Jack Straw Artist Support Program

Athr (pronounced ah-ther) is an audio visual artist based in Seattle, WA. Working at the intersection of music, art, and technology Athr is a social activism empowered music project who makes music to empower marginalized communities.

Their 2020 debut album Childhood’s End received critical acclaim from Seattle Met Magazine who described it as “industrial-futurist R&B/hip-hop . . . that is music for the dance floor brooding of 2050.” KBFG radio station host Louise Bendall cited the album as “One of the best Seattle albums of 2020.” They create both sounds and visuals to help storytell the modern ethos of underrepresented minority. Their second full length album MMXX was released in 2022.

They hold a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts and Digital Art from Dartmouth College and Masters in Architecture from the University of Washington. Most notably, they received the Seattle Arts & Culture Public Art Commission and the Andy Warhol Foundation Collective Power Fund and are a seasonal instructor for the Seattle Architecture Foundation.

New Media Gallery 2024-25

Artist Support Program 2022: Completion of their debut album, MMXX.

So’le Celestial (they/them) is a Trans Non-Binary, Queer, and Gela’ CHamoru multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, performer, and producer. Born and raised on Guahån in the Mariana Islands, So’le moved to the Puget Sound Salish area in 2013 with their family. Their work honors the existence and sacredness of Indigenous CHamoru and Trans Non-Binary, Queer, and Gela’ identity. Through music, they create a compassionate space to explore all the dimensions of being, while honoring their ancestors and themself. Using art and music as a means of storytelling, So’le creates spaces where sexuality, identity, and love can be nurtured. Their creations affirm that our existence is sacred and worthy of love and power. 

Watch: So’le Celestial live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2022: Production of “So’le Celestial’s Solar Return,” a music soundscape that will be a ceremony and story of queer and trans CHamoru grief, love, and healing.

Vibhuti Kavishwar has been learning music since the early age of 5. Her father, Late Shri Lakshman Chausalkar, was her first guru and a great composer. She is currently taking vocal lessons from Srivani Jade in Seattle.

Vibhuti  runs her own music institute, Swarsadhana School of Music, where she teaches both kids and adults. Her main mission is to pass on the rich legacy of traditional Hindustani Classical music and Indian Folk music to the next generation. She has won several National level singing competitions in the US and Canada including BMM Saregama, Swarangan organised by Eprasaran.com, “I Am Next Superstar” which was judged by Sonu Nigam and Suresh Wadkar, both established and well known musicians in the Bollywood film industry. Recently she completed a USA tour with “Marathi Astitva”, a show that includes Indian maestro Satyajit Prabhu and talented singers and musicians from across the country. She also performed as a singer with the Michigan Philharmonic Symphony in December 2021.

Watch: Vibhuti Kavishwar live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2022: Shraddhanjali, an album of bhajans composed by her father Late Shri Lakshman Chausalkar.

Paul Kikuchi attended an Ella Fitzgerald concert while in the womb and was born the next day. He shares a birthday with Prince. His music is wide ranging — from drone/ambient soundscapes to compositions for traditional Japanese instruments, and has been described as “. . . somewhere between natural and deliberate, between wind chimes and the strict order of a composition” (The Stranger)  and “A Morricone showdown in a John Cage rock garden.” (Paris Transatlantic). His work has been supported by Chamber Music America, National Endowment of the Arts, and New Music USA, among others. Paul is tenured music faculty at South Seattle College.

Watch: Paul Kikuchi with Mako and Stan Shikuma, live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2022: An album of original works that features traditional Japanese instruments along with electronics and “Western” classical and popular instrumentation.

New Media Gallery 2015-16: AUTONOMIC

Artist Support Program 2013: Recording and production of Bat of No Bird Island, a song cycle for chamber-jazz ensemble based on the memoir of his grandfather Zenkichi Kikuchi.

