Biographies of Kimmel Harding Nelson Residents
2009 Session 2: July 6 – December 18, 2009
Emily Hanako Momohara, visual artist, Cincinnati, OH
July 13 – July 24, 2009
Emily
Hanako Momohara is inspired by Japanese American culture and issues of legacy. She
has exhibited nationally, most recently at the Light Factory with Artists: Mary
Ellen Mark, Sara Moon and others. She has been a visiting artist at several
residency programs including the Center for Photography at Woodstock and has
given lectures nationally. Momohara grew up near Seattle, Washington and earned
her BFA in Photography and her BA in Art History from the University of
Washington. She went on to receive her MFA in Expanded Media from the
University of Kansas, where she studied under Roger Shimomura. She is currently
an Assistant Professor of Art at the Art Academy of Cincinnati where she heads
the photography major. www.ehmomohara.com
Naomi Shersty, visual artist, Milwaukee, WI
July 13 – 24, 2009
Naomi Shersty’s artwork explores the
formation of identity relative to familial, social, and geographic
environments. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally at
locations such as The Museum of Fine Arts (Santa Fe, New Mexico), The
Powerhouse Gallery (Memphis, TN), The Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Study
(NY, NY), and the 00130Gallery (Helsinki, Finland). Last year her photographs were published in the 2008 issue
of Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (Nebraska University Press). Shersty
was raised in the south and earned her BFA in Photography from the University
of Florida. She received her MFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Photography
from the University of New Mexico. Currently she is a Visiting Assistant Professor
at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. www.naomishersty.com
Allison Landa, writer, Berkeley, CA
July 13 – July 24, 2009
Allison Landa is a Berkeley,
CA-based writer currently working on her first memoir, Running Into. A
September 2009 resident at the MacDowell Colony, Allison has done solo shows in
San Francisco, New York, and Austin, Tex. She received her MFA in creative
writing from St. Mary's College of California. www.allisonlanda.com
.
Anthony Green, composer, Boulder, CO
July 13 – August 7, 2009
Anthony Green (b. 1984) holds a Bachelors of Music
in theory and composition from Boston University (summa cum laude), and a
Masters of Music in composition from the New England Conservatory (magna cum
laude). As a pianist, he has performed at Jordan Hall, Symphony Hall, and other
places throughout New England and Long Island. He has played works by David
Liptak, Berg, and Crumb with the Time’s Arrow New Music Ensemble, he has
premiered and performed in many solo and chamber pieces of colleagues, and also
participated in the world premiere of Moirologhia by Theodore Antoniou. Recently, he
performed James Tenney’s Chromatic Canon with the Callithumpian Consort, and Steve Reich’s City
Life with the New
England Conservatory Wind Ensemble for the composer. Additionally, he has been
active as a church musician, playing in both gospel and traditional styles, and
he accompanies singers in numerous genres, including musical theater and
Israeli folk music. Future performances as an improvisational vocalist and
pianist will take place in Providence, Boston, St. Louis, San Francisco, and
Stanford, CA. He also maintains a private piano studio, with students ranging from
6 to 50, as well as a private tutoring studio, teaching music history, theory,
and basic composition.
