Alice Guareschi

Alice Guareschi was born in 1976 in Parma (Italy), and currently lives and works in Milano. She graduated in philosophy at the University of Bologna. In 2005 she was resident artist at the Palais de Tokyo’s Le Pavillon in Paris, in 2008 she was awarded with the Young Italian Art’s grant promoted by the Castello di Rivoli Contemporary Art Museum, in 2011/2012 shewas the recipient of the Italian Atelier at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Solo shows include Galleria Alessandro De March (Milano), Galleria Sonia Rosso (Torino), Castello di Rivoli (Torino) and Galerie DREI (Cologne). Group shows include Exit. Nuove geografie dell’arte in Italia,Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Torino), The Final Cut, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Aperto per Lavori in Corso, PAC (Milano), XV Quadriennale, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Roma), Disarming Matter, Dunkers Kulturhus (Helsingborg), Fantasmata, Arge/Kunst Galleria Museo (Bolzano),Il Belpaese dell’Arte, Gamec (Bergamo), This and There, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard (Paris), Autoritratti, MAMbo (Bologna), Andata e Ricordo: souvenir de voyage, Mart (Rovereto).

http://aliceguareschi.it

Alon Cohen

Alon Cohen is a producer, composer/sound designer and a drummer. He has collaborated extensively with artists across multiple disciplines – music, film & video, dance-movement, theater and art installations.  The producer of the seminal album Shake Off The Dust… Arise by Grammy  nominee musician Matisyahu, Sierra Leone superstars Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew, hip hop artist Y-Love, Ta-Shma and others. He has collaborated internationally with a wide variety of artists, including Sting (Remixes, Universal 2004) Jazz virtuoso Andy Statman, The Lyricist Lounge, Easy Star and others. In addition, he conceptualized, produced, recorded and perform numerous musical projects, including Forgiveness: Ancient cantorial music soundscapes of electronic and ambient music (Rawkus Records 1996, JMG 2006); Riddim’tion: Mystical music of Chassidut (12Tribe 2010); Bring Back Reality: A musical multimedia performance and others. He is also an accomplished drummer who played and toured with major and indie artists around the world playing wide variety of music styles. He is the co-founder and the creative vision behind production company and label 12 Tribe Sound. Alon is a graduate of The Jerusalem Art School where he studied film, theater and art history. He is a founding member of the Israeli band Nosei HaMigbaat (The Top Hat Carriers) 1987-1992 which played a major role in the emergence of Israeli musical counter-culture and inspired documentaries, tribute events, academic papers, and a novel. Film & Video credits for soundtrack and sound design, including the documentary Awake Zion (U.S, Jamaica 2012) The Chosen Ones (US, Germany 2009) Postcard Sky (Israel 1998) Submerged (US 2013) The Diamond Sky Tiffany & co at the Guggenheim Museum (NYC 2014)

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/alon-cohen-mn0000747580/credits

Andrea Elliott

Andrea Elliott is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. In 2013, her five-part series, “Invisible Child,” followed the life of an 11-year-old homeless girl in Brooklyn, winning the George Polk award, among other honors. The series brought new attention to the plight of poor children, prompting city officials to remove more than 400 children from substandard shelters. Before focusing on poverty, Ms. Elliott reported extensively the lives of Muslims in post- 9/11 America. Ms. Elliott’s three-part series, “An Imam in America,” was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. Her cover stories for The New York Times Magazine include investigative profiles of a young jihadist from Alabama, a preacher trained at Yale and a groundbreaking report on Moroccan suicide bombers that was a finalist for the 2008 National Magazine Award for Reporting. Ms. Elliott’s work has been honored by the Overseas Press Club, the Scripps Howard awards, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists and the New York Press Club. Her writing has been featured in the collections “Best Newspaper Writing” and “Islam for Journalists: A Primer on Covering Muslim American Communities in America.” Ms. Elliott came to The Times from the Miami Herald, where she was a metropolitan reporter. Raised in Washington, D.C. by a Chilean mother and an American father, she graduated from Occidental College and earned a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She and her husband, the journalist Tim Golden, live with their two daughters in New York City. Ms. Elliott is currently working on a book.

