During her second residency at Bethany, Julia will photograph the local landscape to create illusions with mirrors and forced perspective. In the studio, she will be using her own compact, self-built darkroom to develop her negatives by hand. 

Cherie Lee is a self-taught, Philadelphia-born artist, who utilizes high speed rotary equipment to reduce genuine Ostrich Eggshells to small-scale, subtractive-sculpture commentaries appreciating, and testing, the limits of faculty and frailty. Whether her subject matter be ecological, sociological or anthropological, she unites substance and subject, gingerly evoking one basic concept: what you have is fragile, no matter it’s strength.
Having grown up suburban-poor, her earliest materials were found objects in nature and readily available household items, predominantly paper. These early works resulted most often in two distinct forms: elaborate dimensional paper sculptures that are white-on-white plays of light and shadow, or intricately detailed, flat black paper-cuts. Both styles notable for what they lack, or what’s been taken away; a concept she hopes might foster a more solid appreciation for what is there.

Shortly after recognizing the humble chicken egg as a perfect 4-dimensional ‘canvas’, one of her first pieces was admitted to the United States White House Permanent Collection. By 2018, she acquired the tools necessary that would allow her to focus solely on her preferred medium, the thick and sturdy ostrich eggshell. Her current body of work explores how much can be taken away from something, be it natural, man-made or conceptual, without removing it’s integrity. “However,” she cautions, “if the strength of an eggshell allows me to push it to it’s furthest limits, it’s fragility reminds me not to.”

cherieleecreations.wixsite.com/cherielee

Santina Amato incorporates video, sculpture, installation, painting and photography to explore the notion of the intimate body, especially the female body. Her practice and is deeply rooted in attempting to translate the complexities of her own female sexuality, desire and erotica. Amato was born in Australia to Italian immigrants, and has lived and worked in the USA since 2010. She received an MFA (Photography) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2017) and has been supported by the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events and the Australian Council for the Arts. Exhibitions and screenings include The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL, Here Arts Center, NYC, Governors Island Art Fair, NYC and Detroit International Videonale, Kuntshalle Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art, MI. Amato has held positions as Fellow and Artist-in-Residence at MOCA Tucson supported by the Illinois Arts Council Agency (IACA), MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA supported by the City of Chicago’s DCASE, 2018 IAP Grant, Crosstown Arts, Memphis, TN, Process Park, Artslant & Chashama, Pine Plains, NY, Filed/Work Program, Chicago Artist Coalition, Chicago, IL. Amato Founded and Directed Moving_Image_00:00, a biannual festival in Chicago of moving image works by Chicago-based artists between 2016-2019. Her work is part of a collective photographic portfolio at The Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection and The Art Institute of Chicago and video collection at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia.

Chigozie Obi (b. 1997) is a multi-dimensional visual artist who obtained a bachelors degree of Visual Arts from the Creative Arts department, University of Lagos in 2017. Her work is consistent in the use of vibrant colors and figures to portray emotions and stories formed from personal experiences and focuses on the representation of Black/African people in their diversity. Her work has been featured in several group exhibitions and sales, which include, MoCada Museum’s silent auction (2019), Collective Renditions, African Artists Foundation, Lagos (2019), Rele in Lekki, Lagos (2018), The Studio Scout, Omenka Gallery, Lagos (2018), The First Ibadan Affordable Art Fair (2018), Rasheed Gbadamosi Eko Art Expo (2017). She was selected as Arthouse Contemporary’s Artist of the month – July 2018 and one of the recipients of the inaugural Tilga Fund for Arts Grant (2020)

Her work authenticates her keen interest for the human aspect of life, the body, beauty standards and the strive for self-acceptance. She aims to create sustained conversations about people and society – the cultural narratives adopted and how it affects people in it, especially women.

Brice Garrett uses the position of adornment as a source to think through ideas of body, production, labor, value, and memory. Working across disciplines, he utilizes a variety of materials and methods that culminate into wearables, sculptures, installations, and participatory projects. Brice received his MFA from Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden and a BA from San Diego State University. He has been the recipient of awards and residencies from the Museum of Arts and Design, Queens Council on the Arts, The Center for Craft, Manhattan Graphic Center, Tides Institute & Museum of Art and most recently Teton ArtLab. His work has been exhibited across Europe and the United States. He currently teaches jewelry and metal fabrication at Westchester Community College, the 92nd Street Y, and Brooklyn Metal Works.

For more information visit:
www.bricegarrett.com

Instagram:
@Bricegarrett

Mario Moroni has taught at Yale University, the Colby College, and Binghamton University, in the state of New York. He has published eight volumes of poetry and one of poetic prose. In 1989 he was awarded the Lorenzo Montano prize for poetry. His poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. As a critic, Mario Moroni has published  Essere e fare (1991), La presenza complessa (1998), and Al limite (2007). He has co-edited three collections of essays: Italian Modernism with L. Somigli, From Eugenio Montale to Amelia Rossellii, with J. Butcher, and Neoavanguardia, with P. Chirumbolo and L.Somigli. In 2006 he released Reflections on Icarus’ Lands, a DVD of poetry, electronic music, and images. In 2016 he released Reciting the Ashes, a CD/DVD for reciting voice, piano, and soprano. In 2018 he has released Recitativi, a CD of music and poetry created with composer James Glasgow of Strange Fangs Song Factory. Moroni has performed his work in dozens of events in Italy, the UK, Spain, France, Brazil, and across the United States.

