2021 Alumni
2019
Monica Rico
In residence: January 8 – 22, 2021
Monica Rico is a second generation Mexican-American who grew up in Saginaw, Michigan alongside General Motors and the legend of Theodore Roethke. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program and works for the Bear River Writers’ Conference. Her poems have appeared in Anomaly, Pleiades, Black Warrior Review, BOAAT, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), and Split this Rock. She is a CantoMundo Fellow and Macondista.
She is currently working on her first full-length poetry collection, PINION, a magical realist history of Mexican migration to Michigan and its impact on the building of the General Motors empire. This collection focuses on family history, the roles of women, and intergenerational trauma.
Cody Walker
In residence: January 29 – February 12, 2021
Cody Walker was born and raised in Baltimore. He later lived in Seattle, where he served as the city’s Poet Populist. He currently teaches English and directs the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He’s the author of two full-length poetry collections: The Self-Styled No-Child (2016) and Shuffle and Breakdown (2008), both from Waywiser Press. His chapbook The Trumpiad (Waywiser, 2017) doubled as an ACLU fundraiser. He co-directs the Bear River Writers’ Conference and co-parents (with the fiction writer Polly Rosenwaike) two children and a cat.
During his stay at Good Hart, Cody plans to complete his manuscript of Mad Gardener’s Songs, a project he’s been working on for more than a decade. (The Mad Gardener’s form was invented by Lewis Carroll; examples can be found in Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.) He also hopes to revise some of the political poems he wrote during the End Days of the Trump presidency.
Scott Dorsch
In residence: February 18 – March 4, 2021
Scott Dorsch was born in Georgia, raised in Michigan. He is an M.F.A. Creative Writing candidate and Writing in the Wild Fellow at the University of Idaho. His fiction has appeared in The Midwestern Gothic. Beyond writing, he is a gardener, musician, and certified wildlife tracker with a rock-climbing obsession. He currently serves as the Fiction Editor for Fugue Literary Journal.
At Good Hart, Scott will continue working on his novel based on his short story, “Holes or Tunnels,” published in the Midwestern Gothic in the summer of 2018. Set in the dunes and shoreline of Lake Michigan, the novel follows a reluctant Park Ranger who gets wrapped up in a missing-persons case connected to the mysterious appearance of “bottomless” holes in the park’s vast dune system. With themes of loss, solastalgia, and survival, his novel works to make visible the threads that connect humans to wilderness and to each other. He’s very much looking forward to having the time and head-space to continue his work on the novel and to be re-inspired by the dunes, woodlands, and communities of Northern Michigan.
Steph Sorensen
In residence: March 12 – 26, 2021
Parent Writer
Steph Sorensen (she/her) is a feminist writer mom. She earned her MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007. She has participated in several invited readings of her poetry, at the Prague International Writers Festival, the Connecticut Poetry Festival, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival Night of Fresh Voices, and others. She was awarded a scholarship to attend the Writing the Unreal retreat at the Highlights Foundation where she worked on revising a young adult novel manuscript. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Mississippi Review, Matchbook and 3Elements Review. She lives with her family in Pittsburgh, PA.
Steph splits her time between parenting her very energetic six-year-old, writing novels for young adults, and writing poetry and short stories for grownups. She is currently at work on a collection of short form writing consisting of poetry, prose poems and flash fiction, as well as work that blurs the boundaries between those genres. This collection will explore themes of motherhood, womanhood, identity and erasure. She enjoys employing aspects of speculative writing and magical realism as metaphor, and experimenting with form and structure. She is incredibly grateful to have been granted this residency for its generous two weeks of solitude and unbroken focus on writing, and intends to use this time to continue drafting and revision for this intra-genre short forms collection.
You can follow Steph on Twitter and Instagram: @phenompen or visit her website stephsorensenwrites.com.
Laura Berman
In residence: April 29 – May 15, 2021
Laura Berman creates images that layer time, space, form and color together. The natural world inspires her, and there is a focus on play, improvisation, and relational dynamics in her work.
Berman has exhibited her print work in over 150 exhibitions at galleries and museums around the country and internationally. Her prints are widely collected and she has made commissioned work for a number of institutions. Berman has been a visiting artist and has worked as an artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Colorado), Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium), Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida) and Can Serrat Artist Center (Spain), among others.
Her work has been featured in the books Contemporary American Printmakers by E. Ashley Rooney/Stephanie Stanish, Printmaking at the Edge by Richard Noyce, A Survey of Contemporary Printmaking, by Ehlers, Ehlbeck and Muise and Color Theory: A Critical Introduction by Aaron Fine. She has worked with a number of fine print and commercial publishers around the world, including Pele Prints (St. Louis) where she has a longstanding relationship. Her work is represented by galleries: Long View Gallery ( Washington, D.C.), Olson-Larsen Gallery (Des Moines), and Uprise Art (New York City).
Laura Berman is a Professor at the Kansas City Art Institute, where she has taught in the Printmaking Department since 2002. She is a Founding Member of the Art Brand Alliance, author of the ongoing online series of artist interviews: Reflections on Color and Printmaking, and together with her husband, she runs Prairieside Cottage and Outpost, a family-friendly artist’s retreat in the Flint Hills region of Matfield Green, Kansas, USA.
During my time at Good Hart Artist Residency, my goal is to experience a new engagement with my artwork, in a geographical environment that is entirely new to me. I expect the natural environment surrounding Good Hart and its location will inspire me deeply. My printmaking practice has its own disciplined momentum, which sometimes limits my ability to be free with my work. In contrast, I have built my painting practice to be intuitive and without many rules. During my residency time, my work will expand through a new rhythm of working and a fresh outlook. I plan to create new imagery, expand the materials I paint with, and further my imagery through multiple layered paintings in a variety of scales.
Images courtesy of the artist – Laura Berman – laurabermanprojects.com
Zakkiyyah Najeebah Dumas-O’neal
In residence: May 21 – June 4, 2021
Zakkiyyah Najeebah Dumas-O’neal is a Chicago based multidisciplinary artist, arts educator, and independent curator. Najeebah Dumas O’neal’s work is most often initiated by personal and social histories related to family legacy, queerness, community making, intimacy, and interiority. Her practice borrows from visual traditions such as social portraiture, video assemblage, drawing, collage, and found images.
She makes work to further understand and investigate how her own singular lived experiences, and others are connected to broader shared histories and social/cultural experiences. In addition to this investigation, there’s a commitment to reinforcing a different kind of gaze (and gazing) enacted through empathy, desire, love, softness, and longing. Najeebah Dumas O’neal is continuously exploring how these feelings (within all her work and through engagement), are exchanged between herself, her family, collaborators of her portraits, and those who experience the work.
My work functions as a meditation of my own sublime feelings regarding touch, belonging, desire, and familial legacy. In addition to my own experiences regarding belonging and emotional states of tenderness – I’ve been thinking deeply about what it means to create work that imagines ways of being beyond the systems we inhabit.
My most recent work in progress explore the unveiling and honoring of writer and activist Lorraine Hansberry through parts of her concealed lesbian identity. As i rewrite by hand the short fictional love stories she’s left behind, i’m considering, at what lengths, by which means do Black queer women both protect and unveil themselves through public persona, interiority, and poetics. Najeebah Dumas O’neal’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions and several solo exhibitions at ADDS DONNA, Mana Contemporary, and South Bend Museum of Art to name a few. She has also curated exhibitions at spaces such as Chicago Art Department, Blanc Gallery and Washington Park Arts Incubator at the University of Chicago. She most recently held the 2019- 20 Jackman Goldwasser Residency at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago. She is also a co-founder of CBIM (Concerned Black Image Makers): a collective driven project that prioritizes shared experiences.
