Top: Katie Schwerin, Mt. Monadnock Labyrinth. Photo: Bill Whyte. Below: Images of the installation process. Photos: Reuben Radding, current MFAIA-VT student.
The Mt. Monadnock Labyrinth
Current MFAIA-VT student Katie Schwerin recently completed a public arts project titled, The Mt. Monadnock Labyrinth, a land art installation located near the Dillant-Hopkins Airport in Keene, NH.  The labyrinth design features the profile form of Mt. Monadnock, using boulders with a labyrinth walkway situated in front of the form. The largest boulder measures 7 feet in height and the whole installation measures approx. 50 feet x 100 feet.

Final bows and recognitions at the conclusion of JazzAntiqua’s 25th Anniversary Concert – Freedom! Jazz! Dance! Photos courtesy of Pat Taylor.
Los Angeles bestows JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble with a blessing!
Alumna Pat Taylor (MFAIA-WA ‘18) and her company JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble received a resolution/proclamation from the City of Los Angeles on their 25^th Anniversary, presented by Los Angeles City Council President Herb J. Wesson, Jr., and Deputy Albert Lord on December 1^st, 2018. Witness the ceremony here, video by Lia Metz.

Image left: Intersectional Identities roundtable participants: Ruby Lopez Harper (Director, Local Arts Services, Americans for the Arts), Judyie Al-Bilali (Assistant Professor of Performance and Theater for Social Change, Department of Theater, UMass), JuPong Lin (Program Director, MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts, Goddard College), Angela Yu (UMass Art History & Arts Management Certificate ’18). Photo: Courtesy of Terre Vandale. Image right: Women in Arts Leadership Symposium participants. Photo: Hannah Rechtschaffen
New Position and Women in Arts Leadership Symposium
Alumna Terre Vandale (MFAIA-VT ‘12) recently accepted the position of Program Coordinator for a national arts service organization, the Arts Extension Service at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Terre coordinated the Arts Extension Service’s first Women in Arts Leadership Symposium held on October 27^th, 2018. Nearly one hundred arts professionals, Five College students, and nationally recognized speakers gathered to crack open the conversation about what women recognize as the barriers to their leadership in the arts, and how these barriers can be mitigated and broken down. MFAIA Program Director, JuPong Lin, served on the Advisory Committee for the event and hosted a story-circle that set the tone of the day, one of building community and mutual effort to uplift each other. Roundtable discussions, interactive art installations, and workshops promoted an intersectional approach to coalition building, acknowledging that women’s experiences vary and the systemic oppression of women and non-binary people of color must be tackled in concert with gender equity.
Reflections from participants revealed the Symposium succeeded in fostering greater connection between women leaders, organizers and artists across different organizations and sectors, and across the Western Massachusetts region. The excitement around this inaugural event portends future events involving many more members of the community.
The Women in Arts Leadership Symposium was presented by the UMass Arts Extension Service, College of Humanities and Fine Arts, and HFA Advising and Career Center in partnership with UMass Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and the Center for Women and Community’s Women of Color Leadership Network. The Symposium was generously funded by Women for UMass Amherst, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and Radical Tea Towel.
Call for panelists
MFAIA-WA Faculty Advisor Petra Kuppers is looking for participants for a panel “Solarpunk Poems and Ecogenre Work: Speculative Embodiment and Practices of Hope“, which she is organizing at the next ASLE (Association for the Study for Literature and the Environment conference) in Davis, CA, in June 2019. Submissions are due December 15^th, 2018. Submit your proposals here.
Links for other works by Petra Kuppers:
Community artist Petra Kuppers explains community art. Episode 405/Segment 1, Detroit Performs TV
Theatre & Disability (Palgrave, 2017)
Ice Bar. Speculative Short Stories (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018)
Green Orion Woman (Dancing Girl Press, 2018)
Fellow of the Black Earth Institute (2018-2021)

