Millay Colony for the Arts July Resident Bios and Artist Statements
Sue O'Donnell, Jennifer Haley, David Bratton, Katie Murken, Peter Gil-Sheridan, Magalie Guérin
Peter Gil-Sheridan, Playwright; Minneapolis, MN—Peter is a writer and director whose play Topsy Turvy Mouse has been developed by The Cherry Lane Theatre's Mentor Project, The Sundance Institute, The Ucross Foundation and was named the winner of the Smith Prize, awarded by the National New Play Network for outstanding political work. The play was recently produced by Borderlands Theatre in Tucson. His other work has been seen/developed at the New York Theatre Workshop, The Lark Theatre, The Kennedy Center, the New York International Fringe Festival, The University of Colorado at Boulder, A Theatre Group of Silverton, Colorado, The Toy Box Theatre, the figments, Working for Tips Productions, Riverside Theatre of Iowa City, and Prospect Theatre Company. A graduate of the University of Iowa’s Playwright’s Workshop, he is now an adjunct faculty member at Fordham University where he often guest directs and mentors young directors. Currently, Peter is in-residence on a Jerome Fellowship at the Playwright’s Center in Minneapolis and has recently been commissioned by the Guthrie Theatre.
Magalie Guérin, Visual Arts; Brooklyn, NY—Magalie was born in Montreal, Canada in 1973. Since moving to New York in 2000, her work (drawings) has been shown in various galleries across the United States and is now represented by MillerBlock gallery in Boston, MA. She is the recipient of residency awards from Jentel (2005) and KHN Center For The Arts (2006). Guérin was director of GV/AS gallery in Brooklyn from 2002-2004.
Jennifer Haley, Poetry; N. Hollywood, CA—Jennifer is a Los Angeles-based playwright whose plays include Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, Gingerbreadhouse, and Dreampuffs of War. Her work has been presented and developed at the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival of New American Plays, Summer Play Festival and hotINK in New York City, Brown/Trinity Rep Playwright's Repertory Theatre in Providence, Annex Theatre in Seattle, and Refraction Arts at the Blue Theater in Austin. Ms. Haley holds an MFA in Playwriting from Brown University, where she was awarded the Joelson Prize in Creative Writing and the Weston Award for Drama. She is a 2008 resident of the MacDowell Colony and Millay Colony for the Arts, and will be developing a new play this summer at PlayPenn in Philadelphia.
Katie Murken, Visual Arts; Philadelphia, PA—Katie is a visual artist with interdisciplinary interests. Through book works and installed environments she creates new contexts for viewing and experiencing art. Murken received her Masters of Fine Arts from The University of the Arts in 2005, where she earned a degree in book arts and printmaking. She was awarded The Elizabeth C. Robert’s Prize for Graduate Study and the Mr. Harry Eaby/Piccari Press Scholarship. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Pennsylvania State University in 2001, with honors in Visual Art from the Schreyer Honors College. In 2003, Murken traveled to Italy for a four-week artist's residency at the Scuola Grafica di Internazionale in Venice, where she created a one-of-a-kind artists' book. In 2007, Murken was invited to create a site-specific, media-based installation for Greenmachine, a project sponsored by InLiquid.com, at The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Philadelphia, PA. She has exhibited her work at The Visual Arts Society of Texas, where she was awarded the Jack and Evelyn Miller Award and the Connoisseur Brush Award. Murken received the Purchase Award during the Book/ Paper/ Scissors artists’ book fair at the Free Library of Philadelphia in 2007, and her artists’ book, For She is Time, is now included in the Special Collections Department of Temple University Libraries in Philadelphia, PA. Recently, the Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia, PA, selected Murken for a Career Development Fellowship. Murken is currently a full-time Lecturer and the Dean’s Appointment for 2D Foundations at the Tyler School of Art.