You can see more of Zakkiyyah’s work please see her website – zakkiyyahnajeebah.com
Carla Diana
In Residence June 14-28, 2021
Carla Diana is an artist, designer and educator who explores the impact of future technologies through hands-on experiments in form, code and electronics. She has designed a range of products from robots to connected home appliances, and her work has appeared on the covers of Popular Science, Technology Review and The New York Times Sunday Review.
Carla is the creator and head of the 4D Design program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. She writes and lectures frequently on the social impact of emerging technology, and created the world’s first children’s book on 3D printing, LEO the Maker Prince: Journey in 3D Printing. She also cohosts the Robopsych Podcast, a biweekly discussion around design and the psychological impact of human-robot interaction. Her latest book My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human, out in March 2021, was published by Harvard Business Review Press.
Carla holds an M.F.A. in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the Cooper Union. She was previously awarded residencies at the Museum of Fine Art Houston’s Dora Maar House and the Museum of Art and Design’s Open Studio program.
You can follow her creative practice on Instagram as @carladiana
ARTIST STATEMENT:
As an artist/designer working on creative applications of electronics and robotics, I am interested in understanding the nature of the relationships people build with the products around them. My most recent work explores how objects can be expressive, offering a shorthand abstraction for emotional messages the way color or material choices might be used in more traditional art making practices. During my residency time, I plan to tinker with electronics to reflect on the relationship among humans, nature, and our artifacts, seeking inspiration from the serene environment surrounding Good Hart to think about ways that natural and constructed systems can be in harmony.
Images courtesy of the artist – Carla Diana
Stephen Kade
In residence: July 30 – August 8, 2021
Stephen Kade is a fine arts painter, illustrator, art educator, and graphic designer born and
raised in Detroit, MI. He now resides in Walled Lake, MI where he lives with his wife and two
children. He graduated from Oakland Community College with a degree in Graphic Design and
continued into the sign industry creating branding for many local businesses and clients for over
15 years. He went on to earn a BFA in Illustration from the College for Creative Studies in 2007
with a concentration in children’s book illustration and character design in watercolor and acrylic
paint.
In 2007, Stephen became a freelance artist and started Stephen Kade Illustration and Design
where he continued with his design work while illustrating childrenś books for various Michigan authors. In 2010, Stephen completed his life long goal of writing and illustrating his first childrenś book, If Kids Had Their Way. He also began teaching as an adjunct instructor at his alma matter, CCS where he worked for the Community Arts Partnership teaching weekly summer art camps for kids, and Computer Illustration and Graphic Novel classes.
Stephen realized he had a passion for teaching and returned to school to get his Arts Education certificate so he could begin a career teaching art at the K-12 level. He began teaching in 2014, and has worked at Lake Orion High School, Henry Ford Academy/ School for Creative Studies where he was Lead Art Teacher, and now he teaches at O.L. Smith MIddle School in Dearborn, MI teaching both 2D and 3D art classes. While on summer break in 2018, Stephen was chosen as the first art teacher to participate in the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Teacher at Sea Program. During his 17 day voyage on the Oregon II, he assisted scientists and focused on shark research. He painted over 20 paintings during the trip documenting the many species of sharks they caught, researched and released. Through this experience, he has incorporated science into his art lessons so kids can develop a deeper appreciation for their environment and conservation.
In 2010, Stephen began showing his illustration work in various art galleries as part of different group shows until he was accepted into juried shows in the Detroit metro area. In 2011, he was named the featured artist of the Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair. He is now in his tenth year of doing art festivals across Michigan and Ohio.
Stephenś painting work is varied and ranges from work that is colorful and whimsical and meant for kids of all ages, while some are thought provoking paintings that explore pop culture, science fiction, and retro- futurism. During his residency at Good Hart, he plans on exploring the beautiful landscapes of the area during the day to paint on site, and then go back to the studio to add imaginative extras during the night that will take his paintings beyond just the normal landscape painting aesthetic.
Images courtesy of the artist – Stephen Kade – www.stephenkade.com
Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann
In residence: August 13 – 27, 2021
Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann received her BA from Brown University and MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the recipient of the Sustainable Arts Foundation grant, a Fulbright grant to Taiwan, the AIR Gallery and Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Fellowships in New York, NY, and the Arts and Humanities Grant, Mayor’s Award and Hamiltonian Fellowship in Washington, DC. Some of the venues where Mann has shown her work include the Walters Art Museum, American University Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Rawls Museum, the Art Museum at SUNY Potsdam, the US consulate in Dubai, UAE, and the US embassy in Yaounde, Cameroon. Mann is currently an instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Artist Statement
My work’s abstractions arise from the subjects I portray: ecological and geological cycles, processes of chemical corrosion and natural efflorescence. With roots in traditions of Chinese landscape painting, my monumentally sized paintings and installations evolve a fantastic, abstract vision of the natural world. My latest work confronts the challenge: the resuscitation of landscape painting in a world where “landscape” is represented and defined through an ever-widening field of digital, graphic, and visual forms. How can a painting capture flux, abundance, waste, fertility, and the collision and collusion of diverse forms? How can it respond to the pressure we place on our era’s fragile ecosystem? My paintings explore both questions by sustaining tension between what is artificial and what is natural, between what is chemical and what is biological, between organic and inorganic. The paper on which I paint is not only a recognition of a tradition of Chinese painting; it is also a medium of vulnerability and expansiveness, susceptible to crease and tear as well as to collage and collation. My own role in the creation of the paintings strikes a balance between the purpose and the protective. I trust to process, chance, and change, but I encourage, direct, and facilitate all of these. In my most recent work, I hope to live in the tradition of landscape painting, experiencing it for what it has always been: an occasion for radical experimentation and confrontation with the world, in the broadest sense of the term, that sustains us.
Images courtesy of the artist – Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann – https://www.katherinemann.net/
Sarah Stonich
In residence: September 19 – October 6, 2021
Sarah Stonich’s first novel, These Granite Islands was a Barnes & Noble Great New Writers pick, translated to a dozen languages and awarded numerous prizes. Her second, The Ice Chorus was also a critical success, though she is best known for the Northern trilogy, beginning with Vacationland, continuing with Laurentian Divide, winner of the ’19 Minnesota Book Award. That novel was read on air by Jim Fleming as a WPRI’s Chapter A Day selection. Sarah’s memoir Shelter: Off The Grid In The Mostly Magnetic North won a NEMBA award for memoir. Her Fishing With Ray Anne trilogy debuted with Fishing! in March ’20.
Second in that series, Reeling, will launch in October, ’21. Sarah’s novels have been chosen as community reads in a dozen states and provinces. She is a frequent speaker at libraries, universities and festivals, as well as writer-in-residence at such programs as The Ragdale Foundation IL, Gibraltor Pointe; Art OMI; Anderson Center; The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Ireland, and Hawthornden Castle, Scotland, among others. The recipient of a Loft McKnight Award and four MN State Arts Board fellowships, she also reviews fiction and non-fiction for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and other newspapers, as well as editing for The Loft’s Manuscript Assessment program. Sarah lives in a repurposed flour mill on the Mississippi River with her partner; her son, and their boxer puppy, Fergal.
Artist Statement
Place is as important to me as the characters populating my stories. We are all sums of our pasts: our relationships, the landscapes we are imprinted with; the families and societies that raised and nurtured us – or didn’t. I’m a slow writer, needing to understand my characters in their entirety before committing them to the page. If they don’t ring true and full, readers might forget them. Success for me is not how many copies are sold, but that my characters and their stories are remembered.
Rebbecca Lynn
In residence: October 20 – 27, 2021
Rebecca Lynn is a Two Spirit artist, educator, and activist from the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. Born and raised in Northern Michigan, she has always been a passionate advocate for social change. After studying sociology at the University of Michigan, she moved back home to reconnect with her tribal community, family, and ancestral lands. Her work with QueerKwe Designs aims to create representation for LGBTQ & Two Spirit Native peoples within community space by incorporating modern pride flags with traditional forms of beadwork. Rebecca uses her work to not only create visibility but also educate others on traditional Anishinaabe ideologies of gender and sexuality and the way harmful effects of colonialism. She has given lectures at the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University on Two Spirit Identity and Indigenous gender and sexuality.