Provincetown Commons, an arts and economic development center, with ribbon-cutting launch. Photos courtesy of Pete Hocking.
Provincetown Commons
MFAIA-VT Faculty Advisor Pete Hocking is a founder and the co-chair of the board of director of Provincetown Commons, an arts and economic development center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. After completing a major renovation of the former Provincetown Community Center, beginning in early 2019 The Commons will be home to seven studios for working creators, an exhibition space, and a co-working space for thirty-five people. The ribbon cutting for The Commons was on December 1^st, 2018, which included a visual art exhibition with 125 local artists that Pete co-curated. More information about The Commons is available on its website, https://www.commonsptown.org

User Not Found, Scout Book Series by Future Tense Books
User Not Found – An Essay by Felicity Fenton, published by Future Tense Books
Prompted by a sequence of discouraging internet encounters, alumna Felicity Fenton (MFAIA-VT ’07) attempts to free herself from the tendrils of an online world we know, but struggle to look away from. She evaluates the endless distractions of being tethered to her device and all that comes with it: email, spam, texting, taking pictures, and social media (aka “the walls”). In lyrical prose that swerves into dream-like mirage, hilarious thoughts, social observations, and unwavering sadness, User Not Found is a powerful essay that is all too relatable. User Not Found will be released November 29^th, 2018 with a publication party at Turn Turn Turn on Saturday, December 16^th at 6pm. Pre-order the essay here: Future Tense.

Suicide By Sunlight at Sundance 2019
Let’s celebrate with alumna Risha Rox (MFAIA-WA ’15), in her work as Key & Special Effects Makeup Artist, for the 2019 Sundance premier of Suicide By Sunlight!  A film by the wickedly talented writer/director Nikyatu Jusu about melanin protected, daywalking Black vampires, focuses on the hauntingly relatable story of vampiress Valentina (Natalie Paul). In true ground breaking fashion, Jusu’s work turns its gaze on the Black feminine in a way we don’t see enough of.
This film, which received the Through Her Lens Grant, was funded by Tribeca and CHANEL in collaboration with Pulse Films and Tribeca Film Institute. A powerful film by an almost all woman crew, including the Writer/Director, Co-writer, Director of Photography, Assistant Director, Producer, Costume Designer, MUA/SFX, Production Designer, Colorist, VFX.

Women’s Studio Workshop. Images courtesy of Risha Rox.
Woman’s Studio Workshop Residence
Risha Rox is also currently in a monthlong residence at the Woman’s Studio Workshop in the Papermaking Studio. Recipient of the generous Parent Residency Grant (made possible by support from the Sustainable Arts Foundation), for one month, Risha will be learning and exploring the ancient art of paper making. She is creating a series of pulp painting illustrations of stories from a favorite text of hers, Women Who Run with the Wolves.
The WSW mission is to operate and maintain an artists’ workspace that encourages the voice and vision of individual women artists, provides professional opportunities for artists at various stages of their careers, and promotes programs designed to stimulate public involvement, awareness, and support for the visual arts. WSW envisions a society where women’s visual art is integral to the cultural mainstream and permanently recorded in history.

