Jia Sung is a painter and illustrator, born in Minnesota, bred in Singapore, now based in Brooklyn. In her spare time, she is a monkey. She is an art director at Guernica.
Her work is recognised by the Society of Illustrators NY + LA, and American Illustration. She has exhibited work at the RISD Museum, the Whitney Houston Biennial, and La Mama Galleria.
Nanibah “Nani” Chacon is an Painter, Muralist, Educator and Art Activist and Organizer. She was raised in Chinli, Arizona and Albuquerque New Mexico. Her cultural heritage and experience often informs her work as an artist and activist. Nani has a prolific career as an artist which spans close to 20years, covering Graffiti artist, illustration, fine art painting, Murals and public works. In 2002 she received her BA in education, she has taught grades K-College Prep both formally and informally as an artist and mentor. As an artist Nani has won numerous recognitions and exhibits her work nation wide, and internationally. Her recent endeavors focus on Large scale Murals and public and work pieces.
“As a lifelong resident of the Hudson Valley, I’ve drawn from the natural beauty of the region and it’s artistic heritage for creating oil landscapes with an emphasis on light and atmosphere. Dramatic, transitory moments and a deep connection to nature inspire my work. While experiencing these fleeting moments on site, I am infused by the mood and atmosphere. Later after some tempering and distillation, I create works over time using layers of paint and glazes to evoke the emotional essence of the scene, through the veil of memory.”
The artist received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the State University of New York at New Paltz, was inducted into the National Association of Women Artists, and is listed in “Who’s Who in American Art.” Her work has been selected for many regional, national, and international exhibitions, including the New York State Biennial, The Mohawk -Hudson Regionals, The Bienniale in Florence Italy, as well as exhibitions in Austria, Germany and the American Embassy in Thailand. She has had artist residencies through the Catskill Center, and Wakonda Lodge in Lake George, and participated in the Rhine-Hudson Artist Exchange in Cologne, Germany. Jane is represented in galleries throughout the country and her works are in many corporate, museum and private collections
I am a fashion educator, but my past creative work focused mainly on fiber art and conceptual knits. In addition to publishing a fashion magazine, I teach visual merchandising and window design alongside writing, textiles, sustainability and senior thesis courses.
Erected from the ghettos of Baltimore, Abdu Ali raps, sings, and chats over unorthodox and future sounds, creating music that is visceral, spiritual, and very real. From his energetic visceral performances, spiritualizing audiences as a cosmic, punk, and soulful tempest on stage to his work to transcend musical boundaries has put in him in genre categories along lines of afro-futurism to noise rap to “post-apocalyptic” sounding.
Championing Baltimore Club music in the fabric in most of his beats, through his work as a curator of Kahlon (an epic bimonthly music event), writings, and outspokenness via social media/interviews Ali, has been elected as a radical underground Baltimore music and cultural figure. Unapologetically black and queer, Abdu Ali is bold, raw, and most importantly life-affirming.
Abdu Ali has done several tours all over the US and released 4 music projects. He has shared the same stage with various artists like Big Freedia to MC Lyte to XXYXX, has toured with Lower Dens in Fall 2015, and his work has been covered by Complex, AfroPunk, Saint Heron, Noisey, Impose Magazine, Stereogum, The Fader, and many more.
Ratboy Jr. is a band from New Paltz, NY, a college town located in the beautiful Hudson Valley. Singer and guitarist Timmy and multi-tasker extraordinaire Matty (he plays drums and keyboards at the same time!) are a rocking duo for all ages, a band for the whole fam. They have a knack for blurring the lines and pushing the boundaries between music for kids and music for adults, so that it becomes EVERYONE’S music.
The globe-trotting songwriter Adir L.C. delivers a dramatic and lavishly detailed indie-folk answer to the timeless question “should I stay or should I go?” with a resounding “both.” The songs describe a young person’s search for identity and purpose as something essentially solitary and global in scope.
Adir L.C. launched his musical journey in the same Glen Rock, NJ basements that nurtured Titus Andronicus and Real Estate. There he got his taste of the indie foment of the early 2000’s before heading off to the college jam town of New Paltz, NY in 2007. There, he became a pivotal player and promoter in the fledgling indie scene there.
It was also in New Paltz where Adir met former Wood Brothers drummer Jed Kosiner, his partner in the psych-folk outfit Fairweather Friends, a duo that could just as easily assemble as a ragtag, ad hoc collective and deliver ecstatic performances of Adir’s sturdy and deceptively savvy folk epics. Fairweather Friends released the well-received These Years on the Boat on Salvation and hit the road, from which Adir has never quite fully landed.
For all its complicated, multi-city birth story, Oceanside Cities is anything but a casual freak-folk travelogue; it is indie-orchestral, dynamic in its arcs, epic in its song forms and its flourish-filled arrangements, as Adir fully realizes the balance of confessional folk intimacy and broad pop ambition that his writing has always hinted at.