Jacinta Clusellas
In residence: November 3 – 20, 2021
Jacinta Clusellas is a composer, arranger, guitarist and singer-songwriter based in New York City. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jacinta brings together South American folklore, jazz and chamber music, in the context of songs influenced by poems, literature and nature from South America. She has served as music director-composer-arranger for the ongoing development of the bilingual musical AZUL at the O’Neill National Music Theatre Conference, New York Theatre Workshop, BRIC, The Drama League, Tofte Lake Center, Catwalk Art Institute and the Prelude Festival.
Jacinta’s debut album El Pájaro Azul was released in NYC, and published in Japan under the record label Inpartmaint Inc. Her second album A Dónde Llega el Silencio is being produced by West One Music (London, UK) and will be recorded in NYC.
In New York City, Jacinta has performed at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, Joe’s Pub, The Great Hall at Cooper Union, Americas Society/Council of the Americas, La MaMa Theatre, Le Poisson Rouge, Rockwood Music Hall, Musical Theatre Factory, and Women of Color on Broadway.
Jacinta has toured the US as a composer, songwriter, and performer. Selected: South by Southwest [SXSW] (Austin, TX), Lanesboro Arts (Jerome Foundation, MN), Audacious Raw Theatre (MN), Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (WY). Internationally, she has toured her music throughout Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Canada, Greece and Italy. Jacinta has also worked as an arranger for Grammy award-winning artists Alejandro Sanz (Berklee Performance Center) and A.R. Rahman (Boston Symphony Hall). Jacinta is a Teaching Artist at the New York Philharmonic, where she develops programs and teaches for the Very Young Composers Program, has served as a mentor at Lincoln Center’s Music Across Borders program and as a workshop creator and facilitator at Lincoln Center Passport for the Arts. She is a former member of the Carnegie Hall Music Educators Workshop and holds a B.A. in Contemporary Writing and Production from Berklee College of Music.
Artist Statement:
I compose original music influenced by Latin American poetry, nature and landscapes. I am a guitarist and singer-songwriter.
Throughout my life, music has accompanied me as a universal language, helping me break barriers, connect with people and build community. Music has always made me feel less alone, an ever present feeling of belonging somewhere. Composing brings me closer to myself, and opens the possibility to connect with myself in vulnerable states, while also empowering me to move, change and grow artistically and personally.
As a composer and performer, I seek to push my limits and discover new writing methodologies and voices. I do not define myself within one genre. Collaboration is essential to my process, which is fed by an admiration for artists in all fields, as well as for people who do not label themselves artists but are part of creative communities. I work collaboratively because of the give and take, the real need for deep listening, and the clash of various academic trainings, cultural belongings and aesthetic preferences. These experiences fulfill me in all spheres of my life.
Growing up in Argentina, I was always surrounded by nature, wide landscapes and silence. I spent my childhood traveling to Patagonia for fly fishing trips with my father, spending weeks isolated from the city and in pure contact with the environment. Since then, I have always been drawn to the oscillation between silence and sound, seeking to transmit this peacefulness through my music. In the last few years, new questions and concerns have come to my mind, which have led me to continue writing music in Spanish with more awareness of the impact and the importance of creating work that reflects current demographic changes in the US. I value Spanish lyric writing, music and work that can represent so many Latinx and bilingual communities in this country that have been in the margins of the narrative.
Kate Eberstadt
In residence: November 29 – December 13, 2021
Kate Eberstadt is a composer, singer-songwriter, writer, and performing artist, born in Washington D.C. and currently based in Brooklyn. Her work has been shown internationally, most recently at National Sawdust (Brooklyn), The Connelly Theater (NYC), and The Nemetski National Theater (Kazakhstan.)
She was selected as a Creator for the inaugural Toulmin Partnership by National Sawdust and The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Past artist residencies include The Watermill Center, The American Academy in Berlin, and The Center at West Park. Selected press: NPR, Mic.com, YAMAHA,El Español, Tokyo Shimbun,Der Tagesspiegel. Her writing has been published in The Berlin Journal, ROM Magazin, Slant News, and The Writer’s Rock Quarterly.
Kate founded The Hutto Project, a performing arts program for children living in an emergency refugee camp in Berlin. She has taught songwriting in public schools, detention facilities, foster care, after-school programs, and on Rikers Island. Kate enjoys spending time in nature and fostering dogs with Waldo’s Rescue Pen. For more information, visit www.kateeberstadt.com, or check out @updatesfromkate on Instagram.
Kate makes music with her sister Izzi under the name Delune. Their music has been featured in Glamour, ELLE, PopSugar, and more. You can find their work on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and on instagram as @deluneofficial.
Artist Statement:
During her stay at Good Hart, Kate will work on her first solo album.
Sarah Sheppard
In residence: January 3 – 17, 2020
Sarah Sheppard, born and raised in Metro Detroit, spent five years living and working on the East Coast before returning to Michigan. She earned a BA in English Writing and Literature from Saint Mary’s College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. A former senior rights manager, she works as a writer, editor, and copywriter.
In her day-to-day work, Sarah helps individuals, writers, and businesses bring their stories to light through collaboration, ghostwriting, copywriting, editing, and proofreading. She writes about health, well-being, relationships, female entrepreneurship, and what it means to be successful.
In her free time, Sarah supports anti-human trafficking efforts, practices yoga, and travels. In 2016, she traveled the U.S. for two months by train. Sarah has taught writing classes on the East Coast and in the Midwest. She was a writer-in-residence at the Gullkistan Artist Residency in 2018 and is working on her first novel.
At Good Hart, Sarah will dedicate her time to short story writing. She loves to write about the questioning of and the struggles with social constructs. Her fiction is often inspired by the people she meets and the places she inhabits. Some of her favorite short story writers are Jhumpa Lahiri, Adam Haslett, Elizabeth McCracken, and James Baldwin.
Sarah looks forward to spending uninterrupted time collaborating with the community, engaging with the beautiful landscape, and focusing on her craft.
Michael Fischer
In residence: January 17 – 21, 2020
In collaboration with: CharEm Integrated School District
Michael Fischer is a Moth StorySlam winner, a Luminarts Cultural Foundation Fellow, and a mentor for incarcerated authors through the Pen City Writers program. His work appears in Salon, The Sun, Brevity, Orion, Guernica, The Rumpus, and elsewhere, and his audio essays have been broadcast on CBC Radio’s Love Me and The New York Times‘s Modern Love: The Podcast.
At Good Hart, Michael will continue working on a memoir-in-essays that deals with his time as a state prison inmate. The manuscript studies the quieter, often overlooked moments that constitute prison life; Good Hart is the perfect environment to look deeply into those moments. As someone who embraces social justice work and the liberating power of creative writing, he’s looking forward to engaging with members of the local community and being inspired by their stories as well.
Zora O’Neill
In residence: January 29 – February 12, 2020
In collaboration with: Harbor Springs Festival of the Book
Raised in New Mexico and now based in Queens, New York, Zora O’Neill studied Arabic literature in college and graduate school. After a decade as a travel writer, she returned to the subject in the memoir All Strangers Are Kin: Adventures in Arabic and the Arab World, which received the Society of American Travel Writers Lowell Thomas Award for best travel book of 2016. Her writing on refugees in Greece, for publications as diverse as Parnassus: Poetry in Review and USA Today, has also earned praise and awards. More broadly, she has written about food, travel and even plumbing for the New Yorker, The New York Times and The Art of Eating.