Vermont Dance Alliance featured choreographers. Photos courtesy of Hanna Satterlee.
Vermont Dance Alliance celebrates its 3rd annual Winter Dance Gala!
The recently founded Vermont Dance Alliance is a registered non-profit that includes all genres of dance throughout the state of VT. Each Winter they co-produce, with a new VT theater, the “Winter Dance Gala,” a weekend event featuring a professional performance of up to six short works by VT choreographers of any genre. They also feature a public masterclass by the selected choreographers and a post-performance reception party meet and greet.  The Winter Dance Gala is presented to support its members and encourage them to share their work with new community audiences. Dates of upcoming events are December 8^th, 2018, February 16^th and 17^th, 2019.
Before VDA was incorporated, founder and alumna Hanna Satterlee (MFAIA-VT/WA ’16), set up meetings with dancers and choreographers across Vermont, to learn what they desired, and what they felt was missing in being a dance artist in this state. VDA heard loud and clear that having an annual performance for the public felt crucial to enable dancers to train and rehearse for an actual outcome and allow choreographers to stay focused in their creative work without the labour of publicly producing it.
Hemera Fellowship
Alumna Erin Lavelle (MFAIA-WA ’17), was awarded a Tending Space Fellowship for Artists from Hemera Foundation, which supports a community of artists committed to exploring contemplative practice and artistic creation.  Lavelle has chosen to use this fellowship to attend an immersive, silent meditation retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA to strengthen her practice in the Vipassana tradition and further cultivate her work, integrating mindfulness and art making in the public sphere. The fellowship begins in January 2019.
Gorgeous Stories, December 9 in Venice, CA
Current MFAIA-WA student Kindred Gottlieb will be performing a short autobiographical piece as part of Gorgeous Stories at the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Blvd, Venice, CA. The event occurs on Sunday December 9^th, 2018, at 2 pm.

Involuntary Painting Top Ten. Images courtesy of Jayme Aumann.
Involuntary Painting Top Ten Show!
Current MFAIA-WA student Jayme Aumann is producing an art show in Brooklyn, NY for her Practicum, occurring on December 5^th – 8^th and 12^th -15^th. The opening party is Saturday, December 8^th, 6pm-8pm at the KUSTERA Projects. The show features prints of the most popular posts of the last five years, based on ‘likes’, from Millree Hughes and Paul Conneally’s Facebook art project ‘Involuntary Painting’.

Woodruff Creates Web Series, to Debut in 2019
Alumna Amy Woodruff (MFAIA-VT ‘11) will be debuting a horror/sci-fi web series in early 2019, titled ShadowWood. In the series, a ranger at Louisiana’s Kisatchie National Forest must examine very odd things occurring in the over 800,000 acres of managed wilderness. The series is co-created by Keith Nash.
Woodruff is also currently appearing in the Hercules Radio Player’s weekly old-time radio show on WAMF 90.3 FM New Orleans (streaming at www.wamf.org). She has served as Director of East Jefferson High School’s theatre program for almost five years.

 
The Fine ART of Wellness
Alumna Misty Sol (MFAIA-VT ‘11) in partnership with Art Sanctuary Philadelphia presents an evening of socializing, vegan food and art making on December 15^th, 2018. Register here for the FREE event: The Fine ART of Wellness.

“Eclipse” published by The Future Fire
Alumna Misha Penton’s (MFAIA-WA ’13) flash story “Eclipse” is included in Making Monsters: A Speculative and Classical Anthology (September 2018) published by The Future Fire and The Institute of Classical Studies (UK), and edited by Emma Bridges and Djibril al-Ayad. More information about the volume and its availability from online and brick and mortar booksellers may be found here: The Future Fire. Visit Misha online: mishapenton.com
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
In the Ether by ARCOS, featuring Erica Gionfriddo. GIFs by Eliot Gray Fisher.
In the Ether and across the Great Lakes
ARCOS, the interdisciplinary performance group co-directed by alumnus Eliot Gray Fisher (MFAIA-WA ’15) presented its new transmedia work In the Ether at SHIFT | Dance Festival, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, September 29, 2018. The piece, featuring ARCOS co-director Erica Gionfriddo, is a looping, livestreaming performance delving into the mechanisms of social media and the ways in which it coerces us to performing particular identities online. After the festival, Fisher remained in a residency at the University of New Mexico, Oct 2–5, in the Theatre and Dance department and interdisciplinary center ARTS Lab (Arts, Research, Technology, and Science), followed by guest artist talks across the Great Lakes region, at the Department of Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan, Oct 9; the Film, Video, New Media, and Animation department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Oct 10; and the Theater and Dance department at Macalester College in the Twin Cities, Oct 12, where he was able to catch up with alumna Erin Lavelle (MFAIA-WA ’17) and hear about the culmination of her exciting project Something Good.

