M. Benjamin Herndon

M Benjamin Herndon, Untitled (Curves No. 5 & 9 detail), 2017, 32 x 24inches, silverpoint, graphite, gelatin, and marble dust on paper.

M. Benjamin Herndon is a visual artist whose painting practice involves a laborious preparation of surfaces composed of gelatin, marble dust, and pigments on linen, which become luminous grounds for minimal silverpoint drawings. These material interactions, their subtle compositional intention and optical experience with regards to the interaction of light and movement, combine in a quiet conversation that provide for moments of discovery. Herndon received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2012, and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2016. In addition to Marble House, Herndon has been awarded residencies and fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center and the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. He currently lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, and teaches in the printmaking department at RISD.

http://mbenjaminherndon.com

Roohi Choudhry

Roohi Choudhry grew up in Pakistan, Southern Africa and the Middle East and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Normal School, and Callaloo, among others, and has been selected as notable by Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. A 2015-6 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. She teaches and coaches other writers, and consults for the United Nations. Currently, she is working on an essay collection about migration and a novel set in Durban, South Africa. Learn more at

www.brooklynstani.com

Sol Pochat

Sol Pochat, Untitled, Installation and Photography, 2016, Dimensions Variable. 

Sol Pochat is a visual artist and artistic director based in Buenos Aires. She received her BFA from School of Visuals Arts (SVA) in New York City and has exhibited her work in international galleries, both individual and collectively. Her work is recognized in the multiplicity of materials and new media, which refer to an aesthetic and poetic search between man and its relationship with nature. Sol is the founder of HILO, a contemporary art gallery in Buenos Aires, Argentina, focusing on site-specific and -responsive contemporary art. Since the opening of HILO in 2015, Sol has been engaged in helping fellow artists produce on-site commissions, while also developing her own aesthetic language as an artist.

http://www.solpochat.com

Mali Sastri

Mali Sastri is a music artist based in Boston, MA. For the last twelve years, she has been the primary songwriter, lead vocalist, and frontwoman for the avant chamber pop band Jaggery. Jaggery has garnered national and international praise for their “exquisite, lush . . . audacious aesthetic”(Stereogum). With Jaggery, Mali has released five albums and two EPs, and toured nationally. Other Jaggery accomplishments include selection for Boston’s Outside the Box Festival (2013, 2016), and a commission to create a Leonardo da Vinci-inspired song cycle, by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2015). As a solo artist, Mali has toured internationally, and composed works for dance (Luminarium Dance), experimental theater (Liars and Believers), and in collaboration with painter Steven Bogart (Ten Paintings, Ten Songs). Mali trained in the expressive arts modality Voice Movement Therapy in London, UK, and is a registered VMT practitioner. Her uncanny vocal range exhibits this therapeutically expressive approach to sound-making, moving from “new-age songbird to woman scorned to woodland fairy to blood-thirsty werewolf to sultry lounge singer”(Boston Herald). She has featured as the lead vocalist for works composed specifically for her voice (2016’s song cycle Having It Out With Melancholy, by Michael J. Veloso, 2015’s aria You Will Have The Moon, by Mary Bichner).   From 2008 to present, Mali has produced, curated, and performed in the ongoing multi-disciplinary performance series Org, out of various underground-and-otherwise venues in the Boston area, with forty-one shows to date. She is a resident of the South End artist’s co-op, Cloud Club.  

www.jaggery.org

Art Seed at Marble House Project  

Alex Springer and Xan Burley

The work of dance artists Xan Burley and Alex Springer, as creative and life partners, is inherently and essentially collaborative. Since 2008, their cohesive efforts have taken shape as dance theatre for the stage and camera, interdisciplinary work, site-specific performance, durational exhibition, and community engagement. They strive to make work that inhabits spaces holistically, creating physical landscapes that harmonize with each individual project. With multidisciplinary collaborators, they collectively design comprehensive aural, visual, and contextual environments in which performance is experienced intimately.