As a
composer, he has had readings, commissions, and performances across the country
by pianists Elaine Rombola and Daniel Holt, violists Greg Williams, Sarah
Darling, and Ashleigh Gordon, sopranos Yael Handelmann, Rebekah Alexander, and
Ceceilia Allwein, the Laurel String Quartet, the Callithumpian Consort, the
Playground Ensemble, the Tasman String Quartet, the Apple Hill Chamber Players,
ALEA III (with Gunther Schuller conducting), and Alarm Will Sound, among
others. He is a recent inductee into Mu Phi Epsilon, where he is the recipient
of the “Ellen Jane Lorenz Porter Grant for Composition”. He was recently
composer-in-residence with the Providence String Quartet for their 2008 - 9
season, funded by a grant from the Argosy Foundation, and he is the recent
winner of the 2nd Ossia International Composition Prize for his work
3 Groups. He has
given lectures funded by a Meet the Composers grant about his string quartet Chance,
which was recently
featured in the 14th Bienniel New Music Festival at Florida State
University, and also performed by the Playground Ensemble in Denver, and the
Zukofsky Quartet in New York City at Symphony Space. Radio broadcasts include Chance on Radio 1190 KCBU Boulder/Denver in
Colorado and on Bowed Radio (an online podcast), 4 works and an interview on
KGNU in Boulder/Denver on the show “Present Edge,” and the last movement of Dona
Nobis Veritatem: a setting of American text on Radio Papesse in Florence, Italy. Future
performances include a commission for a chamber piece by the Playground
Ensemble in Denver, Colorado, and performances in Italy and the United States
by Italian clarinetist Guido Arbonelli of Ahnungen for solo clarinet, among
others. Past teachers include
Martin Amlin, Richard Cornell, Theodore Antoniou, Lee Hyla, and Robert Cogan
for composition, and Maria Clodes-Jaguaribe for piano. He has also participated
in masterclasses with Lukas Foss, Joshua Feinberg, Michael Finissey, Walter
Zimmermann, Jonathan Harvey, and Michael Daugherty. He is currently a doctoral
student at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he teaches Introduction
to Music Technology, and is the first recipient of the university’s Atlas Fellowship.
He will study composition with Carter Pann in the fall.
Erika Navarrete, visual artist, Lincoln, NE
July 27 – August 7, 2009
Erika Navarrete was born in Santa
Cruz, California and now lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. She recently her MFA in
painting from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in May 2008 and received her
BFA in painting and art history from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2003. Her
paintings and drawings have always carried a narrative sensibility, drawing
from memory, stories, and personal experience.
Neva Sills, visual artist, Chicago, IL
July 27 – August 7, 2009.
Neva Sills received her MFA in
Painting and Drawing from the University of Iowa
and her BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison . Her work explores the
ways in which form and space as well as ideas and experiences may be broken
into parts and what new meaning arrives in the process of reconstruction. Neva
has shown throughout the Midwest in group and solo exhibitions as well as
collaboratively with The Moving Crew. She lives and teaches in
Chicago. www.nevasills.com
Sarah Freligh, writer, Rochester, NY
July 27 – August 7, 2009
Sarah Freligh’s short stories and
poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Cimarron Review,
Iowa Woman, Third Coast, Tar River Poetry, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Elysian Fields Quarterly. Sort of Gone, a book of poems that follows the
rise and fall of a fictional pitcher named Al Stepansky, was published by
Turning Point Books in 2008 and featured on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s
Almanac” and on the NPR syndicated show “Only a Game,” hosted by Bill
Littlefield. Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National
Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall
Foundation in 2006, and a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in
1997. Born and raised in Michigan,
Sarah currently teaches at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.
Christopher Jette, composer, Goleta, CA
August 10 – August 21, 2009
Christopher Jette graduated from the
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh 1998 with a B.A. in violin performance and 2005
with a M.M. in music composition from the New England Conservatory. He began a
Ph.D. in composition at UCSB in 2006 with a projected graduation in 2010. His
compositions, both electronic and acoustic are concerned with the various roles
of cognition in
the perception of sound. An intuitive
inquiry, composition serves as a venue for the exploration and consideration of
issues and concerns important to the modern situation. Christopher won the 2007
Corwin Chamber Music Competition, the 2005 New England Conservatory Piano
Departments Contemporary Music Competition and has been the recipient of
various
scholarships. Christopher
participated in the Steirischer Herbst festival in Graz Austria in 2007.
Christopher is active as both an educator, teaching assistant to Curtis Roads
in the 2007-2008 academic year and as a concert organizer. More information is
available at www.cj.lovelyweather.com
. There is also a blog (more up to
date and more informal) @ www.behindears.blogspot.com
.
Vanessa Norton, writer, Pacifica, CA
August 10 – September 4, 2009
Vanessa
Norton is a writer and teacher based in San Francisco. In Nebraska, she will
work on a collection of short stories. Born and raised in Buffalo, NY, she
spent much of her adolescence exploring abandoned buildings and industry along
Lake Erie. Her collected imagery, coupled with residual Catholicism, led her to
leave home a day after high school graduation to become a nomadic Marxist. Since
then, she has traveled and worked in several countries and written several
articles and stories. Now, relatively settled in a sand-surrounded house, she
writes about people in physical and psychological exile, people who have
detached themselves from the norm due to an unsettled past wound. She writes
about the strange and predictable forms in which escape manifests. Vanessa
received her Bachelors in Anthropology and Gender Studies from Bard College and
a Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Oregon.