Guerrilla Girls on Tour. Image courtesy of jen berger.
Guerrilla Girls on Tour comes to Vermont!
Alumna jen berger (MFAIA-VT ’12), hosts one of the original Guerrilla Girls for a poster-making workshop on October 29^th, and a presentation at the Fleming Museum of Art, on October 30^th, 2018.
Push/Pushback, an Art & Activism Workshop addresses issues affecting you within your community, in the nation, or across the globe in this 2½-hour poster-making workshop with author/activist Aphra Behn of Guerrilla Girls/Guerrilla Girls on Tour.
The workshop begins with a discussion of what makes a good piece of protest art and the evolution and philosophy behind some of the Guerrilla Girls’ and Guerrilla Girls On Tour’s most famous posters and street theater actions. Participants move on to then form small groups and work collaboratively to create a new poster. Topics in this workshop include the art of collaboration, how to gather stats, generate ideas, fund projects, ensure response, and guarantee momentum. “Turn Your Attitude to Action” also sheds light on the use of storytelling to weave together the fabric of a movement designed to effect change.
SPECIAL TALK: PUSH/PUSHBACK — 9 Steps to Make a Difference with Art and Activism
with the Guerrilla Girls on Tour
Donna Kaz was an aspiring actress until she pulled a gorilla mask over her head and became Aphra Behn of the Guerrilla Girls. Guerrilla Girls on Tour are feminist activist artists dedicated to generating a conversation about the current state of women in the arts. In this humorous and enlightening interactive talk, Aphra Behn details how the actions of one person can push against the status quo. The talk culminates in a motivational step-by-step conclusion to inspire audience members to think of themselves as citizen artists who have the power to change the world!

Navigating and Re-Routing- A Walk Unafraid Project. Photos courtesy of jen berger.
Navigating and Re-Routing- A Walk Unafraid Project
As part of the Feverish World Symposium, A Symposium and Convergence in Burlington, Vermont, October 20^th – 22nd, 2018, artists Gabrielle Senza and alumna jen berger come together to create an embodied experience of what prevents us from and pushes us towards Walking Unafraid. This installation, Navigating and Re-Routing- A Walk Unafraid Project, is an immersive experience within an 8’x8’x8’ tent. An audio recording, exploring relevant questions, will play on a loop. In an era where media is as much a part of our days as eating and breathing, using an intimate platform, such as audio and handwritten texts, can give participants an opportunity to contemplate some questions that are on our minds.
The Feverish World Tent City Commons, which consisted of 40+ TentWorks installations responding creatively to the idea of a Feverish World. They were found in various sites on the main campus of the University of Vermont and in the city of Burlington.

Album Artwork: Xander Naylor. Photo: Yuan Liu.
Xander Naylor releases latest album, Transmission
When an inexplicable injury rendered experimental/jazz guitarist and composer current MFAIA-VT student Xander Naylor unable to play his guitar, he was forced to explore the relationship between his body, his brain, and music.  Showcasing a vast array of textures, approaches and techniques, Transmission defies the categorization of our current keyword-based system with roots firmly planted in jazz forms, yet pulling from elements of chamber works, free improvisation, metal, and punk. On Transmission, Naylor shows his hard and fast practices of daily transformation while embracing unity of form and intention. Transmission is available for streaming at: xandernaylor.bandcamp.com

