Andrea Parkins
Andrea Parkins is a 2015 Grantee for Wave Farm’s Media Arts Assistance Fund for NY State Artists
MFAIA-VT Faculty Advisor Andrea Parkins is a 2015 grantee for Wave Farm’s Media Arts Assistance Fund, a Regrant Partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Electronic Media and Film Program. The fund will support distribution and an exhibition of Andrea’s’ 8-channel generative audio work Two Rooms from the Memory Palace. Two Rooms will be featured in the New York Electronic Art Festival’s exhibition at Governor’s Island, NYC, which opens on May 22, 2015.
Tenure Track
Suzanne Ostersmith (MFAIA-WA 2013) is a Theatre Artist, Choreographer, Visual Artist, and Arts Educator. As Academic Dance Program Director at Gonzaga University’s Department of Theatre and Dance in Spokane Washington, Suzanne was recently promoted to tenure track.
New Employment Position
Guillermo Delgado (MFAIA-VT 2013) accepted a new job as Academic Specialist for Community and Socially Engaged Arts at the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH) at Michigan State University.
New Teaching Position
Andy Bonjour (MFAIA-VT 2014) accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Communication Arts at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio and will start teaching Video Production in the fall, 2015.
New Teaching Position
Mark O’Maley (MFAIA-VT 2013) has been appointed as an Assistant Professor and Director of Dance Production at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Jersey where he’ll be teaching dance production and design.
Dawn Breeze in Iceland.
Icelandic Artist Residency
Current MFAIA-VT student Dawn Breeze is attending a self-directed artist residency at BAER Art Center, in Iceland during the month of May. In 2011, when she first was a resident at Baer, she moved away from the studio and began working with and in response to place. Now, four years later, she is examining the points of the past that touch the present, in the same place.
The Art of Worth, Part I: Ask Anything
On June 27th and 28th, Dawn Breeze will be presenting The Art of Worth, Part I: Ask Anything at The Hudson River Exchange. This ongoing project consists of sharing online responses to three questions: What is your greatest wish? If you could ask for anything for yourself what would it be? Why don’t you ask? The collected answers will be given back to the public in the form of over 400 free medicinal plants (that she has been growing by seed). The audience has the opportunity to add their own answers to a growing collection and read the many hundreds of answers received.
Imani Uzuri. Photo by Yossi Michaeli.
Imani Uzuri, 2015 MAPFUND Grant Recipient
Imani Uzuri (MFAIA-VT 2012) has been awarded a 2015 MAPFUND Grant to compose her first opera Hush Arbor (The Opera) which will premiere at Harlem Stage. It will be a mercurial musical meditation on “liminality” (standing at the threshold) exploring themes of death, rebirth, impermanence and transcendence.
Bonnie Schock Named Executive Director of Historic Theater Institution
Former MFAIA faculty member and Co Program Director, Bonnie Schock, has been named Executive Director of the T.B. Sheldon Theatre in beautiful Red Wing, Minnesota. This stunning historic theater serves as a nexus of community engagement, facilitating local production in all performance disciplines, presenting national touring events, and connecting people with one another through a diversity of programming initiatives.
Seitu Jones receives McKnight Project Grant Award
MFAIA-WA Faculty Advisor Seitu Jones was awarded Forecast’s $50,000 McKnight Project Grant for Mid-Career Artists. During a six-month residency in a public exhibition space, Jones will build ARTARK, a floating platform for artistic and scientific experiences with the overall goal of using art and ecology to foster a greater understanding of the Mississippi River watershed and the public’s role as environmental stewards. Youth from the Kitty Anderson Youth Science Center and Urban Boatbuilders will collaborate in the ark’s design and construction. Working with the Capitol Region Watershed District, the ARTARK will interpret and present the scientific data collected through writing, visual art, and performance. The ARTARK will document the 13-mile long Mississippi River watershed segment in St. Paul.
Northern Spark Festival
Current MFAIA-WA student Erin Lavelle is serving as the Producer of Northern Spark, an all-night public art festival created by Northern Lights.mn. On the second Saturday of June every year, tens of thousands of people gather along the Minneapolis riverfront and throughout the city to explore giant video projections, play in temporary installations in the streets, and enjoy experimental performances in green spaces. This year the festival will be held from dusk on June 13 till dawn on Sunday, June 14, and is expected to attract upwards of 50,000 people. Lavelle has worked on artist projects for the festival in 3 of the past 4 years; this is her first time on staff as Producer.