Daniel Fergus Tamulonis has been many things in his life: puppeteer, teacher; Peace Corps Volunteer. Writing marionette plays from a very early age were his first essays into the world of what pen and paper could create. Re-inventing the world as a much more gay-friendly place actively occupies his mind, rejoicing in Madeline Miller’s retelling of The Iliad in her The Song of Achilles and breathing a sigh of relief and recognition at Matthew Bourne’s reinterpretation of Swan Lake. Fleshing out and recasting the fairy tales of Grimm and Andersen inspired his earliest puppet shows. Reimagining those stories occupied many of his solitary, early morning hikes as a paperboy. He credits those hours alone in the dark, freezing or sweating, with his huge bundle of newspapers, walking the silent streets of small town Pennsylvania, as his best times for thinking, creating, becoming.

Tamulonis lives in New York City with his family and teaches at an elementary school in the Bronx. He published his first short story (a long one!), Slung Mugs, about a young American finding himself – and meeting Benjamin Britten – while spending his senior/sixth form year in a British boarding school. His most recent story (and a much shorter one), Verona … after appeared in the new journal Paper Lanterns, created by and for young people (and former young people). His young adult fantasy novel is out on submission and he is working on his next, a historical fiction.

Erika Meitner is the author of five books of poems, including Ideal Cities (HarperCollins, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry series winner; Copia (BOA Editions, 2014); and Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), which won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her sixth book of poems, Useful Junk, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2022. Meitner’s poems have been anthologized widely, and have appeared in publications including Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Tin House. Other honors include fellowships from MacDowell, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, and Blue Mountain Center. She was also the 2015 US-UK Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast. Meitner is currently a professor of English at Virginia Tech.

All Saints Sessions (www.allsaintssessions.uk) was launched in October 2017 as a bi-monthly performance series in a 15th century North London church. The events are curated by UK-based poet and author Cheryl Moskowitz, and composer and sound artist Alastair Gavin, who create, in collaboration with guest artists, one-off evenings of spoken word, music and electronic textures in a quadrophonic sound system for a uniquely immersive live experience. Cheryl has been published in all the major UK poetry journals and has two published collections to her name, and two forthcoming in 2021. Alastair had an 11-year tenure as assistant musical director on Mamma Mia! in London’s West End and is now focussed on electronic composition and 360º field recording. The third member of the team for this Bethany Arts commission is New York-based filmmaker and video designer George Gavin who has previously collaborated with Cheryl and Alastair on their poetry & electronics London show City On Fire (2016); Eternal Mother, a film poem for artist Hayoon Jay-Lee’s 2019 exhibition in the 456 Gallery, NYC; and the recent All Saints Session Milk Opera, produced in lockdown and streamed online Apr 9 this year. His work encompasses award-winning short films and video design for the theatre, inc. The Itch at the New Ohio Theater, NYC (2017).

www.cherylmoskowitz.com
www.alastairgavin.com
www.allsaintssessions.uk

Christine Octavia Shaw is a devised theater artist dedicated to making work that asks her audiences impossible questions. Past and current provocations include: How do we wrap our heads around the immensity of natural disasters and our climate? (Sheet Metal Soup, 2019); How to we reckon with the absurdity of death? (The Usual, 2019); What does “surviving” sexual assault actually look like and how does a person heal? (The Aftermath, 2020); and how do women navigate the complex choices around motherhood? (The Motherhood Project, 2020-2030). Georgia-born and raised, she attended Yale University where she studied theater and dance. Since then, she has performed and created original works in Chicago (The Home for Wayward Artists), New York (The Araca Project), and Philadelphia. Now Philadelphia-based, she recently received her MFA from the UArts/Pig Iron program in devised theater..  

Susan Jennifer Polese is an American, journalist, editor and award-winning playwright whose work is seen regionally and at such venues as La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, HERE Performing Arts Center, The Midtown International Theatre Festival, and Planet Connections Festivity in Manhattan, NY. Trained in New York at The Wonderhorse Theatre, Herbert Berghof Studio, and Hunter College she has taught playwriting through Purchase College, Axial Theatre Collaborative and is facilitating “Playwriting in Paradise” at Key West Fringe Theatre, Key West Florida. Her work is fueled through social justice and is often performed as fundraisers/awareness enhancers for nonprofits. Susan is a member of The International Centre for Women Playwrights and Theatre Without Borders. She attended La Mama’s International Playwright Retreat in Umbria, Italy and is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America. www.susanjenniferpolese.com