Roxanne with her best friend Bob

I learn by watching people; by letting them teach me through their stories. When people tell stories they use their voices, some with raspy growls and others nasally wines, as well as their body language and eyes. By observing all of these forms of communication, I have learned how to read people, an important ability for my creative practice. Being able to read a person is more than foreseeing what they are thinking and feeling, it is also about communicating with them. As a portrait photographer, I believe that every portrait I create should be an intimate glimpse into the life and character of the person I am photographing. In order to that, I have learned how to communicate with people through watching them tell their stories, by embracing how they bring their stories to life, and relating to their stories in any way I can.

A lesson I have taught myself, is that the majority of my life as an artist will be lived gathering knowledge about my creative practice. I learned that lesson through the experiences of my creative practice. There have been times when I met with a person to photograph them, but ended up not photographing them at all. Instead, we sat and talked, or rather they talked and I listened. The fact that I did not take a single photo during those times does not matter, because they taught me more than the act of taking a photo. People in my life have named me a story teller, but I like to think of myself as a story listener. I believe that I have to know how to listen to a story to tell one.

On more than one occasion, someone has asked me where a person in one of my portraits is from; they can’t help but wonder where they have seen them before.   More often than not, they are mistaken by their feeling that they have met the person before, but sometimes they have. I once photographed a friend covered in black concrete dye, and hung his portrait in a show he was able to attend. As we stood in the gallery together, a woman walked over to us and asked who the man covered in black was. I laughed, and then pointed at my friend. The woman laughed as well, with disbelief. The portrait I created of him reflected more than his physicality, it reflected his soul, and that is all I ever hope for when I create a portrait.

The intimate connections between me and those I photograph are the connections I want those who view my work to feel. I want to remind people how disconnected the people in our world have become from one another, a world replacing bank tellers with ATMs, and in-person conversations with text messaging. People pass one another without a glance, as though a person is as common as an abandoned piece of trash on the street. If someone can look at my work and feel compelled to connect with just one person afterwards, then there are at least two more people in the world who may not feel so lonely.

Malley Weber

I am a potter, a ceramic artist/sculptor, and a teacher. My work is elemental and deeply intertwined with my life. I work with the earth in the timeless medium of clay.

I dig my clay by hand near the Androscoggin river 20 miles from my home. The gathering of this clay is a part of my ongoing exploration of ritual. I have made a conscious choice to utilize local materials and fire my work in the most ecologically sound method I can.

“The Garden of Life and Death” earthenware clay wall hanging with terra sigilatta slip, electric fired to cone 04 2 ̋ x 8 ̋ x 9

I am a studio potter. My work is made by hand. I throw clay on the wheel and hand-build functional and sculptural work. I utilize clay as a vehicle for expres-    sion of deep emotional grieving. I dig into the clay and I tap into deep emotional sources. I use the power behind these emotions to unearth age-old questions. I have many questions about grief, death, and loss and the cultural norms and needs of expressing deep emotion.

“Female Mourner” earthenware clay sculpture, electric fired to cone 04 18 ̋ x 12 ̋ x 12

My explorations of death have led me to poetry, performance, and ritual. My performances investigate a new very direct style of communication regarding loss. I seek to understand the relation-ship between Life and Death.

“Day of the Dead (Dad’s Funeral)” performance harlow Gallery, hallowell Maine 10/10

left:“The Garden of Life and Death” earthenware clay wall hanging with terra sigilatta slip,

electric fired to cone 04 2 ̋ x 8 ̋ x 9 ̋

above:“Day of the Dead (Dad’s Funeral)” performance harlow Gallery, hallowell Maine 10/10

right: “Female Mourner” earthenware clay sculpture, electric fired to cone 04 18 ̋ x 12 ̋ x 12

Bridgette Mongeon- With professor Richard Hathaway

I have always been drawn to the human form, especially the face. I strive to capture more than a likeness. Through my sculpture work I seek the essence of an individual. I create a memory or time in a life through portraiture of both the living and deceased. A masterful portrait does not come from the artist alone; it is a collaboration among artist, subject, and those who revere or love the subject. The emotional investment of these people helps to bring each work to life.

I see the world in the face of the elderly
and the heavens in the face of a child.
 
Bridgette Mongeon-Sculptor

My most recent studio work incorporates both traditional and digital processes of sculpting:tra-digi art. The perpetual advancements and the desire to streamline my creative process fuels me.

There is a healing and an educational process that I desire with all of my creative endeavors. In my writing and podcasts, I share vulnerability, experiences, both my own and others, and conversations with the genuine hope that they will assist others in healing. I strive to help both myself and others obtain a fulfilled life infused with creative passion and curiosity and bringing to light new processes that enhance productivity. This healing and educational practice is integral to all of my creative endeavors.

