Blake Sanz

Fiction written by Blake Sanz is forthcoming or has appeared in Ecotone, Puerto del Sol, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Chariton Review, Cosmonaut’s Avenue, Xavier Review, RE:AL, Jet Fuel Review, Medulla Review, The Bend, and other literary magazines. As an MFA graduate of Notre Dame, he teaches writing at the University of Denver. He has been recognized as a semifinalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Competition, and has attended Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference on a work-study scholarship. He has also been selected to attend juried workshops at Aspen Summer Words Festival, the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and has been awarded the Katherine Bakeless Nason scholarship to attend Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop in the summer of 2015. This past summer, he was also named a writing fellow at the Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, and the Seaside Writers’ Conference in Seaside, Florida. 

So Sinopoulos-Lloyd

Sophia (“So”) Sinopoulos-Lloyd is a queer Greek-American who grew up in central Vermont. So is guided in their work by the notion that ecological literacy and deep nature-connection enriches culture and expands paradigms for personhood, community, and identity. So has an MA in Religious Studies from Claremont Graduate University, and has also pursued immersive studies in wilderness survival and earth-based living skills. So has had their work published in Written River and the Wayfarer, and currently lives in Colorado where they are working on launching Queer Nature, an LGBTQ community nexus for practicing ancestral and earth-based skills.

Tara Gilchrist

Tara connects with her natural surroundings to create relaxed pottery in the heart of Dorset, Ontario.  She began her full-time commitment to clay when she opened Chetolah Pottery Studio in May of 2007.  During the spring, summer and fall months, Tara lives, works, teaches and sells pottery out her restored barn where she lives with her wife Caitlin Hutt. The winter months have been spent travelling, gathering inspiration and creating outside of the Dorset studio. Her love of travel has inspired creative projects in Southern India, Colorado and most recently Guatemala.  Her clay work consists mostly of practical stoneware items like bowls, platters, tumblers and mugs but it also includes decorative tiles, lanterns and jewellery.  Everything is electric fired in her studio but she also loves getting involved with other firing methods like wood, soda and raku when invitations exist and time allows.

Meghan Burke

The layered story between human and animal relationships continually fascinates me. Even though non-human species do not share the same language as humans, they show us a world of compassion without words.  I create vulnerable animal beings that ask the viewer to explore connections and sympathize with non-humans they overlook. All animals have the ability to suffer in the same way and to the same degree that humans suffer. The emotions we feel are no different than the emotions of another species. I primarily sculpt livestock -chickens, cows and sheep- to create remorse and compassion for overly consumed and bred animals.  The small-scale sculptures are an intimate invitation to discover that these pure, intelligent beings are no different than you or I.

Meghan Burke is from a small beach town on the coast of New Jersey.  She graduated from Saint Joseph’s University with a Bachelors of Art in 2015. Ceramics is now her medium of choice but she comes from a background of drawing and painting.  She creates simple functional ceramics as well as detailed, small scale ceramic sculpture. Meg loves nature and is an avid animal lover, hiker, and knitter. She spent her summer exploring the coasts of Maine at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts and the Catskill mountains in New York at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild.

Nina Semczuk

Nina Semczuk (Sem'chuck) writes, teaches yoga, and occasionally paints. She graduated from Boston University's College of Communication
with a degree in TV and Film and then commissioned into the Army. After more than four years of service, she's returning to her first passion: storytelling.

Right now, she's writing about her time in the Army and exploring the relationship between millennials and the military. She aims to modernize women’s stories and identities as members of the military. By exploring her personal journey as well as universal themes of leadership and life as a millennial, 
she hopes to create a conversation about what it means to be a modern woman veteran.

 Daniel Fonken

Daniel Fonken is indeed delighted to be returning to Elsewhere Studios (he was a resident July-December, 2014) and to the people, bounty and beauty of the North Fork Valley. Having recently completed 3 semesters of teaching college Digital Photography, this 4-month residency represents a most welcome return to working on his art practice.  That work includes the continuation of a photographic project, which he started at Elsewhere, about the impact of digital devices and communication on our lives; as odd as it may sound that story will be told via (photos of) food and in particular the amazing fruits (veggies, dairy and livestock) of Paonia and surrounds.