Annie Wang

Annie Wang is a freelance dancer and choreographer based in New York.  She received her dance education from the Boitsov School of Classical Ballet and from the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance.  She has performed work by Petipa, Graham, Duncan, Bill T. Jones, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch, Elizabeth Boitsov, Cheryl Barnes, Marshall Mitchell, Leyya Tawil of Dance Elixir, Lauren Camp of MADart Productions, Timothy Kochka, and Samantha Carmean.  Her choreography has been shown at the Chocolate Factory Theater, the WestFest dance festival, and several EFSD showings at Alvin Ailey and the Martha Graham Center.  Most recently Annie completed filming at Gowanus Arts and Production location, the Green Building, for her first dance film, “Echo”, which was funded through a Kickstarter campaign that she launched in December 2013.

http://hyperspacedance.org

Benjamin Heller

Benjamin Heller is a cross disciplinary artist, blurring the traditional boundaries of medium in order to uncover newfound vitality in their intersections. Drawing from a diverse background and training in visual arts, photography, dance, and physical improvisation, his works are rooted in the movement of the body and the creation of intimate environments that can be entered, opening a space for discovery via the body, senses, and the imagination. His photography, video and sculptural performance works have been shown at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Brooklyn Museum, Wave Hill, ICP International Center of Photography, Robin Rice Gallery, Eyebeam, New York Foundation for the Arts, Gallery 151, Chashama, Chair and the Maiden, and Honey Space Gallery in New York. In 2013 he was selected for the Bronx Museum AIM residency program and Biennial Exhibition.  He has created participatory site-specific Installations “Camera Obscura for Wild Life” in Sonoma CA, “The Vital Contour of U+US” a commissioned permanent installation in New Orleans, and a commissioned interactive installation “Inverted Constellation” as a visiting artist at the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania AU. Collaborative dance and sculpture projects include “A Place of Sun”  at The Baryshnikov Arts Center with Company Stefanie Batten Bland in Paris and New York, and The Blind Men and the Elephant with choreographer Julie Bour with upcoming performances at New York Live Arts.

http://www.benjaminheller.com

Ian Burns

Ian Burns’ kinetic dioramas and video feed works have engaged with subjects as diverse as the war in Iraq, TV culture, colonialism, and art history. Using plain wood and primitive electronics, and often incorporating household objects and other assorted junk, Burns creates absurdly convoluted mechanisms whose purpose is to produce a simple moving image on a screen, either by live video fed to a monitor, or as a shadow theater-like diorama. Fascinating and darkly humorous, Burns’ works directly explore the gap between how images are constructed and how they are consumed.

http://www.ianburns.net

Ingrid Lamia

Ingrid Lamia is a writer, an educator and the Head of Grade for Grade 2 at Avenues: The World School in New York City where she writes curriculum, coaches teachers, and meets regularly with parents and fellow school administrators. Before moving to Avenues, Ingrid spent over a decade at P.S. 89 in Battery Park City. In her time there, she taught first and second grades, served as a staff developer and worked with small groups of older elementary school students in math and reading. She holds a MS in early childhood and elementary education from Bank Street College of Education.

Ira Eduardovna

Ira Eduardovna was born and raised in Uzbekisan until she immigrated to Israel in 1990. She currently lives and works in New York. She holds an MFA from Hunter college NY and a BFA from Tel Aviv university. Ira’s work has been shown internationally in Israel, Europe and USA including a solo show at Momenta Art Brooklyn, Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia, and a solo show at Braverman gallery in Tel Aviv. Group shows include the Israel museum in Jerusalem, Bat Yam Museum of Contemporary Art (Israel), Postamsters gallery NY, Leslie Heller gallery NY, Fridman gallery NY, RCA gallery of Art London, Helen day Art center Vermont, Loop video art festival Barcelona among many others. She is the recipient of 2012 Artis exhibition grant and The Ostrovsky family fund for experimental film in 2012 and 2013. Ira was an artist in residence at FUTURA in Prague in 2013 as well as Art OMI in summer 2014. She is currently an artist in residence at Smack Mellon residency in Brooklyn.

http://www.iragallery.com

Jennifer Gilmore

Jennifer Gilmore latest novel The Mothers, was published by Scribner in April 2013. She is also the author of Golden Country, a 2006 New York Times NotableBook, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Jewish Book Award, and Something Red, a New York Times Notable Book.  Her work has appeared magazines, anthologies and journals including The Atlantic, Bomb, BookForum, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, Salon, Tin House, Vogue and the Washington Post.  She has been a MacDowell Colony fellow and has taught writing and literature at Barnard College, Cornell University, New York University and Eugene Lang College at the the New School. Currently she teaches at Princeton University and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

http://jennifergilmore.net

Kristi Sword

Kristi Sword is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her background as a jeweler allows her to see the micro-universe that exists under a magnifying loupe, revealing tiny metal landscapes. Because of its small scale and intricacy her process is lengthy and labor intensive. Patterns and grids have become a constant theme within her work, beginning with a rigid platform and then examining how it can be collapsed into something that retains the material’s original properties but is redefined. She works in drawings, sculpture, objects and jewelry, animation and installation.

http://kristisword.com

Laura Trantham Smith

Laura Trantham Smith is a poet and scholar living in Baltimore, MD. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin while studying poetry in the summer at Naropa’s Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics. Recent creative and scholarly works appear in PANK, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.,and Reflections: Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy. She has served as a Poet in the Schools in Philadelphia, PA and Austin, TX and has led gender and sexuality writing workshops at the International Drag King Extravaganza, the Queer Texas Conference, and OutYouth. She teaches contemporary American literature, African American literature, and creative writing at Stevenson University.