At Good Hart, Zora will be working on a novel informed by the experiences of contemporary Syrian refugees, as well as the family histories of Greeks and Turks affected by the Population Exchange of 1922-23.
Rehab El Sadek
Stay-in-place Residency: May 8 – 22
Rehab El Sadek is an Egyptian-born conceptual artist whose career has spanned over 25 years, working and exhibiting in over 17 countries and 4 continents. Utilizing mediums such as sound, photography, sculpture, and the written word, her work explores issues related to immigration, belonging, communication, and language. She has initiated workshops and creative social practice interventions on issues ranging from women’s rights in Sinai to the challenges facing disadvantaged children in Nairobi.
Career highlights include the “Rebelle: Art and Feminism 1969 – 2009” group show at Museum voor Moderne Kunst and being selected by Jannis Kounellis for his Pavilion at Biennale Dei Giovanni Artisti in Rome. In addition to being a MacDowell Colony fellow, her awards and residencies include the Vermont Studio Center Residency, the UNESCO-supported Artists’ Bursaries at Gasworks Artists Studios in London, the Art Omi residency in Ghent, New York, the Thami Mnyele Residency Award in Amsterdam, and a Sharjah Biennale Installation Prize. She is the recent recipient of a Foundation For Contemporary Art Emergency Grant. In 2017, El Sadek was named the City of Austin’s first Artist-in-Residence, exploring environmental and social issues embedded in a city Department.
She currently lives and works in Austin, Texas.
Danielle Klebes
Stay-in-place residency: May 27 – June 10
Emerging Artist – In collaboration with Harbor Inc.
Danielle Klebes has exhibited at notable galleries and museums in New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Vermont, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Florida, Quebec, Canada, and Istria, Croatia. She is spending much of 2019 and 2020 participating in domestic and international artist residencies. Danielle received her MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA, in 2017.
My current body of work explores and disrupts ideas of social expectations and gender norms by presenting queer bodies in utopic settings. ‘Utopia’ was coined in 1516 by Sir Thomas More from the Greek ‘outopos,’ which literally translates to ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere.’ A ‘perfect place’ is subjective and has a multitude of facades, but definitions are decided by those who have the power to write history. The figures in my work are often captured in moments of uncertainty and isolation, close in proximity but emotionally distant. They are positioned in liminal, natural environments with no clear entrance or exit pathway. There is a sense of the in-between without a clear narrative regarding what comes next. I employ a cool, colorful, and unnatural palette to highlight disconnection and lack of intimacy.
Jonathan Korotko
Stay-in-place residency: August 21 – September 4
Michigan Artist
Jonathan Korotko is an artist who works with fiber in sculptural form. He visually and critically investigates domestic interiors in terms of gendered power dynamics. Working with yarn and string, Korotko wraps objects and creates new skins for them, cloaking and distorting the often sexualized associations of the original. Playful hand-rendered and applied surfaces create alternative imaginations of opulence and theatricality. He wants people to think about the significance of ornamentation and decoration as part of political mobilization in feminist and queer history. He received his MFA in Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019 and has exhibited across the United States as well as internationally. Jonathan has been an artist-in-residence at Ox-Bow School of Art and Franconia Sculpture Park, and will be a resident at PlySpace, The Studios at MASS MoCA, and Good Hart Artist Residency in 2020.
Artist Statement / Project
I look at how exotic animal imagery was incorporated into ornamental designs and patterns that covered all manners of wall surfaces and furniture in eighteenth-century France, England, and the Netherlands. The popularity of these designs and objects was part of a program of cultivating aesthetic taste that focused on exotic animal imagery as signifiers of class and as vehicles of desire. The pursuit of the exotic spoke to imperialistic ideologies of territorial expansion and the acceleration of consumption as part of fashion under colonial modernity. I would like to combine this historical research of how taste and desire were formed through exotic animal imagery with my long standing interest in perfume bottles. After all, perfume bottles hold scents that are associated with romantic pursuit, which has historically been coded in predatorial terms. The bedchamber, dressing room, and powder room are specifically noteworthy, as these are spaces of self-preparation where individuals are primed for courtship and where they are often surrounded by animal iconographies that allegorize pursuit. How might we think of these interiors as fantasy spaces in which taste and desire are trained in terms of animalistic instincts? How are subjects of conquest and courting imagined through pattern and ornament?
My new body of sculptures would incorporate fiber-based materials that allude to exotic animal commodities, be it feather, fur, leather, or ivory. This work would begin during my residency at MASS MoCA in winter 2020, during which I will be in the fiber studios to weave tapestries that will be applied as upholstery onto furniture-based wooden forms. I plan to continue this work while at Good Hart.
Céline Browning
Stay-in-place residency: August 21 – September 4
Michigan Artist
Céline Browning is an artist, art writer and educator currently based in Michigan and Ohio. She was born and raised in Chicago to a family of new media artists and activists whose work addresses a range of topics connected with social justice. Open engagement with social and political issues is a consistent part of her approach to creating meaningful works of art, and her studio work is specifically engaged in an active exploration of power dynamics in American culture. Many of her recent projects are moored in a sense of local history, using objects and symbols as portraits of communities.
She began her career in metalsmithing and fibers, focusing on the conceptual potential of functional objects. While the core of her creative work is conceptually based sculpture, she has also worked in wearables, sound installation, and augmented reality. Her work has been exhibited extensively, most notably through a three-year travelling group exhibition organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum (2017-2020), a solo show at Northwestern University (2019), as well as group shows at the Stony Island Arts Bank (2018) and the Pinakothek Der Moderne in Munich (2014). In the fall of 2019, she was named a finalist in the Miami University Young Sculptors Competition for the $10,000 William and Dorothy
Yeck Award. She is currently an Affiliate Professor of Art at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.
Artist Statement
I have a deep fascination with the diaristic capacity of everyday items; even the most mundane things have the ability to reveal truths about the social systems of which they are a product. In this way, banal objects such as clothing from a thrift store, children’s toys, and national flags can be seen as keys to our collective psyche; they contain the story of our past mistakes, our current woes, and our hopes for the future.
Through my work, I investigate the complexity of American identity in the 21st century, and how that identity is made manifest through visual language. Like many symbols, those associated with American identity are both sacred and profane in nature. As a sacred object, the American flag is used to cover the caskets of fallen soldiers, but as a profane image it is used as a print for bikinis, bumper stickers, even toilet paper. A gun can be associated with the founding of the United States and the sacred duty of police officers to protect their community; yet this symbol is also fraught, bearing with it a history of institutional violence and brutal subjugation. While visual symbols are often imagined to be immutable, they are in fact shifting signifiers whose meaning changes according to context, and how one interprets these symbols is often used as a way to delineate between social groups. Besides being reductive and potentially dangerous, this method of categorization can show the extreme limitation of these American icons. Complex ideas, emotions, and histories deserve complex symbols. Using the vocabulary of surrealism and pop-art, I deconstruct, combine, and repurpose this American visual shorthand, creating objects which seem frozen in transition, caught between contradictory states of being. By destroying, investigating, and ultimately rebuilding common symbols associated with American identity, I aim to question the relationship between signifier and signified, image and object, sacred and profane.
Jan Shoemaker
In residence: September 15 – 29
In collaboration with Harbor Springs Festival of the Book
Jan Shoemaker is the author of the essay collection, Flesh and Stones: Field Notes from a Finite World, and the poetry collection, The Reliquary Earth. Born and raised a Michigander, Jan lived in both the Pacific Northwest and in the Northeast before returning to Michigan to write and teach and raise a family. She received the Greater Lansing United Nations Association Loy La Salle Award for Outstanding Contributions to Global Education for her classroom work in literature and in world religions.
