Lisa Di Venuta – WO+rd
Lisa is a writer and artist living in Kingston. She is currently eating an orange.
Zack Fuller
Zack Fuller is a DIY dancer/choreographer who lives in Rockland County NY. In 2019 he co-headlined the Boston Butoh Festival with Yuko Kaseki, with his dance/music collaboration Twisted from Constantly Watching Doves. His practice of dance is developed from a lifetime of wide-ranging experiences as a performing artist including fronting the Washington DC post-punk psychedelic metal band Scythian, participating in workshops and theatrical research with Ryszard Cieslak of Grotowskiʼs Polish Laboratory theatre, and working with dance artists such as Eiko and Koma and Poppo Shiraishi. In 1997 he was cast in Min Tanaka and Susan Sontagʼs Poe Project: Stormy Membrane, and went on to perform and train with Tanaka throughout Japan, Europe and the U.S. His own dance works have been presented at Leimay’s Soak Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, the Asheville Fringe Festival, the Dance Hakushu Festival, and elsewhere. He currently works as a care giver for the elderly at The Rudolph Steiner Fellowship Community, an activity that constitutes his primary form of dance training. His dance has been described by the Boston Globe as “Cryptic… but characterized by astonishing theatricality,” and “Like an angel coming down Jacob’s ladder to play in the garbage” by the Japanese dance critic Hidenaga Otori.
Shirley Parker-Benjamin and Onaje Benjamin
Onaje Benjamin’s photography reflects a passion for social justice and activism. His images capture urban settings and the cultural and artistic tensions which evolve in these rapidly changing environments. His work ranges from images of street taggers and murals, to portraits of street people and the structural and architectural evolution which symbolizes gentrification and the uprooting of disenfranchised communities.
Shirley Parker-Benjamin is an interdisciplinary artist creating across the genres of sculptural mixed media, assemblage and installation. Her work has been exhibited regionally and internationally. In her work, she explores the intersection between ancestral, spiritual, metaphysical, African/African diasporic traditions and the feminine. Her materials include found objects, natural materials, metal, minerals and beadwork to convey her ideas. Shirley Parker-Benjamin is a high priestess emeritus in the Ministry of Maat. Her studio, Ezili Arts is located in the Cunneen Hackett Arts Center in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Shawnee Miller
Shawnee Miller is a self-taught tattooer, artist, and biologist from Northern California. She is of mixed Native American and Italian heritage. Her work mixes traditional and modern folk art with elements of storytelling and personal narrative. She tattooed in Woodstock from Jauary 2021 until May 2022, and opened her own private tattoo studio in Rosendale in June 2022.
Shannon Kenny
Shannon Kenny was born and raised in Trinidad & Tobago and currently resides in Kingston, NY. She received her BA from the University of Tampa and her MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art. In 2013, she was awarded an artist residency in Giverny, France by the Terra Foundation for American Art. And from 2014 to 2016, she was an artist in residence at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, through Chasmama. She has exhibited in shows both nationally and internationally in the United States and Trinidad. Over her career, Shannon’s work has explored the intersection between figure and landscape, and in a sense, she tries to find a connection between humans and nature.
S. Leigh Thompson
S. Leigh Thompson is a facilitator, Theatre of the Oppressed Joker, community organizer, equity strategist and coach, and all around joyful trouble-maker who has worked at the intersections of art and activism for over 20 years. A trans, white and Native queer with disabilities, Leigh works with communities to develop creative tools to address issues of power, privilege and oppression and attend to oppression-based trauma. He also works as an equity and justice trainer and strategist and organizational development consultant.
Ramiro Davaro-Comas
Ramiro Davaro-Comas is an Argentine/American artist with a background in public art and artist residency management. His passions for painting, storytelling, and community work have pushed him to travel throughout his career, collaborating with artists around the world. He is also the creator and served as a director of Dripped on the Road, a traveling artist residency program from 2016 to 2022.
Ramiro is currently co-directing Super Stories, an organization he launched with artist Grace Lang that focuses on art centered story telling projects in community spaces. Their motto is – If you know something, teach it!