Sue O'Donnell, Visual Arts; Bloomsburg, PA—Sue is a visual artist whose work combines experimental book arts, graphic design, and conceptual narratives. Her constructions reveal secrets and life events that search out and map connections and paths that explore the concepts of truth, memory, evolving emotions and models of certainty. O'Donnell earned her MFA degree in Visual Arts at Purchase College in 2002 after having worked for many years as a freelance designer and digital consultant for CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY. She recently joined the faculty at Bloomsburg University where she teaches digital art and design fundamentals. Her past teaching experience includes Southeastern Louisiana University, Purchase College, and Manhattanville College. O'Donnell brings with her a wide range of life experiences that informs her work and teaching philosophy. Along with a national exhibition record, she is the recipient of numerous artist residencies, grants, and awards. She designed and published a book of poetry I Call Across Time, and was recently invited to participate in a book arts portfolio collaborative in Buffalo, NY. She currently lives and works in Bloomsburg, PA.
Zonde Zinke, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Lynn Gumert, Naoe Suzuki, Allison Carter, Dennis McLeod
Allison Carter, Poetry; Los Angeles, CA—Allison is an LA based designer and writer. She teaches a workshop in hybrid forms at California Institute of the Arts. Her first book, A Fixed, Formal Arrangement, is forthcoming from Les Figues Press in 2008. Her work has otherwise been published in P-Queue, 5_Trope, Fence, 3rd Bed, and other journals.
Lynn Gumert, Composer; Highland Park, NJ—"I earned my masters and doctorate in music composition from Indiana University-Bloomington, where I studied with Claude Baker, Eugene O'Brien, and Don Freund. I have participated in master classes with Ellen Taafe Zwilich, Shulamit Ran, and Ladislav Kubik. My compositions have been performed by the Contemporary Music Forum in Washington, D.C., at the Festival of Women Composers International, at Society of Composers Regional Conferences, at the Midwest Composers Symposium in Oberlin, and at the Seventh International Alliance of Women in Music Concert. I was awarded an orchestral reading session by the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic and a broadcast on the nationally syndicated public radio program Harmonia. I have received commissions for vocal, choral, and guitar compositions.
I am Artistic Director of and performer with Zorzal Music Ensemble and have presented lecture-recitals on aspects of colonial-period Latin American music at the College Music Society International Conference in Costa Rica and at the Seventh International Festival of Women Composers in Pittsburgh. Over the past 20 years, I have performed traditional Latin American music at the Smithsonian and at various locations in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Costa Rica. I am currently Artistic and Musical Director and Conductor of the Highland Park Recorder Society/Garden State Sinfonia."
Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Poetry; New York, NY—Khalil was born in Detroit and raised in Florida. He is the author of 19 Names For Our Band (Fence Books, 2008). His poetry, fiction, and photography have appeared in Boston Review, NOON, Canarium, Encyclopedia, Court Green, and Aufgabe among others. His awards include the Grolier Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Ucross Foundation. A graduate of Bard College and Brown University; he lives in New York
Dennis McLeod, Visual Arts; Glen Ellen, CA—Dennis is a painter living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a graduate of Virginia Art Institute and earned his BFA degree from California College of the Arts in Oakland, California in 1980. Most recently his work was included in the exhibition "Rembrandt to Thiebaud: A decade of collecting works on paper" show at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco.
His travels to India, Japan, Morocco, among other places has been a great source of inspiration in his work. Over the last several years his work has centered around the use of line and drips as well as other forms of mark-making to create meditative abstractions which examine the fundamental ideas behind chaos theory, order and repetition. Working with a pared down, mostly monochromatic palette, McLeod focuses on the physicality of his technique building layer upon layer to create an almost tangible perception of space and volume. Dennis McLeod is represented by Traywick Contemporary, Berkeley, CA.
Naoe Suzuki, Visual Arts; Newtonville, MA—Naoe has worked in various artistic mediums including installation, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, video and performance art. Over the last seven years, Suzuki has been focusing on drawings. Specifically, she creates precise and psychologically charged drawings in mineral pigments and graphite using imagery from the history of art, medical and scientific literature, plant life, animals, and fashion.