Lex Braes

Lex Braes is a Brooklyn-based, Scottish artist represented by Ringel Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany and Show Room Gowanus, New York. His work spans three decades and has been exhibited widely across Europe and in the U.S. Braes also teaches in the department of Architecture at Pratt Institute. Recent exhibitions, Galerie der Moderne, Munich 2010, Ringel Galerie, Düsseldorf 2010, Show Room Gallery 2012, Sideshow Gallery 2014, National Academy Museum, 2012. Braes has enjoyed residencies at Yaddo, Villa Waldberta, Munich, Triangle NY and most recently at Vermont Studio Center. Collaborations include (Re-doing) Allan Kaprow’s 1959 “18 happenings in 6 parts” along with Coryl Krane-Kaprow, Deitch Studios, LIC NY Performa07. Live floor-set painting with Eve Best’s Shakespeare sessions NYC 2010. “Territorial Rights” collaboration with Salwa Aleryani through after her artists visiting visa to US was denied, Aleryani unable to participate collaborated with Braes through email and phone communication, together re-defining temporary studio practice and boundary conditions as a part of the Triangle 2012 Workshop Program. Braes also collaborated with Freya Powell in a piece titled Loving Is Repeating, an accordion book that explores the structure of a memory and an exploration of how every time a memory is recalled it changes slightly, new details are added, or moments fade away. Braes is currently involved in a collaboration that he’ll work on at the Marble House in June of 2014, involving improv brush drawing with dancer Annie Wang. Previous to Wang he did a collaboration with dance performer Kayoko Nakajima in the fall of 2012. Recent publications include Lex Braes Works From 1986 – 2009 Monograph published by Michael Langen, Berlin 2010, The Grace of the Birch, New Stobhill Hospital Collection, Glasgow, 2011, Art Slant interview by Charlotte Jensen, Routine at Show Room NY 2012, and Mnemosyne Atlas, 2013 by Freya Powell.

http://www.lexbraes.com/#

Marcus Kenney

Marcus Kenney (b. 1972) was born and raised in rural Louisiana and lives and works in Savannah, Georgia. Kenney earned an M.F.A. in photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He works in many mediums including sculpture, painting and photography. Kenney has exhibited in museums, institutions, galleries and art fairs internationally, including Tel Aviv, Paris, London, Montréal, New York, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Miami and Portland. His work has been featured and reviewed in Art in America, New American Painting, Artpapers, New York Times, Boston Globe, ArtVoices, Antlanta Journal Constitution, New York Art Magazine, and Art News. Ahigh quality monograph ofhisworks was published by SCADand has been distributed worldwide by DAP.

http://www.marcuskenney.com

Maria Batlle

Maria Batlle brings in a strong mix of arts and business from her background of more than 10 years as the Creative Excellence Manager for MasterCard Dominican Republic and Audio/Visual Artist. Her “Power of Illustration Business” workshop, where Fine Arts students learn how to use their artistic skills for business, taught at The Altos de Chavón School Of Design affiliated with Parsons The New School, got international brand Yellow Tail as a real/present client. As Founder and CEO of “The Muse Seek Project” -a Participatory Action Research Lab through music, art and innovation, focused on breaking barriers between Music and Deaf communities- Maria was invited by Microsoft as a speaker to the conference “Change & Innovation 2014”. Inspired by her summer 2013 experience at the Yo Yo Ma’s institute at Harvard University understanding how learning takes place in and through the arts, Maria’s artistic performance in which she lived the life of a person that can not hear or speak for 2 months was selected by the 2013 National Biennial of Visual Arts in the Dominican Republic. Maria is also the founder & CEO of the The ARTicle, a digital magazine about lifestyle and culture of artists translated to Spanish, Haitian Creole and English.

http://www.themuseseekproject.com

Megan Mayhew Bergman

Megan Mayhew Bergman was raised in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. She now lives on a small farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont with her veterinarian husband Bo, two daughters, four dogs, three cats, two goats, and a handful of chickens. Megan’s first collection, Birds of a Lesser Paradise, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writer’s Selection, as well as an Indie Next Pick , Amazon Top Ten pick, and BookBrowse Editor’s selection for March.  The book earned a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly;  O Magazine included BOLP as a Must-Read book for March. Huffington Post selected BOLP as one of their Best Books of 2012. Scribner will publish Megan’s new collection, Almost Famous Women, on January 6, 2015. She occasionally teaches literature at Bennington College and serves on the Board of Directors for the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont. She writes a regular sustainability column for Salon. Meganstudied anthropology at Wake Forest University, and completed graduate degrees at Duke University (MA) and Bennington College (MFA). She was a fiction scholar and fellow at Breadloaf and received a fellowship from the Millay Colony for the Arts.

http://www.mayhewbergman.com

Miya Ando

Miya Ando is an American visual artist recognized for her paintings, sculptures, and installation artworks exhibited in museums, galleries, and public spaces worldwide.

