BOARD & STAFF

STAFF

Xander Marro has been living the good life in the feminist sub-underground for too many years to count on her long bony fingers. A jack-of-all trades type, she works in probably too many media ranging from printmaking to paper mache to 16mm film. In 2016 she was the RISD Museum artist fellow. She cut her teeth in arts management on the jagged edges of spreadsheets at AS220. She's been involved with issues around affordable housing and the changing landscape of urban America for nearly two decades. She currently serves as the Chair of ONE Neighborhood Builders, a Providence community development corporation.

Pippi Zornoza is an interdisciplinary artist working in sound, performance, installation, video, and printmaking and is a co-founder of the Dirt Palace feminist art collective in Providence Rhode Island. Zornoza's work has been featured internationally and is housed in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Her work has been published in the Bell Gallery's Building Expectation: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future, Anthony Alvarado's DIY Magic, Mathew Barney and Brandon Stousy's Tubal Cain, and in the art-poster anthology, the Art of Modern Rock.

XANDER MARRO: Co-Director

PIPPI ZORNOZA: Co-Director

ANNA KERBER: Work/Exchange AIR

Anna works semi-autobiographically in animation, painting, costume, cello and voice, drawing inspiration from intimate love, dreams, and the nonhuman world. Through improvisation and collaboration, Anna seeks to (re)encounter pleasurable ways of being and relating.

ZOE RODEN: Work/Exchange AIR

Zoe Roden is a writer and art historian based between Providence, Rhode Island and Brooklyn, NY. Her research interests include legacies of Surrealism, feminist artist-led spaces, histories of land-use, and documenting slow violence in the American Southwest. Most recently, she has presented her work at the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Rachofsky Collection, and the American Comparative Literature Association 2023. She has previously held research positions at The Armory Show, the Harry Ransom Center Archive, and Ballroom Marfa.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

BECCI DAVIS

Becci Davis was born on a military installation in Georgia named after General Henry L. Benning of the Confederate States Army. Her birth initiated her family’s first generation after the Civil rights Act and its fifth generation post-emancipation. Becci is a Rhode Island-based interdisciplinary artist who finds inspiration in exploring natural and cultural landscapes, in addition to her experiences as a daughter, mother, American, and Southern born and raised, Black woman.

After earning a MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design in 2017, Becci was the recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Visual Art, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in New Genres, the Providence Public Library Creative Fellowship, and the RISD Museum Artist Fellowship. She was also featured as one of Art New England Magazine’s 10 Emerging Artists of 2019. Becci lives with her family in Wakefield, Rhode Island and is currently an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Visual Art at Brown University.

ANGELA DIVEGLIA

Angela DiVeglia is an artist, archivist, and urban gardener; New England's postindustrial landscape is her natural habitat. She works as the Curatorial Assistant in Providence Public Library’s Special Collections. She is a graduate of Amherst College (B.A., English) and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (M.S., Library Science).

SHAUNA M. DUFFY

Shauna M. Duffy, CPA, MBA (Board Treasurer), after spending nearly 20 years involved in the Providence music and art communities, Shauna became the Managing Director of AS220 in downtown Providence in 2015. Prior to working at AS220, she spent many years in public accounting working with Rhode Island not-for-profits including museums, social service agencies, schools and arts and culture organizations. Shauna has previously served as Treasurer of AS220’s Board of Directors; as a director and later Chair of the Prometheus Radio Project’s Board of Directors; as Treasurer and later Chair of the Everett: Company, Stage & School Board of Directors; and as an adjunct accounting faculty member in the MBA program at JWU.

Why do you serve on this board?

I am honored to be a founding Board member of the Dirt Palace Public Projects. As a young woman (teenager, really) finding my place in the Providence music and art community, I was inspired by the women who had founded the Dirt Palace. My first time in the space itself was overwhelming and opened up a whole new world to explore. I believe strongly that artists must own affordable physical space to live and work, so that they can safely create and engage with the community for the long-term. The Dirt Palace has managed, through hard work and tireless commitment, to be a legal space that retains much of the character of the many illegal artist spaces around Providence and around the country. Through the DPPP, I can help try to make it more sustainable. For nearly two decades, female-identified people at the Dirt Palace have lived, worked, created and inspired those around them. Through the DPPP, we can expand the opportunities for women to live, work and create, and help ensure that the Dirt Palace continues to nurture and inspire for decades to come.