Dane Galloway

Dane Galloway's mom introduced him to piano and guitar at an early age, handing down a love of classical music inherited from her own parents, both classical musicians from the Philippines. By age sixteen, Dane was teaching privately and performing regularly in rock and jazz venues in D.C. and Maryland. He continued to do both while studying anthropology and French before relocating to Philadelphia to teach and make music. For the last five years, Dane has taught Spanish and music at an Afrocentric charter school in North Philadelphia while also training new teachers during the summers. This fall, Dane is leaving the classroom to continue performing and recording as a solo songwriter as well as with his bands: experimental rock ensemble My Son Bison, and soul pop trio Vita and the Woolf, both of which will be releasing studio albums this summer and touring nationally in the fall. While at Elsewhere, Dane will be completing material for his next solo release, a double album that draws on his experiences working in schools in an attempt to understand what it means to preseve radical hope in the face of despair.

Jacob Minter

Jacob Minter is a composer from Vermont who works primarily in film and theater. His primary focus in music has been the expression of concepts not easily articulated by traditional means, and often concerning socio-political issues, issues of identity, problems of superstition and religion, and the human perceptions and understandings of the natural world. While lyrical content may articulate ideas, it is the ultimate fusion of sounds arising from the human voice and the wide array of musical tools that can make an idea manifest in a far deeper emotional connection. The oral and musical traditions of humanity are some of our best sources for education as well as inspiration, and Jake hopes to continue that tradition and ensure that history is not only remembered, but felt in a way that can maintain human connection.

Siri Undlin

Siri Undlin is a musician, creative writer and storyteller currently based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has spent the last two years writing and performing as part of the nationally touring folk group, Undlin & Wolfe. Her work combines elements of Northern European folklore, Balinese shadow puppets and rock n’ roll. She graduated from Colorado College in 2013, was a 2014 Thomas J. Watson Fellow and was selected as a finalist for the 2015 MN Emerging Writers Award. Lately, she’s been working on extended song compositions that explore the body as landscape.

Siri is on a scholarship residency made possible by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Mountain Harvest Creative. Check out this interview with her on KVNF.

Michelle Fontaine

MICHELLE FONTAINE (b. 1987, Atlanta, Georgia) constructs paintings that embody mid-century American popular culture, concentrating on the dualities of the human condition.  Her usually large scale expressive and colorful collage figurative narratives have initiated a small presence in Athens, Georgia where she currently lives. After attending schools in Chicago, Atlanta, New York City, Michelle has completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts with concentration in Painting at the University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art.  She has shown in restaurants and local venues in Atlanta/Northeast Georgia (+ surrounding areas) and Athens, and has been published in online blogs/groups such as The Quiet Life (2009) RAW Artists (2013) and Café Apollonaire with  the Georgia Fine Arts Academy (2014). Check out more of her works at http://www.michellefontaine.net/work

Kathleen Alcala

Kathleen Alcalá is the author of a short story collection, three novels set in 19th Century Mexico and the Southwest, and a collection of essays based on family history. Her work has received the Western States Book Award, the Governor’s Writers Award, and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award. She received her second Artist Trust Fellowship in 2008, and was honored by the national Latino writers group, Con Tinta, at the Associated Writing Programs Conference in 2014. She has been designated an Island Treasure in the Arts. Kathleen's next book, "The Deepest Roots: Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island," will be published by the University of Washington Press the fall of 2016.

Kathleen has a B.A. in Linguistics from Stanford University and an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans. Her work is often referred to as magic realism, but Kathleen considers most of it historical fiction. She does, however, have a great affinity for the story-telling techniques of magic realism and science fiction, and has been both a student and instructor in the Clarion West Science Fiction Workshop.

Kathleen was a faculty member at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island until it closed in 2016.