COLLABORATIONS

I’m seeking opportunities to educate groups through speaking engagments and workshops on teh following topics

• Marketing in the Arts
• Sculpting
• New Technology in traditional Studio
• Digital Sculpting
• Writing
• Spiritual and Motivational topics.

WEBSITES

Contact

Bridgette@creativesculpture.com

Tom Hansell

I like to get my hands dirty. My work grows from the rural communities where I live and work, and collaboration is an important element of my artistic process. As a result, my community has become my studio.

I am interested in combining ecological principles of interdependence with organizing strategies that build community power and cultural equity. Most of all I want my work to deeply impact the individuals and communities that I work with – creating fair and just public policies, opening peoples minds to new opportunities, or simply making people laugh and think at the same time.

“The Sunbuggy” solar panel, galvanized steel, plastic wheels, battery, voltage inverter, electrical wiring, automotive lighting, LCD video monitor 36 ̋ x 38 ̋ x 36

My body of work includes documentary video and audio about the efforts of Appalachian coalfield communities to achieve economic and environmental justice. I have also created a series of self-powered video installations that create their own electricity through sunlight and motion. I am currently developing a set of site-specific installations exploring the natural and human history of the New river – the oldest river in North America.

“Greenhouse effect” electric meter globe, forged steel, native appalachian plants, and coal 18 ̋ x 14”x 14

CONTACT

thansell@GMail.CoM

COLLABORATION

WEBSITES AND LINKS TO OTHER MATERIALS

Tammy Parks

My art is my immediate and thoughtful response to the world. Currently, I am a public artist working in glass, tile, paint, clay, and cement. I have begun to incorporate nontraditional materials into my work as I am becoming more conscious of the stuff left behind by others and myself. I focus on how I can consume less and reuse more in the creation of my art.

Washington Street Community Mural

Art, created individually or collectively, can revitalize communities by fighting the homogenization of identity fostered by institutional domination of culture and values through placeshaping, the concrete artistic expressions that celebrate and make plain the shared culture, geography, history and stories that make up the identity of its people. I am working to decentralize art from institutions and impart its knowledge, experience and participation to those  who know little or nothing of its history and power and to those others who feel alienated from art due to an emphasis on elitism and marketing. What exists in the space that lies between “public” and “art” is the embodiment of a dialogue between artist and audience, a conversation that takes place or comes to be in a community of social consciousness, commitment and collaboration.

Appalachian Sunset - stained glass

CONTACT

tparks@pCVa.us

COLLABORATION

WEBSITES AND LINKS TO OTHER MATERIAL

kahlil almustafa

i am a poet. This does not mean I do poetry. It does not even speak specifically to the fact that I write poetry, perform poetry, teach poetry workshops, and publish books of poetry. When i say, “i am a poet,” I am claiming a tradition as old as human breath with all the blessings and responsibilities that come with it. For me, being a poet is about more than participating in the painstaking, brick-by-brick craft of meaning-making, known as writing poetry. poetry is my life’s practice.

Since fifteen-year-old me discovered the poetry of Langston Hughes, poetry has been the way I engage with the world. poetry is medicine, psalm, prayer, ritual, song, spell, story, theory, and therapy. My life is marked by poems. each poem a threshold I have crossed toward understanding, claiming, declaring, forgiving, honoring. All my poems are love poems. It is a love of self, of my family, of my community, of ancestors and people who I do not know, that urges me to write and share my work.

kahlil almustafa, January 10, 2010 - Culture Shock, New York, NY. (photo by Claudia Acosta)

In the tradition of Black Arts Movement poets Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Amiri Baraka, my poetry is composed to be in service of the growth and development of people. My poetry is explicitly political. In the oratory tradition of Malcolm X, I use my poetry to dismantle the dominant narratives. My hope is that if I can make these limiting narratives unten- able in people’s minds, We can co-create new stories that serve us.

For a decade, I have walked the world as a poet. Sharing poetry is as much about sharing the gift of human expression as it is sharing my personal stories. I read my poems in cafes, churches, public schools,senior citizen centers, prisons, street cor-ners, 90th birthday parties, political rallies and of course open mics. I come to each community as an ambassador from an unrealized world where justice prevails.

My urgent mission: infuse the world with hope and inspiration through poetry. Today, my artistic creation takes longer breaths and cycles. I am developing my practice to be in balance with my work as an educator and my life as a husband and engaged member of many communities.