(by John Burdick)
The Pauses’ (who prefer that their possessive noun-ing be spelled Pauseses) overall sound is one anchored in complexion and combination, a world where guitars are BFFs with synthesizers, horns, bells, and ukuleles. Tierney Tough’s bright, fresh voice glides just as easily atop the breathy sparkle and agile math of “Go North” as it does the indie-pop sway and post-hardcore torque of “Beyond Bianca.” From the serious, atmospheric mood of “The Migration” and “Pull the Pin” to the lithe, glitchy charm of “Hands Up”. The Pauses got mad range, often in the same song. Rooted in the dynamics and ethos of ’90s indie rock, their sound is a balancing act between rock and electronics, airiness and heft, suppleness and angularity. And their debut album, “A Cautionary Tale” (produced by J. Robbins of Jawbox and Burning Airlines) shows that you can explore without losing your core.
Since the album’s release, The Pauses have released a split 12″, contributed a track to a Jason Noble Benefit Compilation, played multiple festival showcases, invented Interact-O-Vision (a live interactive media show component), had songs featured in Harmonix’s Rock Band and multiple films (see: McSweeney’s “The Love Competition” https://vimeo.com/130648160), and have literally shared the stage (with members filling in as backup musicians) with War on Women, The Posies, Matt Pond PA, Davey Von Bohlen, Jonah Matranga, and John Vanderslice.
The Pauses second full-length (also produced by J. Robbins) will be released soon.
http://www.vimeo.com/thepauses
Dusted is the ever-evolving, songwriting venture of Brian Borcherdt- one fourth and founding member of Holy Fuck. While Holy Fuck are known for their unhinged noisy celebration Dusted better suit the morning after, either as a moment of moody reflection or of joyful catharsis.
Total Dust was released on Polyvinyl and hometown Toronto label, Hand Drawn Dracula. The album features guitar and vocal recorded live off the floor while in the back ground, as if haunted from another room, layers of strings and eerie tones fill out the minimal soundscape. Live the sound has become more dynamic, earning opening tours with Perfume Genius, Place To Bury Strangers, and Great Lake Swimmers and festival slots at Osheaga, SXSW, and Pop Montreal. Dusted also appear in two of Jean Marc Vallee’s films, cast on screen in Wild, adapting Grateful Dead’s Ripple, and heard on the soundtrack of his latest film Demolition. After touring Holy Fuck’s latest album Borcherdt relocated to a cottage in The Catskills. Like the hungover morning-after it is time again for reflection and catharsis. With an album in the works and one freshly completed Dusted is back.
“Raw-nerved emotion… wrapping its cutting sentiments in a grotty guitar fuzz that sounds like it was scraped off the heads on Lou Barlow’s old four-track.” Pitchfork
“Like the best kind of Neil Young but with a dreamier voice” Line of Best Fit
‘Now a trio… Dusted sounded more muscular and offered up a tantalizing taste of their yet-to-be-announced second record.’ – Noisey/ Vice
https://totallydusted.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/polyvinyl-records/dusted-property-lines
If there’s one constant with Oshwa, it’s that Alicia Walter has never been content to stay in one place. The art-pop project started in 2010 as a solo endeavor when Walter, then a student of classical piano, decided to indulge her pop music-loving side and in her words, “hang out with a loop pedal in a North Side Chicago basement.” Later, it became a four-piece indie rock band, leading to a 2013 debut album Chamomile Crush, which combined Walter’s adventurously off-kilter vocal delivery with math-rock inflected arrangements. Now after Oshwa’s excellent second album 2016’s I We You Me, a more focused and accessible album that featured contributions from her band members, Walter has reinvented Oshwa as a solo project and moved to New York City.
“Chicago’s an amazing place, obviously, but I knew that I wanted to make some changes in myself. Moving to New York was kind of the impetus to make all those things happen by just putting myself in a new spot,” Walter explains over the phone. “Sometimes I like to make things really hard on myself in order to kind of figure out what’s most important to me. A particularly crazy way to do that is when you’re like, ‘I’m just going to get on a plane to New York with two suitcases and no major source of income when I get there.'”
Moving allowed Walter a chance to figure out how Oshwa would evolve as a solo effort. “For a while, the band was the medium. I was stoked to work with the same people and they were my close friends and it was a really good process. But while working on I We You Me, I wanted to start taking a little bit more control and was interested in kind of getting away from a full band sound,” Walter said. Citing David Byrne’s depictions of Talking Heads concerts in his book How Music Works, the move also allowed her to focus on her other interests in choreography and performance: “I just realized that what I was trying to convey musically could be amplified by a physical performance by really bringing in choreography and a much more animated persona.”
