Jack Straw Artist Support Program

Randal Bays is an American born, Irish style fiddler and guitarist who brings power and passion to the old tradition. He’s well known on both sides of the Atlantic for his fiery fiddling and his devotion to the traditional style of playing. He has a special love for the fiddle traditions of Counties Clare and Galway, where he’s spent many a night playing tunes with the masters of that intricate music. Randal has recorded and toured in the US, Ireland and Europe with such musicians as Martin Hayes, James Keane and Daithí Sproule (Fingal), James Kelly and many more. In 2021 he received the Irish Artist in America Achievement Award from O’Flaherty Irish Music in Texas. Randal lives in the Seattle area and is the Artistic Director of Cascadia Irish Music Week. As Fiddler Magazine says, “Randal Bays is one of the finest Irish fiddlers one could ever hope to hear.”

Randal is also famed as a fingerstyle guitarist. He recorded two seminal albums with Irish fiddler Martin Hayes in the early ’90s (Martin Hayes and Under the Moon) and later contributed two tracks to the Masters of the Irish Guitar CD on Shanachie Records. In 2012 Randal finally released his first album of solo guitar work, Oyster Light.

Watch: Randal Bays live at Jack Straw with Susan Waters and Clint Dye

Artist Support Program 2023: Recordings of live ‘house show’ style performances of Irish music.

Artist Support Program 2014: Record an album of the traditional Irish style music that’s been played and created in the Pacific NW over the last few decades.

Artist Support Program 2007: Record new compositions based on traditional American folk music, Irish and Celtic music.

Gisella Bustillos is a Bolivian-Vietnamese filmmaker who likes writing authentic, messy, relationship-driven stories about women who must grow. Her first feature documentary, A Brief History of Time Travel, premiered at San Diego Comic-Con, won Best Documentary at the Philip K. Dick Film Festival in 2020. Now active in the narrative space, Gisella is working on a short hybrid film, Minors Forever, and a half-hour thriller, Tangletown.

Gisella graduated from Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Film/TV and was a quarterfinalist for the Tisch Sloan Foundation Feature Film Award. She currently lives in Seattle with her cat Yoda and actively hosts futurist events.

Artist Support Program 2023: Minors Forever

The Shakeup is a new podcast about bus driving in Seattle/King County, hosted, edited, and produced by two Metro Drivers, Kelsen Caldwell and Ross Kirshenbaum. As bus drivers traversing our city in the midst of a global pandemic and late stage capitalism, our podcast will share stories from fellow operators, bus passengers, mechanics, and bus lovers to illuminate everything from failures of the state to the ways small acts of kindness remind us of our shared humanity.

By weaving together stories and sounds from the bus, we hope to find solidarities between drivers and vulnerable passengers, to remember the beauty amidst the hardship, and to find better, more humanizing ways to navigate the systems and inequalities that make using and driving the bus such a wild ride.

Artist Support Program 2023: The Shakeup: The Bus (Podcast)

Josephine Ensign is a writer and a nurse with a focus on health inequities for people marginalized by poverty and homelessness. Ensign is the author of Catching Homelessness: A Nurse’s Story of Falling Through the Safety Net, Soul Stories: Voices from the Margins, and most recently, Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City, which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She has had writing residencies at Hedgebrook, Centrum, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Mesa Refuge.

Artist Support Program 2023: Skid Road/Way Home Oral Histories and Podcasts

Artist Support Program 2015: Produce a series of oral histories with Seattle-area homeless service providers and activists for a digital storytelling project on health and healing in the context of homelessness.

2013 Writers Program

Foleada is a group of seasoned musicians based out of Seattle that play Brazilian Forró. Forró is the heartbeat of Northeast Brazil, it draws on many musical styles but two of the primary influences are Afro-Brazilian music like samba and baião and European music such as schottisches and polkas. Forró dance also borrows from Cuban salsa and Samba to create a simple partner dance.

A traditional Forró ensemble features accordion, triangle and drums.  Foleada is a sextet featuring two accordionists, Jamie Maschler and Gabe Hall-Rodrigues; two percussionists, Jeff Busch and Sam Esecson; Michael Catts on bass; and Brazilian vocalist Adriana Giordano.  All their members are active in the Seattle music scene and are veteran performers.

Foleada partners with @ForroinSeattle to host regular dance events for the Brazilian and Forró community. Our largest cultural event Festa Junina draws 400+ people.

Artist Support Program 2023: Recording their debut full-length album.

