemination of my work. I compose immersive solo and chamber works that explore identity, intimacy, queerness, and transness by experimenting with timbre, repetition, and endurance. In many works, the repetition of seemingly banal material reveals unusual depth and variety within sounds and the spaces in which they are heard, provoking the audience to notice and ask questions about the peculiar world we inhabit. Informed equally by Western avant-garde composers and 25 years spent in indie/punk bands, my practice occupies a unique space that exists comfortably between the worlds of academia and "underground" music. My current work is focused on various neurological and music concepts with an interest in the type of brain activity that underlies creative thought, exemplified by my latest 2xCD "Motor Tapes" (New World Records).

Sarah Hennies: "Motor Tapes" (2022), world premiere performance at the 2023 Darmstadt Summer Course, Germany.

Bio

Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer and percussionist based in upstate New York whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer & trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is primarily a composer of acoustic chamber music, but is also active in improvisation, film, and performance art. She is the recipient of a 2024 United States Artists Fellowship, a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a 2016 fellowship in music/sound from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was a participant in the 2024 Whitney Biennial. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College.

www.sarah-hennies.com