Aislinn Pentecost-Farren
Production Curator, 2012
Resident, August 5-31, 2010
Aislinn Pentecost-Farren is an artist, curator, and historian exploring historical and experimental museum design. At Elsewhere, Aislinn supported artists from selection to completion—guiding a site-specific residency process that links artists, objects, collections, and communities through works, events, and public actions. She has worked as Curatorial Design Assistant at the National Museum of American Jewish History, Curatorial Fellow at the Slought Foundation, and Research Fellow at SoundField, all in Philadelphia. She has worked and with for artists Mark Dion, J. Morgan Puett, and Gene Coleman.
She has a background in postal correspondence, documentary, cartography and alternative education. She received a BA in anthropology from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2006, and has worked with the Chicago History Museum, the Raleigh City Museum, Cabinet Magazine. Her work borrows from artistic practice to develop museum exhibits that exploit the vulnerable area between intuitive experience and intellectual consumption to offer visitors an interaction with the polyphonic nature of reality.
Valerie Wiseman
Valerie Wiseman
Communications Curator (2012-2015)
Valerie is an artist and administrator interested in the intersection of public programs and creative fields. She also worked with the North Carolina Entrepreneurship Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and holds a BA in Communications & Media and focus in Arts Administration from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD.
Valerie also worked as Operations Curator from 2011-2012 and as a Documentarian Intern and Assistant to the Directors from 2010-2011.
Cyrus Smith
August 28 - September 30, 2010
Resident
blog | cyrus smith dot vox dot com
Portland, OR
An artist and producer in numerous collectives and collaborations, Smith was a cofounder of the Pancake Clubhouse Historic Township and Activity Destination for the Living Arts (welcomes you), an alternative arts space in Portland, Oregon where he coordinated an active exhibition schedule and residency program from 2008-2009. Recent independent projects include The Christmas Time Radio Hour, a weekly program on KPSU dedicated to Christmas and Holiday Music, “Art Talk AM on the Radio,” a weekly interview show which focused on local, national and international artists and curators, and Neighborhood Projects Media, which was featured as part of a collaborative project for the 2008 Time Based Arts Festival, sponsored by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Smith is a recent graduate of Portland State University, where he received an MFA in Art and Social Practice.
2014-2015
Building Curator
Cyrus is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in sculpture, interactive art, radio, publication, and performance. He was part of the first graduating class at Portland State University to receive an MFA with a concentration in “Social Practice,” a form of art that encourages interactivity, communication, and social engagement. Cyrus also worked on the exhibitions team for the Portland Art Museum and Tacoma Art Museum as an exhibit installer and designer. When he is not making art, you may find him playing music, taking the long way home, or sleeping under the stars.
Antonia Wright
Miami, FL
August 5, 2010 - August 24, 2010
Antonia Wright is a Miami-born artist who has lived and traveled all over the world. Her work employs photography, poetry, performance, video art, installation, sculpture, and the interaction between these forms to question the world around her. She received an M.F.A. in poetry from the New School University in New York City and is a graduate of the International Center of Photography’s General Studies Program. She has worked for Clyde Butcher, Patrick Demarchelier among others and she was recently featured in New York Magazine’s article, “The New Talent Show: Pot-Luck Culture”, on upcoming artists. Antonia’s work has been in many exhibitions including the Envoy Gallery in New York City, “Slideluck Potshow” in McCaren Park Pool, The DUMBO Art Center’s “Down Under the Bridge Festival” in Brooklyn, and Amnesty International’s exposé on Cuban-American Artists at A+D Museum in Los Angeles. Wright is currently an artist in residence at the ArtCenter South Florida and the assistant to the curator at The Margulies Collection at the WAREhOUSE. She began her artistic career as a clown at children’s birthday parties.
Hazel Rickard
Eureka, CA
August 19, 2010 - September 25, 2010
Hazel began composing music while living in Antwerp, Belgium in 2005. She returned to the states to collaborate with others and to study anthropology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In the summer of 2008, she undertook a song-writing and performance project that took her biking across the country to Virginia. Since then she has organized vaudeville performances in Portland, composing music, building sets and puppets, as well as performing in these shows.