Toby Lee, visual artist and writer, Greece
August 10 – September 4, 2009
Toby Lee is an interdisciplinary
artist and a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology and Film & Visual Studies
at Harvard University. She works in video, installation, performance, book
arts, and collaborative research artists. Her projects draw from ideas and
practices central to anthropology, often exploring the social experience of
space, temporality, and history. Her dissertation is an ethnographic and
historical study of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and its
relationship to its host city, looking at how public culture and its
institutions mediate the collective experience of place. She is currently a
Harvard Film Study Center Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow in Greece.
www.iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter.net/us/toby.html
Melanie
Mowinski, visual artist, Cheshire, MA
August 24
– September 4, 2009
Melanie Mowinski is a printmaker,
designer and maker of marks. She holds an MFA in Books Arts/Printmaking from
the University of the Arts and she earned a graduate degree in Religion from
Yale University. Prior to Yale, she served in the Peace Corps in the West
Indies, developing arts curricula, community-centered arts programs and her
love of the outdoors. Her artworks are part of the collections of The Tate
Modern Museum of Art, the Newark Museum, and the U.S. Library of Congress, to
name a few. She is also the winner of numerous awards, scholarships, and artist
residencies, including Jentel in Wyoming, Windgrove in Tasmania and Denali
National Park and Preserve in Alaska Mowinski currently teaches full-time at
the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, MA.
Manya Fox,
visual artist, Los Angeles, CA
August 24
– September 25, 2009
Manya Fox received her BA in
photography from Bard College and her MFA in photography from UCLA. In the past
year she has been in numerous group shows including ‘Some Young Los Angeles
Artists’ at Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art in Culver City, California and
Tikkunim: Jewish Roots, Ecological Art at Howard House Contemporary Art in
Seattle, WA. She has also been in several publications. All of her work focuses
on issues surrounding the American experience. www.manyafox.com
Christopher Reiger, visual artist, Astoria, NY
September 7 – September 18, 2009
Originally from rural Virginia,
Christopher Reiger is an artist and writer currently living and working in New
York City. He attended the College
of William & Mary (B.A. Studio Arts, 1999) in Williamsburg, Virginia,
before moving north. Since
graduating from the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts in 2002, he has
participated in numerous group exhibitions and, in 2006, had his first solo
exhibition. http://www.christopherreiger.com/ http://hungryhyaena.blogspot.com/
Shelly Oria, writer, Valencia CA
September 7 – October 2, 2009
Shelly Oria was born in Los Angeles
and grew up in Israel. She earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2007.
Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Quarterly West, cream city review, and the Spectrum Anthology among other places. She is currently
completing her first story collection, “New York 1, Tel Aviv 0,” whose title
story was awarded the 2008 Indiana Review Fiction Prize.
Photo by Ian Gittler
Michael McParlane, visual artist, Pittsburgh, PA
September 7 – October 23, 2009
In July of 1986, Michael McParlane
was born in Van Nuys, California. He moved with his family several times
cross-country, spending his childhood in the suburban sprawl of New Jersey,
Illinois, and Pennsylvania. He is a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon
University's interdisciplinary Bachelor of Humanities and Arts program, and he
currently resides in Pittsburgh.
Michael McParlane has
exhibited and performed regionally at Space Gallery, the Three Rivers Arts
Festival, PNC Park, and the Matchwood Festival. He has received several honors,
including induction into Phi Beta Kappa an
d a fellowship from the
Idyllwild Arts Center. www.michaelmcparlane.net
Michael Remson, composer, Houston, TX
September 14 – October 9, 2009
Michael
Remson is a composer/librettist, author, educator and serves as Executive and
Artistic Director of the American Festival for the Arts, a non-profit
organization dedicated to enriching young people through music. Dr. Remson’s
works have been performed by such organizations as New York City Opera, the
Foundation for Modern Music, Houston Grand Opera, Texas Tech University Opera,
the Rhode Island College Choruses, Houston Choral Society, Abilene Collegiate
Opera, Eastman EROI Festival and by numerous performers and performing
organizations. Recent performances include premieres with Houston Ballet, the
Nucleus Ensemble and the Cappelletti-Chao Duo. He has received grants, commissions
and fellowships from Americans for the Arts, American Music Center, Houston
Arts Alliance, the Irish Arts Council and numerous artist in residence
programs. Dr. Remson is currently on the faculty of the University of Houston
Moores School of Music and the Houston Ballet Academy. The author of several
articles, including recent articles for the new edition of Amerigrove and the
Journal of Film Music, Scarecrow Press published his biography of
nineteenth-century American songwriter Septimus Winner and an annotated volume
of Winner’s popular songs. Dr. Remson attended New York University, the
University of Houston and Carnegie Mellon University. His primary instructors
and mentors include Carlisle Floyd, Robert Nelson, Nancy Galbraith and Edward
Albee.