Burley and Springer aim to meet with otherness through movement practices that promote communal well-being and to provide compassionate and empowering arts experiences. Their work, under the moniker the Median Movement, has been presented in NYC by Movement Research at the Judson Church, Danspace Project’s DraftWork series, the 92Y, the TANK, Triskelion Arts, MATA Interval at the Museum of the Moving Image, and Gowanus Art & Production, among others. In May of 2016, they developed for North, an evening-length interdisciplinary project, as recipients of Center for Performance Research’s inaugural Tech and Production residency. With support from CPR’s Mertz Gilmore Late Stage Production grant, the project premiered there in December 2016. Their yearlong 2013-14 artist residency at University Settlement culminated in sold-out performances of JACK Rally featuring 26 performers, some of whom participated in their accompanying community engagement project. They were invited as resident artists to Cultivate New Hampshire in the summer of 2014 where they held workshops and developed and shared work in collaboration with sound/visual artist Will Owen. In 2011, they received BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange’s Fall Space Grant, premiering a new piece after three months in residence. Burley and Springer will perform their duet You being Me being You and the Eye as part of New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix Festival in June 2017. Burley and Springer were honored to receive the 2015 Emerging Artist Award in Dance from their alma mater, the University of Michigan. They were DANCENOW’s 2011 Joe’s Pub Festival Encore Challenge winners and received DFA’s 24-Hour Challenge Silver Award (2009) for their screendance daylighting. An Ostrich Proudly was featured on Hulu in TenduTV’s Essential Dance Film and their choreography appears in the feature-length film Frances Ha (2013). They have created work as guest artists at the University of Michigan, Skidmore College, Bates College, Colby College, Goucher College, James Madison University, Ball State University, Ohio University, Oakland University, the Harkness Repertory Ensemble, Harrison High School, Cora Youth Company, and The Collective. In April 2017, they will stage their work on Minnesota’s Zenon Dance Company. Burley and Springer have offered master classes in technique, partnering, composition and improvisation at Hunter College, Muhlenberg College, DeSales University, the University of Maryland, Grand Valley State University, Albion College, and Ballet Western Reserve, among others. They teach regular classes in NYC at Mark Morris Dance Center and Gibney Dance Center and currently as guest faculty at Purchase College. As members of Doug Varone and Dancers, both have taught and performed extensively in the U.S. and abroad, including Korea, the Dominican Republic, Russia, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, and Hungary. In addition, they have performed for artists/companies such as Nancy Bannon, Alexandra Beller, Daniel Charon, Shannon Gillen, Heidi Henderson, Shannon Hummel, Tami Stronach, Donnell Oakley, and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. They graduated from the University of Michigan, Burley with degrees in Dance and English and Springer with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Movement Science.

www.themedianmovement.com

Art Seed at Marble House Project

Lydia Blaisdell

Lydia is a recent graduate of the Michener Center for Writers. She was an artist-in-residence at Yaddo in October & November of 2016. Her play, The Silent Woman, won the 2015 Kentucky Women Writers Conference Prize and made Honorable Mention on the 2016 Kilroy’s List of best new plays. Her immersive retro-future piece, Apocalypse Radio, will have a world premiere by Theater Ninjas in Cleveland, OH in 2018, directed by Michael Rau. Her one-act, Old Broads, was performed at the Off Shoot in Austin, TX in spring 2014. She is a proud member playwright of the OBIE-winning Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater (since 2010). She also belongs to the Brooklyn-based writers’ collective, Kristiania, and the Austin-based political action group, Literary Women in Action. Her play, The Last Great American Bear Hunt, was a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (2016). Lately she has been workshopping a new cassette play, Bear Eats Bear, with director Katie Van Winkle, which has been performed in Bushwick, NY, Toronto, CA and Austin. Bear Eats Bear will be a site-specific installation with outdoor performances in the 2017 Minnesota Fringe. Lydia has been a semi-finalist for Play Penn (2015, 2014), and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival (2014, 2013). Her short plays have been performed in Aspen, Austin, Lake George, NYC, and Paris, France. Her short, Donna's First Brazilian, is published and licensed by Samuel French, Inc. She’s currently working on a contemporary farce and a play exploring the treatment of the mentally ill. Lydia currently resides in Austin, TX with her puppy. She holds an MFA from the Michener Center and a BA from Columbia.

http://www.lydiablaisdell.com