Jan’s essays and poems have been anthologized, featured on public radio, and published in many magazines and journals including The Sun, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Colorado Review, Evening Street Review, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and Upstreet. She received Confrontation Magazine’s 2017 Poetry Prize and her essays have been “nominated,” she says, “in that always a bridesmaid way” for the Pushcart Prize. She participated in a teaching residency at Walden Pond in 2018 and has run workshops at sundry writing conferences. She has an MFA in Creative Writing.
Jan’s essays and poems explore the natural world and our human relation within and, as self-conscious creatures, to it. What does it mean to be, and know oneself to be, a transient here on Earth? What larger reality do we not perceive because, as Thoreau says, “our vision does not penetrate the surface of things?” What might we notice if we paid better attention? What are our moral obligations to each other; what does it feel like to fall short of our own best intentions; and finally, what comprises our hope of and struggle for redemption? These are the questions that drive Jan’s literary explorations. Her work, she insists, is not for people who always get life right, but for people who fall down here and there and struggle to get back up and do a little better by the world. As she does: again and again and again.
Samuel James Stover
In residence: October 22 – November 12
In collaboration with Little Traverse Conservancy
Sam Stover was born in Birmingham, Alabama and currently based in New York City, Sam Stover is currently completing his MFA from Hunter College in New York, and also teaches an undergraduate writing workshop there. His fiction has appeared in Crazyhorse and has been received honorable mentions in Glimmer Train’s New Writer’s Award and the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival Fiction Contest. Sam’s fiction often focuses on queerness and gender, as well as on memory and its impacts on identity. Some of the writers who continue to inspire him are W.G. Sebald, Garth Greenwell, and Maggie Nelson.
At Good Hart, Sam will continue working on a novel that explores climate change and its psychological impacts, as well as gender identity and family relationships. Good Hart’s emphasis on solitude and connection to the natural world as a foundation for artistic practice makes it the perfect place to contemplate the ecological themes of the novel, and focus on crafting its central chapters.
Elsabé Dixon
In residence: May 10 – 24, 2019
In collaboration with Women’s Resource Center of Northern Michigan
Elsabé Dixon is a visual artist focusing on eco and living platforms. Elsabé has exhibited and produced work throughout the United States including the Danville Museum of Fine Art, Danville, VA; Artisphere A.I.R. Center for Contemporary Art, Rosslyn, VA; Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.; The Textile Museum, Washington DC; The Museum of Contemporary Crafts Pittsburg, PA and the, the A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Dixon has participated in exhibitions in Schönebeck, Germany; the Ghetto Biennial, Haiti; Istanbul, Turkey, as well as Sichuan China.
Dixon most recently showed work at VisArts in Rockville where her exhibition Mise en Place (Part of a larger 13 curator exhibition called Deep Dive: Art and Transformation) and incorporated collaborations with the Great Harvest Bread Company, the Beall Dawson Museum, and the Montgomery County Beekeepers Association. Curator Laura Roulet oversaw the exhibition, a pollinator panel discussion and VisArts facilitated 10 hands-on public workshops.
Elsabé has directed and engaged in multiple cross-disciplinary educational art projects: The Book of Latent Promises Project, a series of collaborative public art projects with George Mason University faculty and the Floating Lab Collective, at the Ghetto Biennial in Port Au Prince, Haiti, and The Living Hive Project, a Multidisciplinary Provost Grant she received in 2016 while working with the GMU Bee Initiatives Program as well as the Smithsonian Mason School of Conservation and the GMU student run MakerSpace (the MIX).
Born in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, Elsabé immigrated to the US in 1985 and currently lives and works in Virginia. Elsabé received her MFA in New Media from The University of George Mason, and BA from University of Averette, VA, where she studied under Maud Gatewood. Elsabé Dixon is the President of the Washington Sculptors Group (a DC based 501 C3 non-profit which serves the local communities in the triad area of MD, DC, and VA.) and Director of the Living Hive Project while teaching studio drawing at George Mason. Dixon also writes for the East City Art Paper.
For more information on Elsabé’s work please see her website: elsabeloubser-dixon.squarespace.com/
Marie Alarcón
In residence: May 29 – June 11, 2019
In collaboration with Harbor Inc. and The Loft Coworking Space
Marie Alarcón is a multimedia artist with a focus on video and sound, based in Philadelphia, PA. She has a B.A. in Non-Fiction Filmmaking and Post Colonial Studies from The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, and a Masters of Fine Arts with a Certificate in Time Based Media, from the University of Pennsylvania, School of Art and Design. Alarcón has worked in community media as an educator and producer since 2006 and currently works at PhillyCAM, the Public access television station in Philadelphia, PA, as their Production Coach.
Alarcón’s art works focus on environmental spaces and the silent historical relationships embedded in the geography, often through sound collage and movement. As a multi-medium artist, they create music/sound design, video art, and performance. Inspired by liminality, hybridity and the way that cinema functions as collective memory, they use digital manipulation and animation in their work, with an interest in digital/analog hybrids that reclaim a tactile relationship to the hyper-real. Her relationship to environment and place is informed by psychogeography, and notions of place and its production. With a focus on the problematic of communication, she continuously asks “how do we express the invisible in a culture of visible evidence?” and “In what ways can technological innovations begin to bridge the experiential gap between ourselves and others?”
For more information on Marie’s work please see her website: mariealarcon.com
Sizhu Li
In residence: June 14 – 28, 2019
In collaboration with Crooked Tree Arts Center
Sizhu Li is a New York based multi-disciplinary artist, originally from China, Sichuan province. She is always fascinated by constructing immersive installations based on her understandings towards human society, nature and universe. This interest was largely cultivated during her college time at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, where she obtained her BFA in illustration in 2016. After two years, her MFA was obtained in Mt. Royal, a multi-disciplinary program in Maryland Institute College of Art. She also graduated as the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship awardee, the largest graduation fellowship for academic excellence. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Beijing, Baltimore and New York.
Artist statement
I construct magical worlds in my work. With everyday work-place objects, I swirl together themes of energy, humility, science, environment, and home to create an enchanting experience. A humorous quality blended with blue emotions are embedded in my art: I treat materials as characters; moreover, with binary-coding controls, simple movements are repeating endlessly. My research combines ancient philosophy and modern technologies to craft a form of futurism. My installations and sculptures are kinetic: using basic coding and sensors, the work interacts with its viewers and the space around it.
I believe the order of our world exists in a binary mode, with every corner maintaining the balance of Yin-Yang. This correlates to the binary language involved in the coding of my work. In Chinese philosophy, the universe creates itself out of a primary chaos of material energy, organized into the cycles of Yin and Yang and formed into objects and lives. Visualizing the balance of forces, energy cycles through my personal emotions, thus prompting me to create immersive 4-D images—ones designed to inspire viewers to rethink their lives.
Andrea Novak
K-12 Art Educator Residency
In residence: July 31 – August 14, 2019
“I have always enjoyed stories about the lives people live – those so fanciful they become movies, myths/legends and those based on the simple behaviors that make us human.”
Andrea Simons-Novak is a storyteller who works in oil, acrylic, watercolor and bias-relief assemblage mediums. Her work reflects a dramatic “still” in time used by Baroque artists and the combination of classical and contemporary objects and symbols of the Surrealists. The Michigan native enjoys exploring the correlation between human and animal behaviors and expressions observed in nature by staging animals, primarily birds, as characters in her paintings. These figures communicate as the human figure would but in a much more elegant, intriguing, and less obvious manner.
Novak has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan with a concentration in oil and watercolor painting (1995). She studied a semester abroad in Florence, Italy where she was immersed in plein-air landscape watercolor painting and art history. She also holds a Master of Art degree from Eastern Michigan University with a focus in Painting (2003). She has exhibited as a visiting artist at various galleries in Michigan including the Washington Street Gallery in Ann Arbor, the Lawrence Street Gallery in Ferndale, the Ford Gallery in Ypsilanti, and the Main Branch Gallery in Grayling.