Double CD Album
Laura Ball (MFAIA-WA 2012) has completed recordings of her two full-length Chamber Music Works, The Match Girl Suite (based on the work by Hans Christian Anderson) and Creation (inspired by the origin mythology in the Hebrew Book of Genesis) with Grammy nominee Quentin Baxter. The release date is set for September of 2015 with cover art by fellow Goddard alumni.
Anjali Austin is featured in Tallahassee Magazine this month, page 148.
Threads
Anjali Austin’s (MFAIA-WA 2015) solo performance work Threads is an auto-ethnographic portrayal currently in its final stages of development that highlights how familial influences shape our lives. This ancestral tribute is based around 33 quilts created and collected by Anjali’s maternal grandmother, Gussie Beatrice Arnold Hill (1912-1988). The piece speaks to strength and resilience amidst struggle and interweaves first-hand African-American experience with cultural narratives of an historical period when society stunted and devalued African-American existence, contributions to society, and cultural and professional achievements. Four showings of Threads were performed in Sarasota, FL, May 6-7, 2015 and received critical acclaim. Have a look at a preview and a review.
Fight Choreography at Seattle Theater
Paul Ray (MFAIA-WA 2015) directed the fight choreography for Live! From the Last Night of My Life by Wayne Rawley at 12th Ave Arts to critical acclaim in Seattle. Originally staged by Theater Schmeater during its West Coast premiere in 2011, the original cast and crew, including Paul, came together to bring this award-winning production back to the Seattle stage.
Suchi Branfman
Dance News
Current MFAIA-VT student Suchi Branfman will be featured in Dancemakers: Conversations with Choreographers. Suchi and Sri Susilowati will present at the ARC Performance Space in Pasadena, CA on May 28, 2015.
Devora Neumark at the École des arts de Szczecin (Poland)
DouBle-Stéréo (DBS) is pleased to host MFAIA-VT Faculty Advisor Devora Neumark for the 2015 international artist residency and exhibition program hosted by 23.03.fr and the École des arts de Szczecin. Devora will be travelling to Poland once at the end of May to initiate her research and then again in the fall to complete the project.
Tango Series published in Pank Magazine
MFAIA-WA Faculty Advisor Petra Kuppers’ poetry sequence Tango Series, a meditation on dance, pain, and eros, is forthcoming with Pank Magazine. As part of the publication, Petra is developing an audio version with opera singer Misha Penton (MFAIA-WA 2013).
Petra Kuppers’ Book Launch as part of DisArts Festival, Grand Rapids, Michigan
In April, Petra Kuppers’ new textbook, Studying Disability Arts and Culture (Palgrave) was launched as part of the international DisArts Festival in Grand Rapids. As part of the festival, she also exhibited The Salamander Project, a community arts installation developed with international fellow disabled people; and she and her creative partner Stephanie Heit led a Social Somatic participatory performance.
How to Survive a Poison Apple
Interdisciplinary artist, singer-songwriter, and body image activist Mindy Dillard (MFAIA-WA 2014) demonstrates the healing power of metaphor through her one-woman musical How to Survive a Poison Apple. Through original songs, Mindy invites participants through a fractured fairy tale of her eating disorder and subsequent healing journey. Debuted in June 2012, Mindy has just returned from performing at the 2015 iaedp symposium (international association of eating disorders professionals) in Phoenix. Last summer she performed in the Santa Cruz and Vancouver fringe festivals as well as mounting independent productions in Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Oakland, Sebastopol and Santa Rosa.
Karin Bolender’s Rope Tricks with Rolly among the kangaroos of Depot Beach in New South Wales, Australia. Photo by Sean Hart.
RAW Assmilk Soap Published in Multispecies Salon Book
In 2014, Karin Bolender‘s (MFAIA-VT 2007) assay on RAW Assmilk Soap came out in The Multispecies Salon, a collection edited by Eben Kirksey and published by Duke University Press. She is presently working with Kirksey on a big ass doctoral dissertation, on the art of barnyard ontological choreography, in the Environmental Humanities program at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
Eccles Visiting Scholar
MFAIA-VT Faculty Advisor Gale Jackson recently visited Southern Utah University College of Performing and Visual Arts as the Eccles Visiting Scholar from March 30-April 2, 2015.