Her recent exhibitions include: Drawn to Gravity at Grand Central Art Center at California State University Fullerton; Annual Exhibition at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA; Fractured Fairytales at the Asian American Art Center, New York, NY; Subjective Reality at Judy Ann Goldman Fine Art in Boston, MA. She has also exhibited at Studio Soto in Boston; Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts; San Francisco Public Library; Albany International Airport Gallery in New York; AREA Space in Toronto, Canada. Her drawings are currently being included in the Boston Drawing Project at Bernard Toale Gallery in Boston. Her video and performance works have been shown at ARC Gallery in Chicago and the Institute of Contemporary Art Theater in Boston. Her drawings are published in New American Paintings, Vol. 74 this year.
She was awarded residency fellowships from Jentel, Wyoming; Blue Mountain Center, New York; Millay Colony for the Arts, New York; MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire; Centrum, Washington; and Vermont Studio Center, Vermont. She received the Artist Grant in Drawing/Printmaking/Artist's Book from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (2006), Artists' Resource Fund from Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, The Blanche E. Colman Award from Mellon Trust of New England, and The Artist Grant in Sculpture/Installation from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (2001). Naoe was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1967. She has lived in the United States since 1986. She holds an M.F.A. in Studio for Interrelated Media from Massachusetts College of Art.
Zonde Zinke, Fiction; Knoxville, TN—"I was born in New York City in 1974 and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1997. I spent close to a decade in community service, working as a child advocate, a homeless shelter case manager, a domestic violence counselor and a progressive services support provider for people with mental disabilities. I began writing in 2001 and am grateful for support from The Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University, The University of Tennessee, The Eastern Frontier Educational Foundation and The Jerome Foundation. I've won a John C. Hodges short-story prize and am currently working on a collection of short stories. In the fall of 2008, I will begin a PhD program in Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee. I live in Knoxville, TN with my partner, also a writer, Otis Haschemeyer, and our good old dog, Zuka."
Katherine Arnoldi, Kevin Grauke, Bjork Viggosdottir, Caroline Mallonée, Molly Springfield, D.A. Powell
Katherine Arnoldi, Fiction; Vestal, NY—Ms. Arnoldi’s graphic novel, The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom, (Hyperion 1998), was awarded a New York Foundation of the Arts Award in Drawing, two American Library Association Awards, was nominated for the Will Eisner and the Harvey Awards in the Graphic Novel and was named one of the top ten books of the year by Entertainment Weekly. She won the Juniper Prize and the University of Massachusetts Press published her collection of short stories, All Things Are Labor in 2007. Katherine Arnoldi has been awarded the New York Foundation of the Arts Award in Fiction, the DeJur Award and the Henfield Transatlantic Fiction Award.
Kevin Grauke, Fiction; Philadelphia, PA—"I was born and raised in Texas, but I’ve lived in Philadelphia with my wife and two children (4 1/2–year-old girl, 3-year-old boy) for almost four years now. A tenure-track job at La Salle University compelled me to leave my home state, which I’d returned to in order to write my dissertation after finishing my coursework at SUNY Buffalo. In addition to the PhD, which I earned in 2003, I also have an MFA in fiction writing from Texas State University. My stories have appeared in (or will soon appear in) such journals as The Southern Review, StoryQuarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Quarterly West, Blue Mesa Review, and South Dakota Review, to name just a few. I’ve also published a book chapter and an essay on the representation of suicide in 19th-Century American fiction (the subject of my cheery dissertation)."