Ando’s work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at The Asia Society Museum, Houston; The Noguchi Museum, New York; Savannah College Of Art and Design Museum, Savannah; The Nassau County Museum, Roslyn Harbor; and The American University Museum, Washington DC. Her work has also been included in recent group exhibitions at The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Haus Der Kunst, Munich; The Bronx Museum; and The Queens Museum of Art, NY. Ando’s work is included in the public collections of LACMA; The Nassau County Museum; The Corning Museum of Glass; The Detroit Institute of Arts; The Luft Museum; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art; The Museum of Art and History; among other public institutions as well as in numerous private collections. Ando has been the recipient of several grants and awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant Award, and has produced several public commissions, most notably a thirty-foot-tall sculpture built from World Trade Center steel for Olympic Park in London to mark the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, for which she was nominated for a DARC Award in Best Light Art Installation. Ando was also commissioned to create artwork for the historic Philip Johnson Glass House, New Canaan, CT. The artist holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, studied East Asian Studies at Yale University and apprenticed with a Master Metalsmith in Japan.

http://www.miyaando.com

Monika Bravo

Monika Bravo examines the notion of perception by questioning whether the world we live in, is but a mental construction; her artistic practice is used as a tool to decipher the laws that govern the world we live in. With this inquiry, she creates objects by incorporating still, moving images, sound and interactivity to generate situations where she can materialize and communicate her emotional state. Bravo wants to challenge the audience’s own perception of what they consider real by generating a platform where they are induced to connect by exploring, interacting and at times by focusing on an object-place-scene for a duration of time in a manner that is both meditative and investigative. Her work has been shown at Sternesen Museum, Oslo, Museo de Arte, Banco de la Republica, Bogota, Colombia, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Seoul International Biennial of New Media Art, SITE Santa Fe; Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Caja CAB de Burgos, Spain, El Museo del Barrio, and New Museum in NY. Her videos have been screened at MOMA, Anthology Film Archives, Brooklyn Museum, New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kitchen, Museo di Arte Contemporaneo di Roma, the New York video festival at the Lincoln Center & the Americas Society in NY, L.A MOCA, Tate Britain, Museo Reina Sofia.

http://www.monikabravo.com

Mya Guarnieri

Mya Guarnieri is journalist and writer based in Israel/Palestine. Her reportage and commentary has been published in The New York Times, The Boston Review, Le Monde Diplomatique, Al Jazeera English, The Daily Beast, Guernica and many other international outlets. A graduate of Florida State University’s Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, Guarnieri’s fiction has been published in The Kenyon Review and has been featured as a Story of the Week in Narrative. Her essays have appeared in The Jewish Quarterly and Slate. Guarnieri currentlyblogs at +972.

http://www.myaguarnieri.com

Nick Lamia

Nick Lamia is an award-winning artist whose work includes drawing, painting, printmaking, installation and sculpture. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship as well as residencies at Wave Hill, The MacDowell Colony, the Robert Blackburn Print Workshop and the Triangle Artists Association where he is now a member of the board of directors. 500 of his small-scale drawings were included in the inaugural Bronx Museum Biennial in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include “Coppice” at Jason McCoy Gallery in New York and “Greenhouse,” for which he created a group of site-specific wall works for the Richard Meier building at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.

http://www.nicklamia.com

Nurit Bar Shai

Nurit Bar-Shai is a multimedia artist working at the interface between art, science and technology. She was exhibited at the OK-Center in Linz, The National Art Center Tokyo, SESI Gallery in Sao Paulo, the Science Gallery in Dublin, The State Museum of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki and The Center for Digital Art in Israel. Bar-Shai received a Prix Ars Electronica 2007 Honorary Mention, the 11th Japan Media Arts Festival Jury Award, ETC Finishing Funds award, funded by NYSCA, ARTIS – Contemporary Israeli Art Fund Grant, and was commissioned by Turbulence.org, with funds from The Greenwall Foundation and with funds from The Jerome Foundation. Bar-Shai is the cofounder and the Art and Culture Director at GENSPACE, a citizen’s lab in Brooklyn NY.

http://www.nuritbarshai.com/objectivity/