Artist Support Program 2008 (with Tiffany Lin)

Marilyn Montúfar is a fine art photographer, educator, and activist with ten years of research, production, teaching, and exhibition experience locally, nationally, and internationally. Her work amplifies stories about underrepresented communities through the arts – youth, migrants, women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ communities.

She received a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Strange Paradise Gallery (2021), Portland, Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas Gerónimo Baqueiro Fóster, Mérida, Mexico (2019), Gallery 4Culture, Seattle (2018), among others, and has been included in numerous group exhibitions since 2006. In fall 2020, her photograph Ronnie and Cleveland (2006), inaugurated the Frye Art Museum’s Boren Banner Series at a monumental scale in the form of a 16 x 20 ft. vinyl banner.

Montúfar has been an artist in residence at Chautauqua School of Art, Chautauqua, NY, Centrum, Port Townsend, Washington, the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont; and Primal Studio, Mexico City where she created the photography youth project Beyond Borders/ Más allá de las fronteras – a visual collaboration and international exchange program between Mexico and the United States. The project was featured at the Northern Vermont University’s Julian Scott Memorial Gallery, FotoMéxico Festival, and the Tamayo Art Museum’s Education Center in Mexico City in 2019. Montúfar is a Mexican American dual citizen.

Artist Support Program 2022: Audio support for a project bridging photography with migrant youth storytelling through audio and writing to address how Latinx communities have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

D.A. Navoti is a member of the Gila River Indian Community and a multidisciplinary storyteller, writer, and composer. He is a descendant of Hopi, Zuni, Akimel O’otham, and Yavapai-Apache tribes, and his artwork investigates what it means to be Indigenous in the 21st century. Navoti’s literary work has been published by Indian Country Today, Spartan, Homology Lit, The Seventh Wave, Cloudthroat, and elsewhere. He’s a former writer fellow at Hugo House and Jack Straw Cultural Center, and in 2020 he was a Radical Imagination grantee from NDN Collective and a CityArtist with the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

Artist Support Program 2022: “O’otham Rhapsode,” a multimedia projection depicting the lives and homelands of the Akimel O’otham, whose ancestral lands are located south of Phoenix, Arizona.

2017 Writers Program

Tom Pearson is a poet, multi-media performance and visual artist, choreographer, director, and filmmaker whose work combines material culture and audience-centered narratives, taking the form of mixed-media projects that employ theater, art, choreography, and poetry as well as ceremony, artifact, and mythos to craft interactive experiences. He is known for his original works for theater, including the long-running, off-Broadway, immersive hits Then She Fell and The Grand Paradise, and as a founder and co-artistic director of the New York City-based performance company Third Rail Projects. He is also director and curator for the Global Performance Studio, an international program for cultural listening and exchange. Tom has been named among the 100 most influential people in Brooklyn culture by Brooklyn Magazine and has received numerous awards and accolades for his work including two New York Dance & Performance (BESSIE) Awards and a Kingsbury Award for writing (from the Florida State University). His work has been commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, La Jolla Playhouse, Danspace Project, Jacob’s Pillow, La Mama E.T.C, Dance Theater Workshop, Arts Brookfield, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and others. He has also been awarded artist fellowships and residencies from CEC Artslink (St. Petersburg, Russia), The Bogliasco Foundation (Liguria, Italy), the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University (CT, USA), and Olin College of Engineering (MA, USA).

Artist Support Program 2022 (with Berette S Macaulay):  UN-[TITLED], a site-specific, multi-locational intervention of gentrified cityscapes—exposing the loss of cultural spaces and community erasure through an audience-centered, experiential, and ritual performance.