Novak has practiced as a K-12 Visual Art Educator for 22 years, the last 19 of which have been with the Walled Lake Consolidated School District where she has taught art to kindergarten to fifth grade students. In addition to delivering visual art instruction, Novak also has developed visual art curriculums (for both the Walled Lake and South Lyon School Districts), units of study, and assessments. In addition, she holds a district representative position on the Oakland County Fine Arts Advisory Council, has coordinated and taught the Walled Lake Visual Art Camp, been the K-12 Student Art Exhibition Coordinator, and has frequently presented at the Michigan Art Education Association annual conferences. She obtained her teaching certification from Saginaw Valley State University (1998). She received Newsweek’s-WDIV Outstanding Teacher Award (2000) and Mary Helen Guest Elementary Teacher of the Year (2007-2008).
For more information on Andrea’s work please see his website: andreasimons-novak.blogspot.com
Emma Steinkraus
In residence: August 16 – 30, 2019
Emma Steinkraus is a visual artist, Assistant Professor of Fine Art at Hampden-Sydney College, and a founding editor of Company Editions, a journal for contemporary poetry and art. She holds degrees from Williams College and the University of Iowa, where she earned an MFA in Painting in 2016. Raised by scientists in the Arkansas Ozarks, she grew up keeping insects, identifying plants, and cultivating prairie habitat. Those early experiences now manifest in a commitment to exploring the complex ways ecology, society, and personal history weave together. Her work has received numerous awards including an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Steamboat Scholarship at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the year-long support of a Hubbard Hutchinson Memorial Fellowship. She has previously attended residencies at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Pajama Factory, and Cow House Studios Ireland.
Steinkraus makes paintings and immersive installations that tell personal stories about the environment. One recent exhibition paired portraits set in the Arkansas Ozarks with a grow station for local plants, a handmade solar oven, live mushrooms, and a “foraging jacket” that functioned as a wearable field guide. Another exhibition displayed paintings of animals against a backdrop collaged out of photographs of degraded landscapes. Her current project mines archives to attend to the contributions of nearly a hundred early female artist-naturalists. Across media, her work is research-driven and marked by its vulnerability and attention to detail.
Her work can be found at www.emmasteinkraus.com and you can follow her on
instagram at @emmasteinkraus.
Dani Knoph
Local Artist Spotlight Residency
In residence: August 31 – September 7, 2019
Dani Knoph is an artist, writer, and advocate for fish & wildlife conservation in Michigan. She launched Dani Knoph Wildlife Studio in 2017 and co-founded ReWild Michigan in 2018. Her 2019 art collection features intricate watercolor illustrations of declining aquatic species in Northwest Michigan. Archival prints of her artwork can be found at specialty shops and galleries. In 2017, Dani joined a statewide effort to reintroduce Northern Michigan’s once predominant native salmonid species, known as the Arctic Grayling. She is part of the fund development team for Michigan’s Arctic Grayling Initiative.
In 2017, Dani was asked to write a feature story about Arctic Grayling restoration for Traverse Magazine. Research led her down a rabbit hole through Michigan’s pre-conservation past. Historical records and photography of the late 1800s revealed a grim period of forests cleared of all trees, barren river banks, displaced Native Americans, and declining native wildlife. Learning about this era of mass habitat destruction inspired her to learn about the current state of Northern Michigan’s native species. That’s when a friend introduced her to Michigan’s Wildlife Action Plan, a statewide framework to coordinate conservation for wildlife and habitats by working together toward shared goals—a plan that outlines more than 300 species of great conservation need. She felt called to learn more about this wildlife crisis, meet the people involved and help raise awareness.
Dani received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Michigan and studied painting at the Glasgow School of Art. She and her husband Gerard call Elk Rapids home. They are avid cross-country skiers, gardeners, and hikers. Exploring Northern Michigan rivers by canoe is a favorite, as well as traveling to art shows along the Great Lakes coast. They are inspired by many organizations and people who are dedicated to restoring native wildlife and taking care of the land and water in Northern Michigan. These activities and passions have introduced them to a world of purpose and a wonderful sense of community.
PROCESS
Dani’s work begins with a wildlife species of interest and a blank sheet of Arches watercolor paper. She researches, talks with biologists who work with the species, and then begins to draw. She works with old fashioned nib pens and Speedball ink to map out the overall structure and texture observed in photographic references. She then works with fine round brushes to layer transparent watercolor washes in an effort to capture the spirit of natural beauty and wonder. Each illustration is a tribute to its species and the never-ending pursuit of protecting the wild.
For more information on Dani’s work please see his website: www.daniknoph.com
Meagan Lucas
In residence: September 20 – October 4, 2019
In collaboration with Harbor Springs Festival of the Book
Meagan Lucas is originally from St. Joseph Island, Ontario, but now lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina with her husband and two children. She is a graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University (BA History), Ferris State University (M.Ed. Curriculum and Instruction), and Southern New Hampshire University (MA English and Creative Writing). She teaches English Composition at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, and is the Fiction Editor at Barren Magazine. For fun: she haunts bookstores, walks beaches, murders houseplants slowly, and reads.
Meagan’s recent short fiction appears in: The Santa Fe Writer’s Project, The Same, The New Southern Fugitives, and Still: The Journal. She won the 2017 Scythe Prize for fiction and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, Song Birds and Stray Dogs is forthcoming Summer 2019.
You can read more at: meaganlucas.com
Facebook: @meaganlucasauthor
Twitter: @mgnlcs
Meagan plans to use her time in Good Hart to complete a novel in progress: Mercy explores the way that legacies haunt families, and addresses the role of the poverty and the church in small town Appalachia. Meagan looks forward to reconnecting with old friends, meeting new ones, and partnering with and participating in Harbor Springs Festival of the Book.
Timothy E. Bradley
In residence: October 5 – 26, 2019
In collaboration with Little Traverse Conservancy
Timothy E. Bradley received a BA in Literature from Yale University and an MFA in Fiction from Hunter College. At Hunter he was a 2016 Hertog Fellow and received the Wendell Stacy Johnson Award for Outstanding Scholarship in 19th or 20th Century English Literature. In addition to writing fiction, he has over a decade of experience researching and publishing for advocates and activists on social justice issues, economic inequality, and climate change. He was raised in St. Louis, Missouri and lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.
Timothy’s literary work explores a variety of topics including failure, displacement, queerness, and our evolving relationships to nature and technology. He is currently working on a short story collection and a novel, which tells the story of an aging gay couple and the mysteries they encounter late in life. During his time at Good Hart, Timothy will develop and revise new material for these projects and collaborate with the Little Traverse Conservancy.
Susan Moss
In residence: May 11 – 25, 2018
In Partnership with Women’s Resource Center of Northern Michigan
Susan Moss has an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Nebraska. She has been drawing since a child. Much of her work has focused on large-scale drawings that explore domesticity, memory, and the ordinary as recurring themes. Several years ago she took up the study of historic and contemporary textiles and began using stitch, especially hand embroidery, as a way of drawing. Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally in over eighty venues. Moss teaches contemporary textile art and all levels of drawing in the Department of Art & Design at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO.
About her work:
Stitched marks and lines meander, coalesce, or nervously bob across the surface, describing a world where domestic objects, vegetation, and birds reside (or die) together. These hand-stitched drawings emerge from a desire to draw with thread, to locate a drawing aesthetic in textile work, capturing the sense of immediacy and improvisation associated with drawing. They also explore connections between domesticity and the natural world, at times collapsing distinctions between inside and out.
My work is quiet and might be considered lacking in skill. However, I think that its simplicity, casualness, seemingly accidental nature are strengths, and that these aspects can engage viewers and makers in an open, unthreatening way. My approach to stitch looks like something that anyone could do. And, it’s true! Most anyone could! What I enjoy most about stitch is working without concern for technical perfection, in more spontaneous ways.