Ruben Millares
Miami, FL
August 5, 2010 - August 24, 2010
website | ruben millares dot com
website | smiling gums dot com
Ruben Millares is a 1st generation Cuban American musician, composer, visual artist and entrepreneur born in Miami, Florida. He began playing drums at the age of 3 ½ and soon moved on to guitar which has remained his passion ever since. With his band Smiling Gums, he has been performing around the country for the past 10 years incorporating afro Cuban rhythms and improvisation into rock 'n' roll. As a visual artist he creates abstract landscape Sumi Ink drawings and metal, wire and shell mobile sculpture, both of which can be seen at his self designed office space in Coral Gables. He has recently been exploring video, installation and performance art as well. His office design for the family’s CPA and Asset Management firm was awarded the2008 Outstanding Interior Office Space Award by the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce. Ruben is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) as well as a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) and is also involved with extensive charity work for the Daily Bread Food Bank of South Florida as well as other organizations such as Lotus House.
Hannah + Isaac Nichols
Philadelphia, PA
July 1, 2010 - July 27, 2010
blog | elsewhere elsewhere dot org slash blogs
Generally I (Hannah Nichols) don’t define myself as an artist. I don’t like to think of the things I make as art, rather I consider everything I do to be art. I think it is problematic to differentiate between art and life. Being strictly/solely an artist to me leads to an accumulation of objects, status makers, creating as a justification of oneself. I strive to not let my objects define me as an artist, instead I hope that my actions everyday define me as such. When I am creating an art, (art as noun) I exert the same energy dedication and discipline as when cooking bread or serving tables at work. Instead of being critical within my art I try to make every decision critically. With this in mind I strive to work in many mediums as a way of working at my ultimate goal, cultivating joy. Can I say I work in the medium of fun? Throughout my life I have been in search and pursuit of wonder, the bumper sticker “why do it if its not fun” comes to mind but to me that's a backwards and lazy out look. Rather “why not create fun” or better “lets make the most fun”. I strongly value a sense of community, partnership, collaboration. Wherever I find myself living, family dinner has become a staple to my life style. Action speaks louder than art. I just poured a cup of tea, it’s tag reads “be so happy that when others see you they become happy to”, it seems oddly appropriate to end here.
Isaac Nichols is an artist living and working in NYC. Currently attending The Cooper Union, his work investigates the human condition in the contexts of the contemporary, the commercial, the economic and the institution. His work often relies on a juxtaposition between economic classes, and their cultural and physical manifestations. This framework allows for a practice actively engaged in the production and exploration of objects, events, curations, documents, and performance. Currently Isaac is working on a performance documentation involving a Plymouth Voyager, as well as a series of publications challenging the relationship between education, capitalism, and the institution.
Annie Blazer
Jackson, MS
July 8, 2010 - August 10, 2010
blog | elsewhere elsewhere dot org slash blogs
Annie Blazer is a scholar of American culture. She received her PhD in 2009 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Religion and Culture. For the past two years, Annie has been teaching classes on religion and popular culture at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. In the fall, she will be moving to Princeton, NJ as a Research Fellow at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Religion. While at Princeton, Annie will complete her forthcoming book, Faith on the Field: Sports, Gender, and Evangelicalism. As a scholar, Annie is interested in anthropologically investigating how people make meanings and how late capitalist consumerism affects these meanings. At Elsewhere, Annie will explore this relationship by observing how artists use American consumer culture creatively.
Caroline Mak
New York, NY
July 1, 2010 - August 4, 2010
website | caroline mak dot com
blog | brooklyn soda works dot blogspot dot com
Caroline Mak is an installation and mixed media artist based in New York and Hong Kong. She received her bachelor's degree in biology from Stanford University (2002) and her MFA from the University of Chicago (2005). She has been the recipient of an Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park, and is currently participating in the residency program at Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ. Exhibition highlights include the installations at Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; Islip Art Museum, NY, 'Mirage' at Hong Kong Art Fair '08 and a collaborative project at New Life Gallery, Berlin. In addition to making artwork she is one of the co-founders of Brooklyn Soda Works and enjoys sharing her fizzy beverages with thirsty people.
Kate DeCiccio
San Francisco, CA
June 17, 2010 - June 29, 2010
Kate is a painter and mental health specialist who also spends a great deal of time making sushi. Since 2003, Kate's work has been focused upon collaboration with people in institutional settings. Kate spends as much time as possible in state psych hospitals, forensic wards and prisons, making are with people who have been identified as 'unsuitable for community life.' Much of Kate's work is about America's obsession with diagnosing and criminalizing people. In practice, she looks to utilize art and the activity of art making as a tool to work with people to successfully return to community life and cultivate a kind of inner peace that the loveless protocols of correctional and mental health systems will never synthesize.