Image courtesy of Pat Graney.
Works-in-Progress Showing of ATTIC
For current MFAIA-WA student Pat Graney’s main thesis project, The Pat Graney Company will be hosting a Works-in-Progress Showing of the new work ATTIC at YAW Theater Space in Seattle (Georgetown), on Sunday, December 9^th from 2:00 – 3:30 pm.
ATTIC is the third work in the House of Mind triptych, exploring women, memory and the concept of Death and the Afterlife. Using Carl Jung’s model of a house representing different aspects of the self, the first work in the trilogy, House of Mind, represented the main floor of the house and dealt with the accumulation and the dissolution of memory. The second work, Girl Gods (winner of 2 Bessie Awards), was the basement of the house and dealt with the idea of women and rage. ATTIC, the third and final work in the series, is the top floor and deals with death and visions of the Afterlife.
Three new members of the group joining long-time artists Jenny Peterson and Sruti Desai are; Lauren Linder, Dominique See and Danielle Doelle. The Works-in-Progress showing will feature movement work explored in the Fall of 2018 with sections of readings and showing visual art work created during the rehearsal period.
A discussion with the audience will follow the event, as well as discussion during the showing.
This event is free and open to the public.
WHAT: A Works-In-Progress Showing of ATTIC, third work in the House of Mind triptych.
WHEN: Sunday, December 9^th, 2018, 2:00 – 3:30pm. Admission is free.
WHERE: YAW Theater,(Georgetown, Seattle), 6520 5th Ave S Seattle, WA 98108
WHO: Contact: info@patgraney.org for more information
206-329-3705

Artist-in-residence Laiwan with (L-R) Isabel Janowski, Dorothy Yan, Tara Ivanochko, Elias Braunstein (BACK), Hannah Avenant (FRONT), Lutairan Chen. Photo: Laiwan
Artists-in-Residence at UBC
Recently, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Curatorial Assistant Gregory Elgstrand wrote on Artist-in-residence programs at the University of British Columbia. He notes their potential to generate new approaches to collective knowledge production as distinctive as the art they produce. Vancouver artist and MFAIA-WA Faculty Advisor Laiwan is presently winding down a residency on campus with the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science as Vancouver artist Holly Schmidt’s residency with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is in nascent form. To read the full article visit Artists-in-residence at UBC.

Letters To (N)on Com as part of Archival Intuitions & Annotations at the Belkin Art Gallery, UBC. Photos: Laiwan.
Archival Intuitions & Annotations – Artist Responses
Laiwan partook in Archives Week at the Belkin Art Gallery at UBC, Saturday November 3^rd, 2018, from 1pm to 2.30pm, with colleagues Elizabeth MacKenzie and Cindy Mochizuki. Her presentation Letters To (N)on Com, included working with typewriters, projecting photographic slides, inspired by the archival fonds of the (N)on Commercial Gallery, founded in 1984, housed at the Belkin Art Gallery Archives, encouraging public participation engaged in playful letter writing back to the future.
The description for Artists Respond to Intuition Commons notes: “As part of Independent Archives Week, we ask the question, how do we respond to archives both public and private? In this come-and-go event, artists Laiwan, Elizabeth MacKenzie and Cindy Mochizuki contribute three individual responses to the Belkin Gallery Archives and in relation to artist Christine D’Onofrio’s online project, Intuition Commons. The responses are open for viewing, listening and conversations throughout the event. Refreshments are served.”
Artists Respond was also activated for the Intuition Commons project, a growing, interactive database of female influences that destabilizes the bias to individualism in art. Projected in a gallery installation, contributors nominate their influencers with visual connections, overlapping stories, keywords, and links, creating a rhizomatic archive. Intuition Commons is part of the exhibition Beginning with the Seventies: Collective Acts (September 4-December 2, 2018) curated by Lorna Brown.
Ten Different Things Catalogue Download
Laiwan’s project from the Spring of 2018 Mobile Barnacle City, commissioned by the Ten Different Things Project at the Emily Carr University in Vancouver, is included in the publication that is available for PDF download here. The print version is also available for order here.
Ten Different Things Project Publication. Edited by Kate Armstrong
English
Perfect-bound Paperback, 110pp, full colour
21.59 cm x 21.59 cm
ISBN 978-0-9878354-4-4
November 2018
Produced on the traditional unceded Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.