PUGG/D.R.A.W. Kingston & Sophi Kravitz
Sophi is equal parts engineer, playground ride designer, and artist. She currently works as the director of product at Hackaday where she builds partnerships that bring the hardware community closer together. Recent creative projects include a video short about the badgelife phenomenon, a politically focused (and anonymous) art installation, lighter-than-air tiny blimps, and two traveling adult sized sit-n-spins.
Previously as an engineer, she worked in battery and thin film solar research. She is very interested in climate related topics, but is disappointed with the lack of information available about where products begin at “the cradle”. With the climate crisis requiring our full attention, Sophi is looking at the circular economy, sustainability, and how we can evaluate these topics.
PUGG is the youth workforce training program of the Department of Regional Art Workers (The D.R.A.W.). It is a paid, after school work-study program providing job training in art/non-profit management, arts education, leadership and entrepreneurship for Kingston High School students and recent alumni.
https://www.drawkingston.org/pugg
https://sophikravitz.com/project/how-does-it-feel-to-come-back/
Pau Quintanajornet
PAU Quintanajornet doesn‘t paint pictures. Pau creates worlds – open invitations to a journey into the beauty of Latin American influences and into the spheres of an artist, who with brushes, paint, ink, paper and wood, playfully turns her world inside out. The cleavage between cultures loosens up. From the friction between her Chilean roots and her German home she draws her own symbolism in bright colors and shapes which grows out of the ground like plants rising to the sky. Birds also occupy a large space in Pau‘s World: in her „cosmovision“ they symbolize free spirits of wisdom and peace, spreading their wings and coping with highs and lows of life.
Pau is a collector. Her studio – the sanctum sanatorium – is home to countless keepsakes, ranging from talisman, coins, stones and shells for her altar to plane tickets, drawings and paintings from artist friends. Everything has its place in this world that tells the story of encounters through pieces of a mosaic. This place is her spiritual walk-in memory bank. All these little things eventually turn into her art. Pau‘s paintings are an expression of her inner world. She paints what she lives and feels.
Born in Chile and raised in the former DDR, Pau moved to Berlin at the age of 15 to broaden her horizons and find a creative outlet. She studied communication-design and illustration at the FHTW before taking off to South America. In Valparaiso, Chile, she recharged her batteries and set the course for her future. Falling in love with the Urban Art Movement and Artivism, Pau started to create her first wall pieces down South. Although she eventually returned to Germany, Pau would frequently revisit Latin America – her Motherland – her emotional home. During these returns, she might discover something new about her self or her art, socialize with other artists or improve her techniques. In the collective of the Artivists, Muralistas and Street Artists, Pau found birds of the same feather.
Over the last couple of years Pau has participated in numerous festivals and art projects around the world. These travels and interactions with the people around helped her to find a deeper meaning in her work and get more sensitive for different global realties. Inspired by the words of Pablo Neruda, “The murals are the books of the people “ she started a long term art project called PROJECT WALLFLOWERS in 2013. Her work is found on walls in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, France, The Netherlands, Germany, United States, China, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile … . While Pau‘s walls are on display in public spaces, they are created with the permission of the communities. Her interest lies in sharing her art with people, not creating notoriety for her self.
„Painting walls is something which shapes the environment and makes it more colorful. It‘s a gift to community it should help to nourish our souls – Alimento para el Alma
Nell Jungyun Choi
Nell Jungyun Choi was born in Seoul, Korea. Choi received a Master and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture at the State University of New York at New Paltz and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramic at KyungHee University in Korea. Choi is an artist assistant of Marco Maggi who is a New York- and Uruguay-based artist, and works as a shop technician at Lite Brite Neon Studio in Kingston. Choi has participated in group exhibitions such as Sublime Concepts Bethany Arts Community, Export 2019, and Esabitchin’ fall. She focuses on dream and multiverse, especially, the quilted multiverse and string theory. She does interdisciplinary art, recently multi-media art, projection mapping, and installation art.