Grammy® nominated vocalist, composer, orchestrator and multi-instrumentalist, Johnaye Kendrick received a Master of Music from Loyola University and an Artist Diploma from the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute. Johnaye performs original compositions as well as fresh interpretations of beloved jazz and contemporary works. A dedicated educator, Johnaye serves as Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. In 2014, she founded her johnygirl record label in efforts to release honest music representative of her world, removed from the superficial constructs surrounding contemporary music in today’s recording industry. On this label she recorded, produced and released two albums: HERE, a collection of  heartfelt originals and FLYING, a collection of originals and covers. Johnaye is a recipient of the Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Grant (2022,) the Marble House Creative Residency (2022,) the South Arts Jazz Road Creative Residency (2022) and the Chamber Music America Performance Plus Grant (2020).

Artist Support Program 2023: GROUNDED: A Bespoke Healing Experience

Joshua Nucci is a 22 year old African American, Blackfoot Indian, Brazilian, Italian, and Portuguese visual artist, musician, and community organizer from Seattle, WA. “Making music is a passion of mine. Playing especially with others brings me so much joy because it allows me to free my consciousness and connect with others in both spoken and unspoken ways. My ultimate goal is to bring people together, to create, and tell stories that uplift and inspire. It is my hope to create a platform and body of work in collaboration with community members I have met and will continue to meet during my lifetime.”

Watch: Josh Nucci and Friends live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2023: Production of an album focused on building community, recorded through a series of live performances and studio sessions.

Zambuko (under the direction of Sheree Seretse) performs traditional and contemporary music from the continent of Africa. The group draws a large part of its repertoire from Zimbabwe, South Africa and Kenya. Zambuko has been together for over 20 years. Zambuko which means “bridges” aims to unite people of Africa descent to the roots of African Marimba music. The group has had the honor of performing in Costa Rica at the Marcus Garvey center but primarily perform within the confines of the Northwest. Zambuko has made appearances at festivals, schools and cultural events.

Artist Support Program 2023: Making their first recordings as a group.

Blue Cactus Press is a hybrid publisher crafting books that serve as community resources. We center voices and stories from historically marginalized groups in our books, staff, and collaborations. Many of our books are about community building, self-actual action, caregiving, and equity.

Artist Support Program 2023: Produce an audiobook of Katharine Threat’s Anatomy of My Mixed Body

Katharine Threat is a mixed-race writer, poet, and artist whose work resides in the crossroads of “identity” and “home.” Her work has been featured by Button Poetry and published in the intersectional feminist anthology We Need a Reckoning. She currently lives in Tacoma, Washington and is passionate about working with contemporary artists of all media to foster sympathetic, earnest, and socially active communities through art. Anatomy of My Mixed Body is her first solo poetry chapbook (Blue Cactus Press, 2022).

Artist Support Program 2023 (with Blue Cactus Press): Produce an audiobook of Anatomy of My Mixed Body

Jasmine Iona Brown and Paul Jackson Ph.D. are married creatives. Jasmine earned her BFA from Howard University and MA from UCLA. She is a public artist, specializing in photo murals and sculpture, and arts administrator. She also started her own art academy teaching youth how to make digital art and electronic music. Paul earned his Ph.D. in computer engineering and played bass in a funk band in the ’90s. After years as a research engineer at Boeing, Paul retired and now has time to focus on content creation. Both Paul and Jasmine also wrestle with chronic illnesses. They were brought together by their disabilities and mutual love of the arts. Together this creative couple is starting a podcast about love, marriage, culture and creativity.

Artist Support Program 2023: Third Marriage Manifesto podcast

Vania Clemons Bynum is a former Computer Engineer who utilizes the ingenuity of making software to create dance. A graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, Vania has taught and choreographed throughout the Greater Seattle area for almost 20 years. She performed in the Paramount & Moore Theaters, Intiman Theatre, Benaroya Hall, the Meydenbauer, and the intimate space of local churches. Utilizing dance as her form of worship, Vania directed the Adult Liturgical Dance Ministry at New Beginnings Christian Fellowship for 11 years. She also performed in The Black Nativity, Hip-Hop Back to Its Roots!, Dance This!, 7 Women 7 Stools, the American Jazz Nutcracker and more.

Vania’s works have been sponsored by the city of Seattle, 4Culture, Central District Forum, Bossak Heilbron, Microsoft, and the Allied Arts Foundation. Artist Trust will be an additional sponsor in her new works. Vania produced a Hurricane Katrina Benefit raising $13,000 for victims in 2005, “Excerpts from the Soul of a Woman” in 2006/2008, and CATS in 2009 for Broadway Bound Children’s Theatre.  In addition, Vania choreographed works for Northwest Tap Connection, Bellevue Lyric Opera/Bellevue Youth Theater, Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center, Jerboa Dance, and Hal Jackson Talented Teens.

Vania was a featured dancer in Langston Hughes inaugural African American Master Choreographer series, choreographed by the late Kabby Mitchell. She also worked with distinguished artists such as Donald Byrd, Sonia Dawkins, Wade Madsen, Michele Miller & Deborah Wolf.