Berette S Macaulay is a photo-based interdisciplinary artist, curator, and writer born in Sierra Leone, and raised in Jamaica. Her work engages complex cultural negotiations of be/longing, coded identity-performance, memory, and mythmaking. Spaces of exhibition and sharing include, Melkweg Expo (Netherlands), Art Alive (India), SP-Arte (Brazil), Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Memorial ACTe Museum (Guadeloupe), and Annenberg Space for Photography (USA). Permanent collections include National Gallery of Jamaica and Int’l Center for Photography (as ‘SeBiArt’). She has received artist grants and residencies from 4Culture, Vermont Studio Center, Shunpike Arts, and Simpson Center among others. Her curatorial work includes the permanent exhibition Mystic of a Woman on Rita Marley at the Bob Marley Museum, HOME is be/LONGING at Wa Na Wari, SHAPESHIFTERS – a film program for Studio Museum of Harlem’s Black Refractions Exhibition at Frye Art Museum, Exploring Passages in the Black Diaspora at PCNW, and illusive self at Taller Boricua Gallery, NY. Publications include MONDAY Arts Journal, Feminist Media Histories (UC Press), MFON Photography Journal, Ebony and Of Note magazines, World Policy Journal, and UNESCO Courier. Macaulay received the Champion of Seattle Arts Award, the UW Ottenberg-Winans Fellowship for African Studies, and is the Curatorial Fellow at On the Boards. She serves as Professor/Art Liaison Program Manager at Henry Art Gallery and is the founder of Black Cinema Collective – a project of i•ma•gine e•volve.

Artist Support Program 2022 (with Tom Pearson): UN-[TITLED], a site-specific, multi-locational intervention of gentrified cityscapes—exposing the loss of cultural spaces and community erasure through an audience-centered, experiential, and ritual performance.

Sharece Anissa Phillips is a Seattle-based designer and interdisciplinary artist whose inspiration comes from the dissection of narrative art and the interconnection of creativity and emotional wellness. Works including jewelry and other modes of wearable sculptures, djing, collage, and podcast/oral history- offering a meditation on identity, duality, and the relativity of perception.

Phillips is a 2018 Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts Pentaculum Artist, Boma Grant awardee, as well as a Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Residency winner, and the 2019 recipient of the Stone And Strand Black Artist Grant. Phillips’ work has been widely exhibited in both national and international museums and galleries.

Artist Support Program 2022: We Are the Others, a podcast looking to preserve a culture of mixed cultures, one intimate story at a time.

Garrett Fisher has created more than a dozen opera-theatre productions in the US and Europe, work that “has combined elements of opera, dance, Indian raga, Japanese Noh theater and more into fusions that have both a ritualistic intensity and an improvisatory freedom . . . a groundbreaking hybrid . . . a strong, unified and strikingly individual utterance of unambiguous beauty” (The New York Times). His work has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. His Noh-inspired Kocho was premiered by Beth Morrison Projects in New York City; Yoshinaka, in collaboration with Tokyo-based Noh master Munenori Takeda at Seattle’s ACT Theatre. Garrett’s music is on the BIS label (The Passion of Saint Thomas More is part of their 30 year/30 disc commemorative series). The Iris was recorded at Jack Straw Cultural Center as part of their Artist Support Program; his sound installation Mikawa was presented as part of the New Media Gallery Series. Blood Moon, commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE Arts Center, was premiered at New York City’s Prototype Festival in 2020.

In addition to his work as a composer, Garrett is developing Cultivating Feedback: A Pocket Guide to Creative Survival with longtime collaborator Ken Cerniglia.

Artist Support Program 2022: On Foot Across the Solar Systems, a song cycle composed by Garrett Fisher featuring vocalist Maria Männistö, based on poetry by poet Edith Södergran.

New Media Gallery 2016-17 (with Tori Ellison): Mikawa

Artist Support Program 2014: Recording and production of The Iris by The Fisher Ensemble.

Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, activist and educator, whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. In her writing, Flame explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and the interstitial joy in it all. As the singer-songwriter front of her band, Last of the RedHot Mamas, her original music is heavily influenced by both blues and choral music, often morphing from the comfortable into something new through the use of loops and electronically produced instrumentation and effects. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work is published in diverse arenas, including Def Jam Poetry, Nailed Magazine, Winter Tangerine, and Split This Rock, with her first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame’s second book of poetry, apocrifa, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press.