WE This new dream will be human
And the maps of WE
will no longer have borders
The fabric of our flags
will no longer be used to stab soil or sky
Instead WE will be patches
in a quilt of stone and stories
     sewn together
WE are America’s dream
And we have always been here
willing to push our hopes
to the borders of our skin and wear our dreams on the
     outside
Do not call us intelligent
We are merely committed to
memory merely willing to seek god
in photographs, in fingertips, in
film, in earth
in dance, in laughter, in children,
     in eyes, in silence
It is with our whole lives we vote our work
our only currency
our love a prayer
We dare to dream this human
     dream
just in case god was WE all along

CONTACT

kahlilalmustafa@Ggmail.com

COLLABORATIONS

WEBSITES AND OTHER LINKS

Nambi Kell

I am an art practioner. As a professional actress and playwright, my work has been presented at some of the top theatrical venues in the United States as well as internationally. As an actress, I am drawn to new plays, particularly new plays which integrate movement, music, image, and the written word. As a playwright, my writing tends to be incredibly poetic, juxtaposing image and sound within the language. It is my greatest joy to be able to bring my multi-disciplinarian expertise to the rehearsal room and performance. Thematically, my work in both disciplines seems to be consumed with the idea of justice. What is justice? How is it served? Where does justice exist, and how does justice fail us? It is one of my greatest fascinations to interrogate the idea of justice and where does it live and breathe in the modern storytelling world.

"TEN SQUARE” - Nambi as “Talia”- MPAACT & Pegasus Players Theatre, 2009-2010 season

Professionally, my objectives are to seamlessly integrate various mediums of artistic expression in the context of my work as an actress and playwright, and, to incorporate ancient mythological storytelling elements in my work of modern myth making, using ancient mythology as a basis for understanding current human interactions.

“THE GOOD NEGRO” - Nambi as “Claudette”- Goodman Theatre, 2009-2010 season

CONTACT

nambi@nambikelley.com

COLLABORATIONS

WEBSITES and LINKES TO OTHER PAGES

Linka Behn

A watcher, I collect expressions in the face or shouted in stance of body. Textural history in rusting metals, peeling paint, aging wood describe momentary and transformative life. Combined, they describe individual, moment and time.

“Choices rising” Mixed Media: collage, textured paste surface, acrylic, charcoal 24 ̋ x 48“4-Back” Mixed media: found metals, pastel, textured paste surface, collaged pattern tissue, acrylic, colored pencil, charcoal 18 ̋ x 18

I celebrate women: the curves, dips, rises, landscape of woman’s body- nuances of color within her skin, whis- pers of beauty draped in shadows across her body. Silent stories of history reside in how she rests, sits, stands, folds her hands. She is cloaked in a spiritual ease: an aura of knowing.

Women are an invisible column of continued growth and support in the architecture of our society. I paint commonalities, women’s authenticity from transformation- silent or voiced. exploring layers of shared responses: joy, pain, hope overlaying personal history, exclusion, and involvement. Summoning strength, she rises above to peace-filled knowing of ‘woman.’ I capture this com- mon ‘rising-above’ troubles- her recogni- tion of strength and capability.

I reason what it means to be a woman now, with things to say, to share, to teach. I examine how we make mean- ing in our lives, how we create identity, what we hide, and what we allow to be seen. Women in my world envelope. Understanding her, I understand me.

“4-Back” Mixed media: found metals, pastel, textured paste surface, collaged pattern tissue, acrylic, colored pencil, charcoal 18 ̋ x 18

CONTACT

linka@artZeyes.CoM

COLLABORATION

WEBSITES AND LINKS TO OTHER MATERIAL

Tom Brenner

I believe that the essential purpose of every art form is to reflect some aspect of our human experience. For some artists this may constitute a political statement, for others, a literary or visual narrative, factual or fictional. The goal in my own art is to visually capture a nondiscursive, transitory, spiritual fragment of my own existence, and in so doing to communicate with others. The recognition of a shared perception of reality or of a common emotional or psychological expe- rience establishes a bond between human beings, bringing us closer to one another, and enabling a philosophical communion among all people.

“Iron Cross” - pastel on paper - 24 ̋ x 32

In visual art of the highest order there is often a paradoxical quality: that of space on a flat two-dimensional picture plane; that of movement in a static image or object; that of life in a block of stone or an arrangement of essentially inert particles of pigment applied to a piece of fabric or wood. Magic.

My work has evolved in unexpected directions as it has grown over the course of my career. Nonetheless, certain threads of continuity can be discerned: an abiding interest in light as it defines volume and suggests space; an explora- tion of color as it inspires emotion, and creates visual harmony and rhythm; and an endless curiosity in composition that is at once reflective of the seemingly arbitrary and transient nature of our lives, yet somehow possesses a quality of inevitability and permanence.

“passage” - pastel on paper - 24 ̋ x 32

CONTACT

tCbrenner@yahoo.CoM

COLLABORATION

WEBSITES AND LINKS TO OTHER MATERIAL