In 2018, Vania performed a work in progress, “Dancing Our Truth” for Showing Out: Contemporary Black Choreographers and she danced in “A Special Evening with Stephanie Mills and Friends 2019 concert.”

Artist Support Program 2023: QUEENS IN THE MILITARY: Audio production for a multidisciplinary dance project that uses music, dance, video and poetry to explore the challenges that women face in the military.

Artist Support Program 2020: Audio support for Humanity: An Evolving Perspective, a virtual performance and fundraiser as part of their project We Inspire Humanity

Gregg Dietzman (b.1958) is an emerging artist with an interest in music and sculpture. His projects explore the intersections between person, place, and time. He plays traditional music on a concertina arranged with ambient nature sounds, with a special emphasis on reverberant acoustic space. His sculpture has a maritime navigational influence, with plans for an immersive installation entitled Sound and Light Signals that incorporates sculpture, projected imagery and a soundtrack. Gregg lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest and is retired from a career in science. He spends a lot of time on the water.

Artist Support Program 2023: Sound and Light Signals

Mario Layne Fabrizio is a composer, drummer, percussionist,visual artist, filmmaker and writer. Around the world, his work has been presented at places like the The Whitney Museum (NYC), Salzburg Jazz Festival (Austria), Jazz at Lincoln Center (NYC & Shanghai, China), Panama Jazz Festival, Birdland (NYC), Kunming’s International Drum Festival (China) and The Kennedy Center (DC). Throughout the years he has performed with notable musicians such as Cecil Mcbee, Claudio Roditi, Nilson Matta, Santi DeBriano, Joe Morris, Ali Boulo Santo Cissoko, Jason Palmer, Oran Etkin, Noah Preminger, and Volker Goetze. He premiered Arturo O’Farrill’s piece Little Tiny Walls, theatre piece “The Black Clown” at American Repertory Theatre, and played for Jason Moran’s STAGED exhibition. London Jazz News describes him as “ferocious but subtle,” and Steve Smith of On The Record says that he presents “with assurance, charisma and infectious enthusiasm.” You can find interviews about him in Seattle Refined as the artist of the week. Compositions of his have been acknowledged by the New York Times, Allmusic, France Musique, and commissioned by National Sawdust, is a finalist fellow for EBCP. Mario has won two YoungArts awards, and grants to support his works, a National Sawdust composition commission, and has been supported by MassMOCA, Assets for Artists, Mass Cultural Council, and the Foundation for Contemporary art. Mario graduated with a BA in Jazz Studies from Boston’s New England Conservatory in 2018 and studied with an array of teachers like Jabali Billy Hart, Cecil McBee, Joe Morris, and Vijay Iyer and Jason Moran and before grew in the Jazz House Kids programs in NJ led by Melissa Walker and Christian McBride, which exposed him to an array of amazing musicians that are teachers, mentors and friends. Some words and concepts that are important to Mario and his work would be: freedom, endurance, love, innovation, spirituality, beauty, magic, mystery, honesty, wisdom, patience and intuition.

Artist Support Program 2023: Recording music for the debut of a multidisciplinary, transcultural, surrealist, fantasy, music, film, pop, art project.

Robert Francis Flor, poet and playwright, is a Seattle native from the Central District and Rainier Valley.  His plays largely revolve around Seattle’s Filipino community and its interplay with American society. Ten-minute plays “The Injury” (2013), “Pinoy Hill” (2014), and “Pinakbet” (2015) were performed in the Eclectic Theatre Festival. Mabuhay Majesty, a full- length play, was produced at the Rainer Arts Center in 2017. “Salamangka’s Barber Shop,” a short play, was produced at the Seattle Filipino Community Center in 2018. “The Eagle’s Curse,” a short play, was produced by Bindlestiff Studios in 2021. Salamangka Returns became both a Bechtel Group (2021) and Playwrights Center San Francisco (2023) Developmental Reading selection. He has studied playwriting with Freehold, ACT, and Seattle Rep theatres and taken a myriad of courses from Dramatists Guild, Hugo House, Smithsonian Associates, and other venues. He graduated from the Artist Trust 2010 EDGE Writers Development Program and published his chapbook Alaskero Memories with a 2017 Artist Trust GAP grant. His poetry appears in several journals and anthologies. Robert co-chairs Kultura Arts, a Filipino arts organization, and is a member of the YMCA Poetry Workshop, Seattle Playwrights Circle, Theatre Puget Sound, Rain City Writers, and the Dramatists Guild.