Alice Thompson, visual artist, Ardmore, PA
September 28 – October 23, 2009
Alice Thompson is a
printmaker with a unique perspective. She applies layers of cut paper to windows
to create the illusion of a room or landscape, changing context on both sides
of the window pane. Through participation in the Kimmel Harding Nelson
Residency she hopes to find inspiration in
the Midwestern horizon. Originally
from Upstate NY, Alice specialized in printmaking at Binghamton University, graduating
in 2004 with a BFA. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia
awarded her an MFA in 2006. She participates in the lively artistic community
of the Greater Philadelphia Area. Alice has shown her work in exhibitions at
Fleisher Art Memorial, The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Moore College of Art &
Design, the Main Line Art Center, and Little Berlin Gallery. She volunteers
with BuildaBridge to bring art to children in homeless shelters. This summer
she looks
forward to assisting
artist Andrew Rubin in the color intaglio workshop at Penland School of Crafts. www.alicesproof.blogspot.com
Jeremy LeClair, composer, Portsmouth, NH
September 28 – October 23, 2009
Jeremy
LeClair is fascinated by the residues and imprints left behind by pop culture,
particularly popular music. His multimedia works use these transient forms to
reveal deeper relationships between sound, psychology and memory. A recent
graduate of the Bard MFA program, he currently lives on the cusp of coastal ME
and NH, where he operates the collective gallery/performance space BUOY and
formulates imagined, celebrity alter egos for his dog
GoogleBrangelinaNikeWhopper.
Rachel Moritz, writer, Minneapolis, MN
October 12 – 23, 2009
Rachel
Moritz is a poet who received her M.F.A from the Univeristy of Minnesota in
2006. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Night-Sea (2008) and The
Winchester Monologues (2005), both from New Michigan Press. Her poems have been
recently published or are forthcoming in American Letters and Commentary,
Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, typo, and other journals. She is the
recipient of a 2008 Jerome Fellowship and a 2005 Minnesota State Arts Board
Grant.
Susannah Sayler, visual artist, New York City
October 26 – December 18, 2009
and
Edward Morris, visual artist, New York City
October 26 – December 18, 2009
Susannah
Sayler and Edward Morris work with photography, video, writing and
installation. Of primary concern are contemporary efforts to develop ecological
consciousness and the possibilities for art within a social activist praxis.
In 2006 they co-founded The Canary Project - a collaborative that produces
visual media and artworks that deepen public understanding of climate change,
particularly the challenge and opportunities it presents to the organization of
human society. Works from The Canary Project have shown in diverse venues,
including: art museums such as The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver and
the
Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY); science museums such as the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago, IL); universities; public art projects; magazines; city halls; etc.
www.canary-project.org In 2008-2009 Sayler and Morris were Loeb Fellows at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
Keith Meatto, Writer, New York, NY
October 26 – December 4, 2009
Keith Meatto is a graduate of Yale
College and The New School (MFA) and has worked as an English teacher and a
journalist. He is now at work on a collection of short stories. His fiction has appeared or is
forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Glossolalia, and Ghoti. One of his stories was a finalist in a recent Glimmer
Train fiction
contest. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Forward,
Mother Jones, The Texas Observer, and the Concord Monitor, where he was a daily newspaper
reporter.