Ursula K. LeGuin said of Kathleen's first collection, “This is a book of wonders. Each story unfolds with humor and simplicity and perfect naturalness into something original and totally unpredictable. The kingdom of Borges and García Marquez lie just over the horizon, but this landscape of desert towns and dreaming hearts … is Alcalá-land. It lies just across the border between Mexico and California, across the border between the living and the dead, across all the borders – a true new world.”

RY King

RY King is a writer, translator, photographer and scholar living in Durham, North Carolina. During her time at Elsewhere, she hopes to wrap up a project she’s been working on for the past two years—an experimental prose-poetic narrative that traces notions of home, place, and mobility through a series of rhizomatic investigations into the histories of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus), the oyster, the mobile home and Brutalist architecture. The project, like much of her work, makes extensive use of archival resources. As such, she has spent countless hours deep in the archives of libraries and research institutions in Philadelphia, New York, and New Haven, CT. Her residency at Elsewhere will provide much-needed fresh air and a quiet, restful space to think and write.

Nick Collier

Nick Collier received his BFA from George Mason University, Virginia, in 2012 and his MFA Florida State University in 2016.  Collier works as an interdisciplinary artist, employing photography, social practice, and sculpture to explore the intersection of ideas revolving around place, history, and contemporary culture.  His work has been shown in galleries in Washington D.C., Virginia, and Florida.  He currently resides in Tallahassee Florida where he works as an arts facilitator at The Plant and serves as the President of the board for 621 Gallery.

While in residency at Elsewhere Nick plans on making a body of photography work that investigates the things that embody the town of Paonia as well as the surrounding areas.  He is interested in what defines the idea of place and the lure of the local (to borrow from Lucy Lippard). This is a loose framework and one that he plans on keeping flexible and able to change organically throughout his time at Elsewhere.  Photographic work will be primarily conducted using a home built Afghan Box Camera (pictured below), an object that he sees as a treasure chest of memory. 

Hannah Davis

Hannah Sepúlveda –Davis earned her BFA in Drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2014. She is the recipient of several awards including the John Jackson Memorial ’77 Scholarship, the Jennie Jones Scholarship, and the Ralph. W. Woehrman ’66 Scholarship in Drawing.  The artist currently lives and works outside of Dallas, Texas. To learn more about Hannah visit www.hannahsepulveda-davis.com

Janet Thornburg

    Janet Thornburg’s collection of short stories, Rhubarb Pie, was published in 2005. Her short stories have appeared in Carve Magazine, The Distillery, In The Family, Lumina, The MacGuffin, Phantasmagoria, Phoebe, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Sanskrit. In addition to writing fiction, she has written and performed seven solo shows, and her poetry has appeared in Womanthology, A Collection of Colorado Women Poets and Most of the Holes Are Occupied: A Santa Fe Anthology. During her residency at Elsewhere, she has been working on her novel-in-progress, Calling Her Back. For further information about her publications and performances, visit www.janetthornburg.com.

Liz Cantrell

Liz Cantrell is a freelance writer and adventurer who got her start in Burlington, Vermont. She has profiled all types of creative folks, from vintage jewelry restorers and silk-screen t-shirt artists, to honky-tonk crooners and multi-lingual hip-hop performers. While at Elsewhere, Liz has begun a series of poems about relationships old and new, broken and mended, acknowledged or unspoken, familial or romantic. The poems are rooted in the concept of “place” and how location is a thread running through these relationships. Follow her travels at lizdcantrell.com

Patrice LaVigne

Patrice is a freelance nonfiction writer whose work spans medical writing, professional blogging and magazine features, including for Backpacker Magazine. In addition to writing, she finds employment in the hospitality and outdoor industries, sustaining a very nomadic life, having lived and worked in 14 states. But more than anything, she spends her time backpacking and exploring new places with her husband. In 2014, they walked 2,000 miles across New Zealand. Patrice used her time at Elsewhere Studios to work on her travel memoir about their trek. Read some of Patrice’s work and follow her adventures at wanderinglavignes.com.