Carole Frances Lung (Frau Fiber)
June 15, 2010 - July 5, 2010
website | elsewhere elsewhere dot org slash revolution textiles
Kathryn Lynn Shearman
San Francisco, CA
June 3, 2010 - July 6, 2010
website | kathryn lynn shearman dot com
myspace | myspace dot com slash music by kazoo
The body of Kate's work resists categorization as visual art, performance art or theater. Rather than squeeze her ideas, which move freely through media and histories into a well defined and understood form, she embraces the freedom that her relative position in the world affords her. She recognizes fully the importance of community and makes it a central aspect of her art making.
Dixon Stetler
Wilmington, NC
May 27, 2010 - June 8, 2010
blog | elsewhere elsewhere dot org slash blogs
Yucky items usually left alone when spotted on the sidewalk – gloves, flip-flops, and cigarette butts– these are Dixon Stetler's art supplies. Both children and adults can be intimidated when asked to produce, critique, or even consider art. The everyday nature of the materials Stetler uses and the safe confines of a group allow multiple voices to participate with pride and kinship. We are the sum of the goods we consume, the common denominator: a shared experience with all of our stuff. Stetler is co-founder of Independent Art Company, two buildings in downtown Wilmington, NC, that have been converted into 12 artist studios, an intimate gallery, and a 60-seat micro-cinema. She also curates documentary films for the Cucalorus Film Festival and serves as Ringleader for the Grand Procession of Peculiar Pets, an annual art parade. Dixon currently works with at-risk youth through the Dreams Center for Arts Education, teaches for the A+ Schools Program, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Creative Women’s Exchange.
Rose Luardo
Philadelphia, PA
May 20, 2010 - June 15, 2010
blog | rose luardo dot blogspot dot com
Rose Luardo creates dense and vibrant interactive performance installations that are original, character-based environments. Her bizarre and authentic creations aren't as experimental as they are experiential. To get a sense of her work, think of a dusty middle-aged pixie forging through a creative landscape full of big hair, press-on nails and chunky plastic. Rose is using her "less is more/focus on being unfocused" performance techniques throughout all her work. She does it by seeing what she can create out of a tissue, a comb, a baby stroller, someone else's shoes, a pen, a toothpick and a left pocket full of cheap tricks. Her brand of artistic creation is described as fun-driven, textured, and diverse. She is asking you to turn off part of your brain and turn on part of your body. She is one half of the performance duo The New Dreamz and recently started a comedy night in Philadelphia with her performance partner, Andrew Jeffrey Wright.
Christopher Moore
Montreal, Canada
May 6, 2010 - May 25, 2010
website | dis intermediator dot com
Christopher Moore is a Montréal-based artist, designer, and educator whose cross-disciplinary practice ranges from print publication to sculpture and media installation. His creative research currently focuses on satire as a progressive form of social critique, utilizing performance and absurdist humor to engage media-savvy public audiences.Christopher Moore studied illustration at the Ontario College of Art, and received a Master of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1999. For the past 11 years, he has taught at a number of institutions across Canada, including NSCAD University, the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, and the University of Lethbridge. Moore currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in Design & Computation Arts at Concordia University, and is a member of the Hexagram Research Institute.
Michelle Roche
Bristol, UK
May 6, 2010 - June 1, 2010
website | the wonder club dot co dot uk
Michelle Roche is the founding member of The Wonder Club and hails from Bristol, England. Michelle entered the theatre world five years ago, performing and directing with The Invisible Circus in squatted buildings in Bristol. She has since trained with Double Edge Theatre, Playback, John Wright (told by an idiot), Bristol Old Vic, Chickenshed among others, and has also taught drama to children and adults with learning difficulties and behavorial disorders. The Wonder Club was set up in 2007 and since then she has co-produced and co-directed The Juniper Tree (2008), At Tether's End (2008) and The Lamentable Tragedy (2010)- large scale site responsive promenade theatre in non traditional spaces. She endeavors to make theatre exciting, experiential and accessible for all. The Wonder Club is also a member of Residence, an artist-led organization creating space for artists to make performance, live art and theatre in Bristol, England.
Dayna Kriz
Chicago, IL
May 7, 2010 - May 31, 2010
website | wood lawn collaborative dot org
Dayna Kriz loves people, excess consumed materials and the creation process. Dayna sees her creativity as improvisational and informed by belief in the spiritual. She creates collaborative opportunities, experiments with discarded fiber materials and reflects on inequity and institutional limitations. Dayna teaches art and enacts programs that provide youth with resource, techniques, technique and a creative outlet, she sees all said interests as many parts that are in constant making of a whole.