Shannon Holmes in performance.
Doctoral Researcher, University of Birmingham UK
Currently completing her second year as a Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Birmingham UK, Shannon Holmes (MFAIA-WA 2013) is pursuing a practice-based PhD where her research centres on somatic vocal practices that intersect singing and speech. This past year she presented papers in both Canada and the UK on a variety of topics at the nexus of movement, theater, music and voice, including the use of Contact Improvisation dance form to free vocal expression for classical singers. In February, a music-theatre piece she devised and that emerged out of her research into the intertwining of personal narrative and established texts entitled, The Crook of Your Arm, premiered at the FRIGID New York Festival, where critics called it “an emotional and intimate performance, both with beautiful vocals and an achingly honest monologue”. A split location-student, Shannon travels to the UK each term but makes her home with her partner and six children in Montréal, Québec where she is part time faculty teaching Voice and Speech in the Theatre Department at Concordia University.
Ryan Conarro performing this hour forward. Photo by Adam Nadel.
This Hour Forward
Ryan Conarro‘s (MFAIA-WA 2015) solo performance installation this hour forward was presented by the Performance Project at University Settlement on New York’s Lower East Side in May 2015.
Banff Centre Residency
Lawrie Crawford (MFAIA-WA 2014) has been awarded a 4-week intensive residency at the Banff Centre to develop her public art piece Unraveling Complexity, a multi-year project that uses public art to solve political science problems.
Dragons, 24″x24″ collage by Stephanie J. Baugh
Exhibitions
Stephanie J. Baugh’s (MFAIA-WA 2014) visual artwork will be included in the following National Juried Exhibitions: Force of Nature: Exploring the Power of the Feminine, July 6-August 14, 2015, Karl Drerup Art Gallery and Silver Center for the Arts, Plymouth State University, NH; Once Upon a Time, June 2-28, 2015, The Studio Door, San Diego, CA; Art by America: A National Review of 2-Dimensional Contemporary Art, June 1-30, 2015 The Art House, Chicago, IL.
Spiritual Study in Accra, Ghana
Current MFAIA-WA student Kenshaka Ali will be traveling with the Agape International Spiritual Center in Los Angeles to Africa this summer to participate in the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Etherean Mission for Spiritual Empowerment in Accra, Ghana.
First Prize in Photography
Current MFAIA-WA student H. Cynthia Brooke won first place in Adult Digital Photography in Tidepools Literary Magazine and her photograph Twelveth Man (2014) will soon be published in a book.
Walter Wright’s desktop.
Signal Culture Residency
Walter Wright (MFAIA-VT 2007) is back as the Signal Culture toolmaker in residence from May 7-21, 2015. Walter is developing a Eurorack-based audio/video synthesizer for live performance. Signal Culture located in Owego NY, offers residencies, exhibition opportunities, and resources to artists, researchers, and innovators in the field of experimental media art.
In Heat
Current MFAIA-WA student Ari Rudenko will perform In Heat, a performance inspired by images of lust, volcanism, and insectoid desire, at the Lanjong art festival in Kalimantan (Borneo) and the Bali Art Festival. The performance draws from Ari’s Butoh dance practice and explorations into Indonesian dance forms. He will continue exploring the spontaneous use of stones to create a kinetic landscape, a process that began at the 2015 spring residency. These works feed into the further development of Ari’s feature length piece Holy Garden: Touching the Fruit of the Void, which will be staged for the Bali on Stage dance series.
Jonathan Demme’s Latest Film Project: Another Telepathic Thing
Stacy Dawson Stearns (MFAIA-WA 2012) performed in Another Telepathic Thing with Big Dance Theatre a little over a decade ago. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jonathan Demme is now releasing the production on film. Inspired by Mark Twain’s morality tale ‘The Mysterious Stranger,’ Another Telepathic Thing is a prismatic and complex dance-theater parable and exploration of the fragility of our human condition. The piece is directed by Paul Lazar and co-directed and choreographed by Annie-B Parson. Catch Demme’s film of this project at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York on June 8, 2015.
Cascading Memorials: Public Places to Mourn
MFAIA-VT Faculty Advisor Ruth Wallen‘s presented a paper about her current project, Cascading Memorials: Public Places to Mourn, at the conference “Balance/UnBalance: Water, Climate and Place Reimagining Environments” in Phoenix. It is included in the current issue of Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, edited by Goddard Graduate Institute faculty Lise Weil.