Kelsey Courage

Kelsey Courage is a mixed media artist with a degree in Metalsmithing and Jewelry Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her jewelry work has been featured in New York Fashion week and on the runway of Puerto Rico fashion week and her installation “Fear Like Feral Foliage” was shown at the Smithsonian Art Show in Washington D.C.  She is currently residing in Norfolk, Virginia and pursuing
a Masters in Art Therapy.

Elyse Mische

I am motivated by my ephemeral existence and a drive to preserve both my conscious and subconscious selves. I am fascinated by the concept of time and the ways people value and apply value to it. I investigate the cycles of life and how individuals accept, fear, embrace, and preserve our temporary existence. I’m intrigued by the fine line between our sleeping dreams, daydreams, and reality and how our identities are bi-products of these realms. The Bird is an important reoccurring image in my work; acting as the bridge between my conscious and subconscious beings.

My artwork is influenced by exchanging life experiences and stories with others, spending time in environments that are slower paced and free from distractions of city life, and by the preservation of history and memories of the past. My processes are fueled by self-analysis and observing and interacting with environments and people around me to understand how we value, view, and preserve time and subsequently ourselves. I create mixed media two dimensional illustrations that prompt three dimensional live drawings composed of handmade props, costumes, and environments. I construct narratives that are non-direct, theatrical, and heavily laden with symbolism.

To see more of my creations visit my website www.lifepropaganda.com

Lorena Williams

15 years have passed since I forced my feet into the stiff leather of new fire boots for the first time. That pair of boots is hardly recognizable now, cracked and worn beyond salvaging. This transformation is not unlike my changed perceptions of life as a firefighter and of wildfire itself. My memoir, titled "Firestorm: One Woman's Story of Life, Death, and Politics as a Wildland Firefighter" delves into the chaos and beauty of life on the line. 

visit me at www.lorena-williams.com

Clay Hamilton

"You are a child of the times!

Blaze of hope, deluge of spite

Dreaming up forests of pine 

dusting the planet, destroying divide

but people hide so deep inside

their bodies curl around old lies

Bent over like a snowy branch."

Being a young adult today in American is to be a living contradiction; to feel the terrible paradox between one's idealism and one's (dare I say) incapability to actualize righteousness. Child of the Times is a musical work- in -progress poetically gesturing towards the hopeful, agonized, and vice driven young adult whilst unravelling my own cynicisms and hunger. While I intend to have a formal concert at the end of my residency in March, I invite the community to hear where I'm at now, as well as to listen to recent recordings soon to be released on her first EP "Cages of Light." Check out my music at www.clayhamilton.org

Chelsea Rowe

I was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida as the youngest member of a happy, loving family of five weirdos. My artistic upbringing and my love of theater and visual arts translated into my decision to pursue a BFA in Drawing from the University of Florida. My thesis as a senior was inspired by my own family dynamic and how I as the only daughter of an only daughter fit into this succession of strong matriarchal women. I created masks using textile, yarn, and other traditional crafting materials that through performance became a cast of characters that was a supplemental family unit while I was away from my real one. Documentation through video and photography of these performances served as reference for two-dimensional portrait paintings in gouache of this “family” I had created.

After graduating in spring of 2015, I have been working in this same cycle-style of mask-making and performance that leads to two-dimentional work. My current series is my reaction to my own struggles with severe anxiety and is a projection of how I wish I felt inside of my own head. I created several flat circular masks with absurd faces to become a set of characters bathing in a sea of marzipan fruits, illustrated again as a set of portrait paintings. At Elsewhere, I plan to continue working in this same style of mask-making that leads to fantastical portraiture. 

Amy Katz

Amy has been painting in oil and acrylic since 1998. She got her B.A. in Fine Art from the Evergreen State College where her work was informed by ‘The Intensive Journal Process’ by Ira Progoff, a student of Carl Jung. While Amy plans to continue drawing forth images and painting, she is also working on a series of nature-based prayer pieces, incorporating collected materials from nature, woodwork, crafts and writing

Dawn Rains