Watch: Last of the RedHot Mamas live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2022 (with Last of the RedHot Mamas): Magick Black Woman Blues, an album of eight original blues songs documenting different aspects of the everyday life of contemporary Black queer women.

Atrium Gallery 2018-19: ::intrigue8::

Artist Support Program 2015: Produce an album of original songs made from the poems of various writers

2010 Writers Program

Artist Support Program 2008: Record Last of the RedHot Mamas, which explores African American mixed race and bi-cultural experiences with spoken word and new arrangements of blues and jazz standards.

Alex Guy is a Seattle-based violinist, violist, singer and composer, and is the leader and principal songwriter of Led To Sea, a magnetic trio that fuses classical, pop and experimental music. Alex has also composed extensively for dance, film and theater, and has performed and collaborated with many notable bandleaders, composers, improvisers and musicians in the Pacific NW and beyond, including Angel Olsen, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, Wayne Horvitz, Mirah, Sera Cahoone, Jherek Bischoff, Ahamefule Oluo and Laura Veirs.

Artist Support Program 2022: Record arrangements of four new songs for voice, strings and piano, each based on literary inspirations.

Michael Hamm is a Seattle-based composer focused on stories that invite a homecoming to the body and a curiosity about the natural world.  He has worked in collaboration with musicians, science educators, poets, filmmakers, and stage artists to produce shows that blend myth and science.  In 2019, Mike’s electroacoustic ensemble Cosmozoa created a full-length album ‘Ice Age Gospel’ that blends human stories with living microcosms, wild spaces, and geologic time. Mike has also created and performed live dance/film scores with choreographers Kaitlin McCarthy (‘8 Abigails’) and Coriolis Dance Company’s Christin Call (‘Ad Astra per Astera’ , ‘Undiscover’d Country’).  In 2022 Mike and Cosmozoa are excited to begin production on a multidisciplinary climate opera (‘Fire on Helicon’), which includes live performances and scientific exhibits.

Artist Support Program 2022: Production of a 7-song concert work, the backbone of an opera chronicling climate change and emergent life forms.

LaVon Hardison is a singer/songwriter, artist, and general creative and sings jazz standards, originals, and her own eclectic and compelling arrangements of popular songs. Originally hailing from Boston, she has found a musical and creative community in the Northwest.  Equally at home at jazz clubs, corporate events, private parties, and sacred settings, LaVon uses her background in musical theater, opera, and jazz as a foundation for her accessible, joyful, and engaging musical explorations and discovery. She is delighted to be a part of this residency!

Watch: LaVon Hardison live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2022: Brown Girls Dream, a collection of 5 original songs based on books and poems (inspired by Bushwick Book Club/Seattle Arts and Lecture events).

Derek G. Larson, MFA Yale School of Art, is an artist and animator with previous experience at PBS. He produces the animated documentary series Très Mall featuring academics on topics in philosophy, the environment, and the Anthropocene. The series screened at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, Tranen, Times Square in New York City, MoCA Atlanta and Yale School of Architecture. Larson will be working on the soundtrack for his series.

Artist Support Program 2022: Violencia Y Conciencia, a digital animation in Spanish featuring 10 academics from Mexico City covering topics on philosophy, violence and US policies impacting Mexico.

MANtrio is an improvising trio with Sage Romey (piano), Sarah Yates (bass) and Melanie Sehman (drums/percussion) that uses the standard trio format as a laboratory for exploration, performing improvised music and original creative work. With radical listening as a guiding principle, their work breaks down conventional stylistic barriers and ensemble roles, blurring the line between melody and rhythm and bringing together their collective experiences in jazz and black American musics, contemporary, experimental, and medieval musics, as well as visual art, literature and poetry. Their music is defined by placing radical listening and interaction at the center of the creative process. By being present and listening to each other with curiosity instead of expectation, the music is an honest, unfiltered product of its immediate context. MANtrio has performed at the Racer Sessions (Seattle), the Wayward in Limbo series (Seattle), Jazz Center of Bellingham Jazz Walk Festival, the Bellingham Alternative Library and other regional venues.

