Location: Kingston NY

Preetika Rajgariah (b. 1985) is a multidisciplinary artist whose works examine the complicated intersections of cultural + queer identity, belonging + otherness, and capitalist consumption + erasure while referencing her nuanced upbringing as an Indian born American. Notable residencies attended include the Golden Foundation, the Momentary at Crystal Bridges, Oxbow School of Art, and the Vermont Studio Center. Performances at the Asia Society Texas and Untitled Art Fair Miami, installations at Women & Their Work and Art League Houston, and a large scale public art commission at Rice University have all shaped her multimedia practice. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and currently lives and works in Houston, TX.
www.prajgariah.com

PUGG (a.k.a. Pop-Up Gallery Group) is the youth workforce training program of the Department of Regional Art Workers (The D.R.A.W.). It is a paid, work-study program providing job training in art/non-profit management, arts education, leadership and entrepreneurship for young people 15 to 23.
https://www.drawkingston.org/special-event-drawathon2023

Shani Richards was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. She received a BFA in metalsmithing at the University of Akron and MFA in metal from the State University of New York, New Paltz. Afterwards Shani returned to her hometown Akron, Ohio. In 2018 she was awarded a Community Fellowship with The League of Creative Interventionists. With the year-long fellowship Shani developed a youth project called Akron’s Growing Chefs and partnered with non-profit community organization The W.O.M.B. In 2020 Shani was awarded art residency with The Akron Soul Train. Shani was one of six artists selected to be a part of The Sculpture Center 2022 Emerging Artists Solo Exhibition Series in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2023 Shani was a visiting craft fellow at SUNY New Paltz and was selected for a six month fellowship at Ann Street Gallery in Newburgh, NY. In 2024 Shani was awarded a New York Council of the Arts Grant.
http://www.shani-richards.com/

Amy Trompetter is a puppeteer, trumpeter, World Theater historian, teacher & community organizer. She founded Redwing Blackbird Theater in the late 90’s as a workshop and performance space in the Hudson Valley. Her roots are in Bread & Puppet Theater in the 1960’s in NYC. She has taught, directed & performed all over the globe. She is the driving force behind the theater’s drive to invent new forms, connect with the broad range of world theater traditions & address the urgency of local and global issues. Amy taught as an Assistant Professor of Theater at Antioch (tenure), Bates, Bard & Barnard Colleges. For several years she taught as part of the Bard Prison Initiative.
https://www.redwingblackbirdtheater.com/

Michaela Weiss: Michaela started her aerial journey in 2016. After her first silks class she was hooked. While silks remained her first love, she has also taken up Lyra/aerial hoop, hula hoop, aerial hammock and dabbles with pole arts. She received her Nimble Arts aerial silks teaching certificate in February 2020, and her CirqFIT Lyra certification in April 2021. Michaela has continued sharing her love for aerial by teaching, leading and creating aerial opportunities for students both in Kingston and Connecticut.

Amanda Panzer:
Amanda has been in love with circus arts ever since she took her first aerial silks class in 2013. She has been training with Hudson Valley Circus Arts in Kingston for over 8 years and continues to pursue aerial silks, hammock, lyra, hula hoop, and all matters circus as her passion project. In winter 2020, she received her teacher training with NECCA (New England Center for Circus Arts) as an intro level aerial arts instructor. That same spring, she also trained with CirqFIT to receive her Lyra teacher training. Since then, she has been working as client coordinator for Hudson Valley Circus Arts and advertently sharing her love and passion for all things circus. She hopes to inspire other folks to give aerial arts a try, as they are for every one and every body!

Felipa Gaudet: Felipa’s first experience on fabric was at her friend’s birthday party at HVCA in 2016. From the moment she inverted on the knotted silks, it was true love! As a yoga teacher, Felipa was originally interested in learning and teaching ways to interact with the fabric in a yoga-type practice, leading her to complete a 50-hour Aerial Yoga Teacher Training at OM Factory in NYC in 2017. When she first began her aerial journey, Felipa struggled with the core, pull up and grip strength required for an aerial practice. However, consistent practice with the hammock steadily built those muscle groups and gave her the strength she needed for more challenging endeavors. Not long after she began aerial yoga, Felipa became addicted to the cirque elements of the practice, finding them both exhilarating and wildly fun. Drops, wind-ups and belays quickly became her favorite things, especially when stacked and strung together. In 2018, Felipa returned to OM Factory to complete the 16-hour Advanced Aerial Yoga Teacher Training, where she learned to teach advanced, cirque-related skills and tricks. While hammock is her first love, she has also been enjoying learning split silks and Lyra at Hudson Valley Circus Arts and discovering the cross over between the apparatuses. In April of 2024, Felipa received her Lyra certification from CirqFIT, where she learned extensive teaching and spotting techniques. In addition to the physical and emotional benefits, Felipa enjoys the neural plasticity and proprioceptive gains that come from learning sequences and new ways of moving her body in space. Felipa loves teaching and practicing in the supportive Hudson Valley Circus Arts community, where people encourage one another and celebrate their accomplishments together. She is excited to help folks begin their aerial journey or bring their practice to the next level!

Rakel Stammer is a Danish interdisciplinary artist, painter, puppeteer, printmaker, writer and radio host, living in Kingston , NY, who’s practice addresses systems of power through an amalgamation of symbolism and political theory. Her visual art and writings has been exhibited and published in Sweden, Russia, Mexico, Spain, Italy, the US and Denmark. Besides puppeteering in Snake In The Boot Collective and Arm Of The Sea, Rakel is also an alumni of The Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale and has taught at Krabbesholm Folk College, and lectured at Södertorn University in Stockholm, Sweden.

Short: The recipe for Medukha involves fermenting the antics of a rock band in a pitcher of third culture confusion. Add Polish and Ukrainian folk melodies to taste. The resulting solution should be rich in Eastern European post-folk psych-rock chaos.

Long: The recipe for Medukha involves fermenting the antics of a rock band in a pitcher of third culture confusion. Add Polish and Ukrainian folk melodies to taste. Medukha uses ethnographic recordings, tokens of our homelands, the languages we’ve grown up with, and the folk music conventions we’ve been exposed to as an emotive vehicle for interrogating the immigrant experience: a wedding song from Southeastern Poland with patriarchal undertones becomes a curbside conversation with a bird, a Ukrainian spring song is fractured into an unrecognizable ambient soundscape, a song with disputed origins becomes fertile ground for a new language.

“Medukha’s music resolves the following contradictions without effort: grief and playfulness, historical depth and currency, professionalism and vulnerability, bedroom lo-fi and Eastern European folk. To anyone with Eastern European heritage who is alive in today’s culturally ambiguous globalized world, this music is especially healing.”
– Matt Genkin of the band You Want Milk
https://msha.ke/medukha

David Held (b. 1954, NY] is an interdisciplinary artist based in New Paltz, NY. He received his degree from the Center for Media Studies from SUNY Buffalo. He has exhibited and performed in exhibitions at numerous exhibitions including the International Computer Music Conference and the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. His audio work was also featured in Nam June Paik’s video on Merce Cunningham entitled “Merce by Merce by Paik”. He was honored with a Mid-Hudson Arts Grant and a NYS Council of the Arts Grant. Held’s work has been written about in MIT’s Journal of Computer Music.
makingwithheld.com
www.youtube.com/@makingwithheld

I like to make art that connects with others on the topics that I find painful and isolating.