Exhibition
Felix Osiemi (MFAIA-VT 2014) will be showing recent works at The Sheen Center in NY, June 16 through August 30, 2015.
Book Release And Book Signing Party
John Ollom (MFAIA-VT 2014) has an upcoming book release and book signing party for Internal Landscapes, a culmination of 14 years of movement research, movement technique classes and personal introspection that have created the revolutionary methodology of Internal Landscapes©. Sunday June 7, 2015 at 5:30 pm at the Bureau of General Services Queer Division at the Center on 13th St., New York.
Through a Window: Visual Art and Simon Fraser University 1965-2015
MFAIA-WA Faculty Advisor Laiwan will be in the upcoming exhibition Through a Window: Visual Art and Simon Fraser University 1965-2015 which looks at visual art production at SFU’s School for Contemporary Arts since 1965. Literally considering the window at each of SFU’s campuses as a social, spatial and material symbol, the exhibition takes up Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis (1992) as a framework for reflecting on the rhythms of the past fifty years. Opens on June 3, 2015.
FOUNTAIN
Laiwan’s public art project FOUNTAIN: the source or origin of anything installed in March 2014 at the CBC Plaza in downtown Vancouver, Canada has been extended on display until later this summer. The project was also awarded a British Columbia Arts Council Grant to mentor emerging writer and researcher Renee Mok to further develop the FOUNTAIN website, with its Hydrologic Blog, exploring articles related to urban and ecological issues raised by the project.
Frankenstein 2029
Ben Munisteri (MFAIA-VT 2014) is currently working on Frankenstein 2029, a multi-media experience melding visual art, theater, music, dance, and film produced by the collaborative efforts of over 80 students, teachers, administration, staff, and alumni at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. Based on and inspired by Mary Shelley’s novel, this project reaches both backwards and forwards in time, combining visual and thematic elements from the 1800s and a projected time in our not-so-distant future of the year 2029.
Theatre Exile
Current MFAIA-VT student Catharine Slusar has just completed work on Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Directed by Joe Canuso, with Theatre Exile from April 16-May 17, at Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey Place. Philadelphia
Justified Art!
Margaret DeLima (MFAIA-VT 2007) has a work in the exhibit Justified Art! at the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, W! from March 10- May 31, 2015. Justified Art! is a platform for visual artists to participate in the conversation inspired by “Justified Anger”, a Cap Times essay by Rev. Alex Gee detailing his personal experience with racial profiling and discrimination as an African American living in the Madison area.
Annis Karpenko with potter Lucy Doheny at their exhibit In the Beginning: Materia Prima at Uplands Gallery, March 2015.
Stems & Stones
Annis Karpenko (MFAIA-VT 2014) exhibited her rock-inspired paintings at Uplands Gallery in Quebec with potter Lucy Doheny. The show, In the Beginning: Materia Prima ran from March 29 – May 17. The rock work and a flower series, titled Stems & Stones, will be on exhibit again at Le Vieux Forgeron in Stanstead, Quebec from July 30 through August 16, 2015.
New Solo Album
Mary Edwards (MFAIA-VT 2007) is pleased to announce the release of her latest solo album, Everyday Until Tomorrow, which captures the essence of Modernism, ’60s film scores and classic pop. Available on: Bandcamp. This collection was conceived of “in terms of miniature movies (to paraphrase Burt Bacharach) in order to create pocket symphonies and an indelible, sprawling landscape of sound.” Felicity Fenton (MFAIA-VT 2007) recently interviewed Mary.
Photo from the production J Edgar Klezmer: Songs From My Grandmother’s FBI Files.
J Edgar Klezmer: Songs From My Grandmother’s FBI Files
J Edgar Klezmer: Songs From My Grandmother’s FBI Files, directed by current MFAIA-VT student Gwenyth Reitz runs at HERE in New York City from June 4th through the 7th. This musical documentary theater adventure is based on the true story of the late Dr. Adele Sicular, grandmother of drummer, lyricist/composer and bandleader Eve Sicular. Using documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act filing, plus a myriad of other archival findings and family gossip, this piece investigates the dealings of the FBI and Adele — pianist/psychiatrist/activist — during the McCarthy Era and beyond, through live theatre & band as well as multi-media projections. The six-woman cast features actress Yelena Shmulenson and lead vocalist Melissa Fogarty.