For more information on Susan’s work please see her website: susanmmoss.com
Mami Takahashi
In residence: June 16 – 30, 2018
In Partnership with Crooked Tree Arts Center
Mami Takahashi is a Japanese interdisciplinary artist, who integrates traditional and contemporary approaches in ideas, methods, and media to address perspectives on foreignness and Americanness. As a non-native English user and recent immigrant to the US, she incorporates her awkwardness in new culture, and often her clumsy English usage into visual practices. She shares the struggle non-native English speakers face when communicating with first-language American speakers, and the limits imposed through these interactions. Takahashi uses multiple methods of art making such as painting, craft-making, digital video, performance, language-base works, and audio, frequently creating large scale installations that explore the boundaries in the social norms between cultures.
As a nation historically struggling with its diversity problems, the U.S. offers a unique
perspective on the relationship between native English speakers and an increasing immigrant population. She believes that art re-ritualizes the everyday to reveal something about our lives.
For more information on Mami’s work please see her website: mamitakahashi.virb.com
Steven Walker
In residence: August 3 – 17, 2018
Steven Walker biography
“ I didn’t come from a family of artists, I wasn’t top of my class or win a lot of awards but I’ve always had a strong work ethic and the passion to work on my craft.”
Born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and raised in Richmond, Virginia he discovered his love for art at a very early age. With little interest in anything else, Steven took the next big step towards his pursuit of a career in art when he earned his bachelor’s degree in fine arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. He would later earn his masters in fine arts from Marywood University, where he also met his wife/ fellow artist Evelyn.
Instant success was not in the cards as Steven continued showing at a string of coffee shops, libraries and other businesses. Eventually, his hard work paid off with a few local awards that soon caught the attention of two gallery owners. Since his venture into gallery life, his landscapes have been well received by collectors as his paintings are part of several private collections such as Airstream Inc., Hilton Hotels, the Boy Scouts of America, Dominion Resources, Virginia State Department, the National Parks Service, the Columbus Convention Center and the United States Air Force.
Since going full time as an artist in 2008, Steven has been included in several local and national juried competitions including the Richeson 75 Landscape Competition, Plein Air Salon, the International Salon Competition, the Oil Painters of America Salon and the Art Renewal Center. Steven also had the privilege of being a part of a statewide traveling exhibition with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
He has participated in several artist in residency programs in Michigan, Indiana, Iowa and Colorado. In 2014, he was selected to create the Ohio Governor’s Art Awards by the Ohio Arts Council and in 2015 he received honorable mention in the Southwest Art Magazine’s Artistic Excellence Competition.
Steven currently resides in Hahira, Georgia where he continues to work hard on the advancement of his career, with the assistance of his lovely wife Evelyn and studio assistant/daughter Poppy. Currently, his work is represented in Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C.
“I should have quit years ago but that would have proven so many people right.” – SW
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Statement
For more information on Steven’s work please see his website: stevenwalkerstudios.com
Bryna Cofrin-Shaw
In residence: September 21 – October 5, 2018
In Partnership with Little Traverse Conservancy
Bryna Peebles Cofrin-Shaw is originally from Northampton, Massachusetts, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is a graduate of Brown University (BA Environmental Studies) and Hunter College (MFA in Fiction). In addition to writing and teaching, Bryna is an amateur bread-maker, moose lover, and competitive cyclist.
Bryna plans to use her time at Good Hart working on a novel-in-stories that grapples with intimate politics and queer family-building, as well as the interplay of ecology, climate psychology and sexuality. She plans to spend as much time as she can in the varied, splendid habitats of northern Michigan, and to allow these landscapes to shape and infect her creative work, especially as she considers the relationship between human and environmental traumas. She looks forward to collaborating with the Little Traverse Conservancy, and taking part in the Harbor Springs Festival of the Book during her time as a Good Hart Artist-in-Residence this September.
BILL HOSTERMAN
In residence: May 12 – June 9, 2017
In partnership with: Crooked Tree Arts Center
Bill Hosterman is a tenured Associate Professor in the Foundation Department at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, MI. He received his B.A. in Printmaking from Pennsylvania State University, and his M.F.A. in Printmaking from Indiana University. Hosterman channels his creativity into drawings that he hand-paints with watercolors.
From May 12 – June 9, Hosterman will come north from Coopersville, MI to enjoy and be inspired by Good Hart’s natural environment, and explore relationships between humans, nature, and culture.
“I make artwork about relationships – between land and water, and nature and human progress. Through my personal experiences and research into the habitat, landscape and human history of an area, I create images that explore how nature defines humans and they, in turn, define nature. I will use the specific landscape and flora and fauna of the [Good Hart] area as the subject matter for my drawings.”
Hosterman has participated in solo and group exhibitions across the country and overseas, and he has attended artist residencies in Gatlinburg, TN, Ontonagon, MI, and Sheridan, WY.
“For this project, I will be employing a similar strategy at the Crooked Tree Arts Center’s Artist in Residency Program to one that I used during my three-week artists’ residency at The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There, I worked with scientists and park staff at the Twin Creeks Science and Education Center to discover the ways in which the park has changed over time in relationship to the human impact. The piece I am in the process of completing for this project is an examination of the connection between human-made light and its effects on the life of the park.”
CTAC Workshop: On Monday, June 5 from 10:00 AM – 12:00 noon, Bill will present the hands-on workshop, Working in Layers: Combining Pen, Watercolor and Other Media to Create an Image. Tuition for this workshop will be $10 for CTAC members and $15 for non-members. Advanced registration is preferred.
For more information on Bill’s work please see his website – billhostermanprints.com
AMANDA HAMILTON
In residence: August 4 – 18, 2017
In partnership with: Crooked Tree Arts Center
Amanda Hamilton has been on staff at Bethel University in St. Paul, MN as Associate Professor of Art since 2013. She received her B.S. in Drawing and Painting from Biola
University, and also has her M.F.A. in Painting from Claremont Graduate University. Hamilton’s artistic outlets take the form of drawings and paintings, but she has also spent time creating video works.
From August 4 – 18, Hamilton will take a break from her normal routine in Minneapolis, MN to experience Good Hart, MI and further delve into her current theme of darkness and illumination.
While at the Crooked Tree Arts Center my greatest intent is to be present, still, quiet and, perceptive. I intend to make paintings and drawings as well as exploring the possibility of video in relation to my current painting practice. I would [also] like to make a trip to explore the Headlands International Dark Sky Park. I have been working with darkness for the last two years and time at the Dark Sky Park would provide a unique experience available almost nowhere else in the U.S.
Hamilton works with oil and acrylic paints on both paper and stretched canvas. Her work sometimes takes the appearance of a scenic landscape, and other times, emphasizes loose gesture, rough marks, tension and illusion with a much more abstract result. She has been exhibiting in solo and group shows since 2001, and has been a presenter, guest lecturer, and has been the recipient of Artist Residencies in Boise, ID, Johnson, VT, and Idyllwild, CA.
“I have been fortunate to do some residencies over the last decade and I find the experience of being alone, in an unfamiliar environment, stimulates my ability to be focused and thoughtful in a way that feeds my practice for years after.”
CTAC Artist in Residence Talk: On Monday, August 14 at 10:00 a.m, Amanda Hamilton will present a talk entitled, Darkness and Subject/and or Object addressing the recent evolution of her work. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information on Amanda’s work please see her website: amandahamiltonart.com
Joanna Hoge
In residence: May 16 – 30, 2016
In partnership with: Crooked Tree Arts Center
Joanna Hoge currently lives in St. Louis, Missouri and will be spending two weeks in northern Michigan in May. Joanna has studied at Université de Poitiers in Poitiers, France, she has her B.A. in Studio Art and French from Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, and she is currently working toward her M.F.A. with a specialization in Drawing from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois. Joanna finds inspiration in the complexity of the human body – its aesthetic beauty, it’s incredible mechanistic functioning, and its role as a vehicle of the self. Her work is predominately comprised of printmaking and drawings, and she incorporates hand-made paper and thread into her compositions by means of tearing, layering, and embroidering into the fibers. Her techniques allow her to study the intricacies of the body and mind, and how they relate to one another.