Jenni Brant, visual artist, Lincoln, NE
October 26 – November 6, 2009
Jenni
Brant is originally from southwest Wisconsin. Growing up in handmade clothes
and having a father that was a farmer by day and a woodworker by night, she
knew that her life would revolve around the visual arts and craft. In 2007, she
received an MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and holds a BFA from
the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Brant splits her time between being the
Education Director at Lux Center for the Arts in Lincoln, NE and working as a
studio artist, creating functional pottery that she sells and exhibits
nationally. She was recognized by Ceramics Monthly as an Emerging Artist and
was a Niche award finalist in 2008. Brant recently received the 2009 Kimmel
Foundation Mayor’s Arts Award as an emerging visual artist.
Tyler Gilmore, composer, Denver, CO
November 9 – December 18, 2009
Tyler
Gilmore is traversing a new landscape in big band and chamber
composition. Influences ranging from composers of the 20th century
to the electronic innovators of today combine with his own musical personality
to form his aural output. He has been honored with the ASCAP/Columbia
College 2009 Commission in Honor of Hank Jones, The 2008 & 2009 ASCAP Young
Jazz Composer's Awards, and a 3.5 review in Downbeat Magazine. Tyler has been
writing and playing music since he was nine years old. He grew up in rural
Wyoming, where he discovered music on his mother's upright piano and found
inspiration in a number of great teachers in the area. He is now based in
Denver, Colorado, where he is currently pursuing various artistic goals with
his jazz large ensemble 9th+lincoln, as well as other groups. His music
has been featured and reviewed in Downbeat Magazine, The Colorado Music Buzz,
Westword, Cadence, and AllAboutJazz.com. His charts can be found at UNC
Jazz Press as well as his own publishing company, Minor Ninth Music. Though he
has never had a steady composition teacher, he has had lessons with John
Hollenbeck, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Maria Schneider, Loren Stillman, Art Lande, Mike
Holober, Alf Clausen, Jack Smalley, David Hansen, Cuong Vu, and Paul Chihara.
His music has been performed by The Chicago Jazz Ensemble led by Jon Faddis,
The University of Northern Colorado Jazz Lab I, The Colorado State University
Jazz Ensemble I, The University of Kansas Jazz Ensemble I, The University of
Kansas City Missouri Jazz Ensemble I, The Colorado Conservatory for the Jazz
Arts, The James Madison University Jazz Ensemble I, The South Nine Ensemble
based in Miami, The Henry Mancini Institute Overture Orchestra, the HMI Garage
Orchestra, and his own ensembles. In addition, he has been
commissioned by Dr. Richard Mayne for the Univ. of Northern Colorado, Art
Bouton at the Lamont School of Music, A Cappella group Groove Society, and
Shawn Constantino for the Harvard-Westlake School in Hollywood, CA. Tyler
has formed a jazz large ensemble called "Ninth+Lincoln" featuring
some of Colorado's top jazz performers. The group has made a name for itself as
the top progressive composer's orchestra in the region. They have performed to
sold out crowds, to rooms of more than 2,500 people, and feature new music by
Tyler and other members of the band. www.tylergilmoremusic.com
Mike Giron, visual artist, Omaha, NE
November 16 – November 27, 2009
Michael Giron was born in New
Orleans, LA, in 1970. Although
recognized for drawing skills since childhood, he began formal training in
college, graduating with a BFA from the University of New Orleans. He went on to study and teach as a
graduate student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he received his
MFA. There he met his wife,
Nicole, and began a family with two children, Rhianna and Noah. They moved to Omaha in 2000 to remodel
his wife’s childhood home. Mike
has been teaching drawing and design, life drawing, and illustration for
graphic design at Metropolitan Community College, as well as, painting, mural
painting, printmaking, art appreciation and such at Bellevue University, where
he is also gallery director.
Tracy Zeman,
writer, Springfield, IL
December 7
– 18, 2009
Tracy is poet from the Midwest. She
grew up in central Illinois then attended college at DePaul University in
Chicago and graduate school George Mason University in Virginia. After living
and working in Chicago for ten years, she moved to Springfield, IL with her
husband last year. Currently she teaches writing and interdisciplinary research
at University of Illinois at Springfield. Her work has appeared in Jubilat,
Cutbank, Phoebe, and
So to Speak. This
past August she participated in a residency program at Artcroft in Carlisle,
Kentucky.