Artist Support Program 2022: Studio recording of an album of original compositions for piano trio.

Nada Rosa is an otherworldly audio/visual experience and band led by artist, filmmaker, and performer, Brandi Diaz. A blend of psychedelic rock and soul that takes roots in latin rhythms, ’60s-inspired garage, and surf, Nada Rosa delivers a spiritual and interdisciplinary dreamscape that fuses elements of ecstatic dance during performances to bring sonic layers to life. Short films and visual poems often accompany songs to allow the music to come alive inside the minds of listeners.

What began the idea for Nada Rosa was a desire to create space to celebrate, dance, grieve, heal, and connect all parts of the songwriter’s personal experiences simultaneously. Her songs emerged from a time of loss, withdrawal and self-reflection, and became a way to celebrate and honor her sacred femininity, independence, and cultural lineage. Nada Rosa uses music to confront themes of longing, memory, present awareness, joy and the fear of forgetting her past. Songs and films become letters; to herself, family, friends, spaces, lovers, and other lifetimes, in an attempt at embodied self-preservation and universal connection.

The name Nada Rosa signifies the concept of infinite potential (everything comes from nothingness/nada) and Rosa comes from the name of her maternal Grandmother, who represents authenticity, power and strength. Among the band’s biggest influences are Pixies, Santo y Jonny, and Khruangbin.

Artists Support Program 2022: Nunca Te Olvido, an album of original songs on themes of memory, loss, and unconditional love.

Hannah Simmons and Leah Crosby are the team behind Field Guides, a series of place-based audio guides designed to help you reconsider the limitations of your own body. Their collaborative work has been supported by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, the Freeway Park Association, and the Corvallis Arts Center. Their shared practice is driven by deep questioning, rigorous logic, and communal care.

Artist Support Program 2022: Audio support for Field Guides, a series of narrative sound scores that guide listeners on unusual and multi-sensory tours through public spaces.

Amelia Winger-Bearskin is an artist who innovates with artificial intelligence in ways that make a positive impact on our community and the environment. She is a Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts, at the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida.  She is the inventor of Honor Native Sky, a project for the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture: Honor Native Land Initiative. She founded Wampum.Codes, which is both an award-winning podcast and an ethical framework for software development based on indigenous values of co-creation.  Wampum.codes was awarded a Mozilla Fellowship embedded at the MIT Co-Creation Studio from 2019-2020 and was featured at the 2021 imagineNative festival. She continued her research in 2021 at Stanford University as their artist and technologist in residence made possible by the Stanford Visiting Artist Fund in Honor of Roberta Bowman Denning (VAF) .

In 2019 she was a delegate at the Summit on Fostering Universal Ethics and Compassion  for His Holiness, The 14th Dalai Lama,  at his World  Headquarters in Dharmsala India.  In 2018 she was awarded a MacArthur/Sundance Institute fellowship for her 360 video immersive installation in collaboration with the artist Wendy Red Star (supported by the Google JUMP Creator program). The non-profit she founded, IDEA New Rochelle, in partnership with the New Rochelle Mayor’s Office, won the 2018 $1 Million Dollar Bloomberg Mayor’s Challenge for their VR/AR Citizen toolkit to help the community co-design their city. In 2018 she was awarded the 100k Alternative Realities Prize for her Virtual Reality Project from Engadget and Verizon Media. Amelia is the founder of the stupidhackathon.com.

Amelia is Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma, Deer Clan.

Artist Support Program 2022: Audio support for SKY WORLD/CLOUD WORLD, an unguided detour (sound guide based in a tour guide app and installation)