Caroline Mallonée, Composing; New York, NY—Dr. Mallonee is a New York-based composer who has written solo, chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral music as well as electroacoustic music, opera, and music for film. She was born in Baltimore, where she studied violin, flute and piano in the Preparatory Department of the Peabody Conservatory. She did her undergraduate work at Harvard University, earned a Master's Degree from the Yale School of Music and a Ph.D. from Duke University, where she studied with Scott Lindroth and Steve Jaffe. She lived in the Netherlands from 2004-2005, where she held a Fulbright Fellowship for study with Louis Andriessen at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag.
Dr. Mallonée's compositions have been played by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Da Capo Chamber Players, counter)induction, the Contemporary Music Forum, the Women Composer's Orchestra, the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, the Virginia Pops Symphony, Non Sequitur, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, the Greater Baltimore Youth Orchestra, the Ciompi, Alexander, Del Sol and Mendelssohn String Quartets and American Opera Projects. Her music has been heard at Lincoln Center (Avery Fisher Hall), Symphony Space, Tenri Cultural Center and Tonic in New York City, as well as at the Nieuwmuziekgebouw in Amsterdam, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., on the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, on the New Music New Haven series and at the Long Leaf Opera Festival. Her music has been performed in the U.S., the Netherlands, Wales, England, Italy and Mexico, and has been broadcast several times over National Public Radio on Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion." Some of her choral music will be published by Boosey & Hawkes this year.
Dr. Mallonée has been on the faculty of The Walden School for young composers in Dublin, New Hampshire since 1998 as Director of Composer Forums, directs the female choir, and is the Assistant Academic Dean. Dr. Mallonée is the violinist in pulsoptional, a band of composers based in Durham, NC as well as in Glissando bin Laden and His Musichideen, an experimental improv band based in New York City.
D. A. (Doug) Powell, Poetry; San Francisco, CA—Mr. Powell is the author of Tea, Lunch and Cocktails. The latter was a finalist for the Lambda and the National Book Critics’ Circle Awards. Powell’s honors have included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the James Michener Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America and an Academy of American Poets Prize. His recent poems appear in Kenyon Review, New Orleans Review, Poetry, New England Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. Powell teaches in the English Department at University of San Francisco.
Molly Springfield, Visual Arts; Washington, DC—Ms. Springfield is an artist who makes drawings and installations based on textual artifacts. Balancing a deadpan, ironic sensibility with historical homage, her work addresses oppositions between reproduction and originality, reading and seeing, technology and labor, memory and nostalgia, digital and analog, and pencil and print. Molly's current projects include an ongoing series of drawings of photocopies of printed texts; a mixed-media project based on the life and writings of the 19th-century photography visionary William Henry Fox Talbot; an investigation into how handwritten marginalia reveals relationships between readers and books; and a visual "translation" of the first fifty pages of Swann's Way in the form of drawings made from every existing English edition of Proust's novel.
Ms. Springfield was born in 1977, received her MFA from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004, and was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine in 2006. Springfield has had recent solo exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.. Her work has been reviewed and featured in many publications including Artforum, The Village Voice, The New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, Drain Magazine, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Ms. Springfield has also published her own writing in the College Art Association News and NY Arts Magazine. She is based in Washington, D.C., where she has been on the faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the George Washington University.
Bjork Viggosdotter, Visual Arts; Iceland—"I work with beauty and stories in my art. I like to use combination of different media in my works to encourage the audience use all their senses in viewing my work. I try to do installation that touches you and let you experience something visual and make sound that goes in to your memory. My world of visual poetry, sound, colours and emotions. I try to make art that makes your eyes hungry and your heart sad. Fill some people heads and make others mad. I love to do art and I also love art. Like to blend together print, photographs, sculptures, music -compostion- recordings-, video, film, dance and everything that makes my artwork work. I play base, keyboard, harp, flute, mellodica and all small instruments. I sing and dance. I make my own music mostly for my art exhibitions. I always have a clear vision of how my artwork should look like and what I want people to experience in my art. I would like to travel and exhibit my art all over the world. And that is what I’m going to do the next months. I have a studio in Reykjavík. I work as an visual artist and an art teacher now in Iceland."