As someone interested in the narratives of the physical body, I would like to approach the area surrounding Good Hart through its own body: its flora and fauna, its forests and farms, and its lakeside beaches. My practice involves questioning aspects of embodied experience and examining how shifts in emotional state impact the body. I am curious to continue this line of questioning in Emmet County by looking at how its locational specificity impacts my own experience. It is my intention to translate these observations through a combination of thread and ink on paper.
For more information on Johanna’s work please see her website – joannahoge.com
Linda Harvey-Opiteck
In residence: August 5 – 19, 2016
In partnership with: Crooked Tree Arts Center
Fiber artist Linda Harvey-Opiteck, will be taking a short sabbatical from life in Saratoga Springs, New York to visit Good Hart and be inspired by a completely different landscape. Linda has a B.S. in Art/Art History from Western Michigan University and her M.S. in Historic Preservation Administration from Eastern Michigan University.
This fall I created several felted pieces for a show at a museum in the Adirondack Mountains with the theme “How Do You See the Forest”. I absolutely fell in love with my creations all centered around the beauty of the outdoors in all seasons. From the splendor of sparkling snow, the calmness of summer trees to the vibrancy of the yellow and oranges of the fall. I would spend my residency continuing to work on this outdoor theme using the beauty of northern Michigan as my subject.
Michael Marks
In residence: May 8 – 22, 2015
In partnership with: Crooked Tree Arts Center
Printmaker, Michael Marks has decided to venture from Maine into the northern Midwest in the name of art and “the lake”. Having lived in Cleveland, OH, and with ties to Wisconsin, Marks has spent time around the Great Lakes, which have intrigued him for years, and still do. Having an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Delaware, and having been affiliated with multiple presses across the country, Marks is ready to push pause on his professional life and immerse himself in new surroundings.
“The residency…[will] allow me the time and space to step away from what I comfortably know about myself in the studio, and to find new inspiration to funnel into my artwork from the surrounding landscape and the community around Petoskey.”
With a desire to explore the idea of “the lake”—it’s boundaries and pervasiveness, the effect it has on the land and those living near it, Marks plans to conceptualize “the lake” in his work during his time in the north. He plans to share his residency experience with Good Hart, and the surrounding local communities. Marks also intends to bring back his findings to the creative community in Maine.
Using drawing, collage, and printmaking, my artwork is an attempt to disassemble and reassemble my experiences within landscape, emphasizing the space between narrated memories and observable representations of nature. I strive to search within the margins of the landscape, its contours and layers, interrogating space in both its physical fact and my recollection thereof. This transposition from physical travel to a work on paper acts as a documentation of my interactions with the landscape (hiking, backpacking, fly fishing) and interprets the water, mountains, and weather taken from my observations.The mark making, layering, and color in my artwork creates anchor points of events, passages of time that coalesce into a single image that resonates with both my involvement and my estrangement from the environment. Ultimately, I wish to create an image that exists somewhere between the individual and the landscape.
For more information on Mike’s work please see his website – mikemarksarts.com
Amanda Boyd
In residence: July 31 – August 14, 2015
In partnership with: Crooked Tree Arts Center
Graphic Designer at Doudna Fine Arts Center of Eastern Illinois University, Amanda Boyd embraces the challenge of interacting and connecting with a new community and environment during her CTAC Artist Residency. Working away from home with new people may bring about different perspectives, enhancing her own perceptions of nature—her inspiration.
“Moving to a new community, even for a short amount of time, opens the mind to new possibilities and a lot of knowledge, experience and connections are yet to be gained.”
Having recently graduated with her MFA from Eastern Illinois University, Boyd is eager to show her processes and techniques to the art world. This opportunity in Good Hart is perfect for cutting her teeth on being a resident artist. Being surrounded by the Northern Michigan nature and environment will fuel her new projects because it is nature and the emotions it instils in Boyd that allow her to create.
In my experience, the wilderness leaves me to feel vulnerable, and in conjunction with the darkness of night, this brings a new level of fear. It’s as though I have become only a speck within the immersive and densely populated woods that consume me. This psychological view of nature is what drives my creative process, allowing me to recall these emotions and create a space of my own. Through the use of materials like charcoal, chalk pastels, and soot, I frantically build my image, layering these different mediums, then return to these layers and remove areas by erasing the surface and excavating the image. The seductive use of materials and mark making allow each drawing to read as both celestial and earthbound; an interesting dichotomy of environmental exploration.
My intent is to let the mind lose control and confront the chaos; as the eye wanders, the viewer becomes lured into the depths of the mysterious darkness provoking the individual to become lost within themselves.
For more information on Amanda’s work please see her website – amandaboyd.weebly.com
Kirsten Furlong
In residence: September 25 – October 9, 2015
In partnership with: Crooked Tree Arts Center
Solo and group exhibitionist, Instructor, Professor, Lecturer, Commissioned Artist, Gallery Director of the Visual Arts Center at Boise State University – Kirsten Furlong has quite the list of titles and experiences within the art world. And now she’ll be adding another to her extensive resume. With a varied and detailed journey behind her, Furlong has laid out a plan of experimentation for her time in Good Hart.
“I plan to work with a variety of materials and processes including drawing, painting, photography, stitching/embroidery and printmaking on paper, canvas and felt. Processes and images will be led by exploration of the area and research into the local flora, fauna and landscape.”
Earning her MFA at Boise State University with a concentration in painting and printmaking, Furlong currently works at the university as Gallery Director. Having focused on specific disciplines hasn’t pigeon-holed Furlong or her creativity – thread works, felt pieces, installation and public art, and garments for animals all fall under her pursuits. Furlong’s focus as of late has been on nature and the relationships between humans and animals.
My current artistic practice engages with a series of questions about our culture’s multifaceted relationship to nature and the geography of human/animal interactions in urban and wilderness settings. These inquiries are utilized to contemplate various issues about the natural world and the concept of representation of animals, the landscape, and the environment. I create artworks based on first-hand observations in the natural world and internal responses to objects, illustrations, and texts about various species. In the work, animals serve as emblems of nature and as metaphors for human desires.
I employ a series of visual strategies including linear detail, repetition, and patterns inspired by those seen in various species. Additional ideas and visual sampling comes from the cultural, scientific, and historical models used to describe various environments, animals, and plants.
For more information on Kirsten’s work please see her website – kirstenfurlong.com
Kalina Winska
In residence: May, 2014
In partnership with: Crooked Tree Arts Center
Kalina Winska was in northern Michigan for two weeks in May. She has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Florida in Gainesville and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Art/Design, Wroclaw, Poland. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Valdosta State University in Georgia. “When creating my art, I draw inspiration from observable natural phenomena, living systems, and their formation on a micro and macro scale.… During my (residency) I plan on developing and exploring the ideas of drawing and materiality in relation to nature as well as the space and place through a combination of both drawings and paintings.”
For more information on Kalina’s work please see her website – kalinawinska.com
Lindsey Dunnagan
In residence: August 2014
In partnership with: Crooked Tree Arts Center
Lindsey Dunnagan, a recent graduate of Texas Women’s University with a Masters Degree in Fine Arts, immersed herself in her art during her residency in Good Hart in August. Lindsey “navigates ideas of interconnection, place, and identity through visual mapmaking. … The technique of layering paint and ink on paper blurs and reveals parts of the composition and allows for an abstract view into the mind.”
For more information on Lindsey’s work please see her website – lindseydunnagan.com
Good Hart Artist Residency 