Artist Support Program 2023: Filipino Mythologic Radio Plays

Gabriela Denise Frank is a transdisciplinary literary artist, editor, educator, and creative consultant whose work expands from the page into the sonic, the visual, and the experiential. In experimenting with formal expression, she seeks to expand the idea of what literary art can be and where people can encounter it. By placing literary art in the path of everyday life Gabriela celebrates storytelling as both a technology of survival and an evergreen source of wonder, pleasure, delight, and humanity.

An advocate for public art and artists, Gabriela serves as an arts commissioner for the City of Burien, on 4Culture’s arts advisory committee, and as creative nonfiction editor and managing editor of Crab Creek Review. Her creative practice is supported by 4Culture, Centrum, Civita Institute, Invoking the Pause, Jack Straw, Marble House, Mineral School, Seattle Public Library, Shunpike, Vermont Studio Center, and Willapa Bay AIR.

Artist Support Program 2023: Storefront and Sidewalk Poems

New Media Gallery 2014-2015: UGLY ME

2012 Writers Program

Perri Lynch Howard is an artist dedicated to forging new narratives from the front lines of climate change. Working in the context of extreme environments is an essential aspect of her creative practice, expressed through painting, drawing, sculpture and sound. Originally from Marblehead, Massachusetts, Perri received her BA from The Evergreen State College, BFA from the University of Washington, and MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Honors include an Artist Trust Fellowship, McMillen Fellowship, Seattle City Artist Grant, and multiple 4Culture Special Project Grants. Perri’s art has a global reach through projects completed in Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Canada, and in South India as a Fulbright Scholar.

Artist Support Program 2023: Svalbard Speaks

New Media Gallery 2021-22 (invitational): On Our Watch

New  Media Gallery 2011-12: CARTASONIC (with Lara Swimmer and Robert Zimmer )

Nic Masangkay is a Seattle-based community musician and poet. They graduated in 2016 from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Notable highlights include Buzzfeed, Autostraddle, and Tumblr features for poem “My Gender Is for Mothers”; 2018 Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Assistance Program Resident; 2019 4Culture Arc Artist Fellow; and independent singer-songwriter-producer alt-pop releases with EP Dark at Dusk: the Final Suicide (2019), singles “Star” (2021) and “Mothers” (2022). Aside from their solo work, Masangkay regularly collaborates with music, movement, and film artists, for remixing, scoring, production, and live sound. As they move to create more intergenerational and all-ages art, working with young people as a teaching artist is a budding focus of their practice. In their music, poetry, collaborations, teaching, and everyday life, Nic generously shares their perspective on the transformative potential of cultural work.

Artist Support Program 2023: We Came of Age As Love Was Changing

Artist Support Program 2018: Dark at Dusk: The Final Suicide EP

Nacha Mendez grew up in the tiny border town of La Union, in southern New Mexico. She is Chiricahua Apache and Mexican. She began singing and playing the guitar at an early age. She learned traditional Ranchera canción from her grandmother and performed in border towns near El Paso with her cousins, the Black Brothers, sons of ex-Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black.

In the early ’90s, she was a principal singer in Robert Ashley’s opera company, touring Europe and Japan and translated the libretto for Ashley’s opera Now Eleanor’s Idea. She performed trouser roles in three of his operas throughout Japan, at the Avignon Music Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Strasbourg, France, Graz, Austria, and Berlin.

Nacha has also collaborated with celebrated composer Steve Peters, who produced “Bodega de Amor” and “Volando.” “My Burning Skin to Sleep,” a song on the 2004 CD release Shelter by Steve Peters and distributed by the Cold Blue Label features the voice of Nacha Mendez. She has also collaborated with composer and Pulitzer Prize recipient Raven Chacon. Her recordings include “Slowly Rising” (as Dueto Le Momo), and “Blue Silence,” “Bodega de Amor,” and “Volando” (as Nacha Mendez). Since 1990, she has worked on several projects with Steve Peters, Raven Chacon, and has collaborated with writer Melody Sumner Carnahan, visual artist Harmony Hammond, and filmmakers Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi who directed and produced the documentary Chavela.

Mendez/Cordero received a National Endowment for the Arts Award and a fellowship from Mutable Music in New York. In February 2011, she was honored by the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women Artists. She was voted Best Female vocalist in Santa Fe, New Mexico in both 2009 and 2010. Voted Best Family Friendly Entertainer Santa Fe Human Rights Alliance 2012 Award and in 2013 she was awarded the Best Latin Music Production at the New Mexico Music Awards. In 2018, Ms. Mendez received the prestigious New Mexico Platinum Lifetime Achievement Award. She performs under her grandmother’s name, Nacha Mendez. She is Founder and Executive Director of the Nacha Mendez Music Scholarship Fund for New Mexican Girls of Color.

Artist Support Program 2023: Recording a new album of original songs in Spanish + songs from various Latin American traditions.