STEPHANIE FORTUNATO

Stephanie co-founded Constellations Cultural Studio to inspire discovery and understanding through the arts and humanities. The consultancy works with communities to develop strategies for arts and culture, public engagement, and creative projects that promote civic participation and strengthen cultural ecosystems through collaborations across sectors, issues, and differences. Stephanie’s place-based approach is informed by her experience within city government. She served as director of Providence’s Department of Art, Culture + Tourism, working at the intersection of cultural planning and community development to integrate arts and culture into community life while showcasing Providence as an international cultural destination. Throughout her career, Stephanie has stewarded cultural development, arts-based policies, programs, and partnerships that aim to strengthen neighborhoods, facilitate community connections, and animate public spaces. Stephanie is Special Projects Director for the Global Cultural Districts Network and co-host of its podcast The Three Bells, produced by AEA Consulting.

LOIS HARADA

Lois Harada is an artist and educator based in North Providence, Rhode Island. She has worked at DWRI Letterpress, a commercial letterpress print shop, since 2011. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Printmaking in 2010 and recently rejoined the institution teaching classes in that department and Graphic Design. Harada has previously volunteered as an Artist Mentor and Board Member at New Urban Arts and currently serves on the Art in City Life Commission for the City of Providence.

BONNIE JONES

Bonnie Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is currently a member of the High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, along with Suzanne Thorpe she co-founded TECHNE, https://technesound.org/, an organization that develops anti-racist, feminist workshops that center on technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland and Providence RI on the lands of the Susquehannock, Piscataway, Algonquian, and Narragansett. https://bonnie-jones.com/

CODY ROSS

Cody Ross is an indebted beneficiary of alternative cultural institutions, subcultural space-making, and radical political interventions at every scale. He has contributed to a range of projects and organizations, including collective housing experiments, worker-owned cooperative businesses, art collectives, artist-run community and studio spaces, academic research projects, and youth movement organizing against incarceration.

In collaboration with a collective of artists, he helped found New Fruit, an artist-run studio, printmaking, and exhibition space in Portland, Maine dedicated to supporting feminist, queer, and radical cultural production. Cody was awarded a Kindling Fund grant for his project Cathedral, an iPhone application and digital curatorial platform imagined as “a public bathroom on your cell phone.” His art practice is informed by a general ontological confusion provoked by queer, feminist, and affect theory as well as a faith in the space of encounter. Cody has worked for libraries, archives and museums throughout the northeast, including the Maine College of Art, Bowdoin College Library, the LGBTQ National History Archives, and the Leslie Lohman Museum. He currently tends to the preservation of digital archival material at the Brown University Library. He is grateful to have been a resident of Dirt Palace from 2018 to 2020.

ANABEL VAZQUEZ RODRIGUEZ

Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez is an independent curator, artist and organizer based in Providence, Boston and San Juan. She is currently Curator at Leica Gallery Boston and Assistant Programmer at MassArt Film Society.

Why do you serve on this board?

"As a curator, manager and arts advocate deeply involved in the arts community of New England and beyond for nearly two decades, I am thrilled to be part of the Dirt Palace Public Projects and to be working collaboratively, implement projects, and to continue building community."

SUSSY SANTANA

Sussy Santana is a poet, cultural organizer and performer. Her current work explores writing as a tool for healing. She has published four poetry works: Pelo Bueno y otros poemas (2010). RADIO ESL a poetry cd (2012) Poemas Domésticos, a poetry chapbook (2019) and the zine, La Caminata (2023). Her work explores the bi-cultural indentity through text and performance. Santana is working at the intersection of arts & healing at the Providence Healthy Communities Office. In 2015, Sussy became the first Latina recipient of the MacColl Johnson Fellowship in writing. She is a Creative Community Health Worker Fellowship recipient from the City of Providence Art Culture and Tourism Department and Rhode Island Latino Arts 2023 Poet-in-Residence.

J. R. URETSKY

J.R. Uretsky weaves performance, video, puppetry, and sculpture into emotionally charged, affective artworks that shift seamlessly between autobiography and fiction. Uretsky’s work confronts viewers with expressive confessions that test the bounds of comfort, personal space, and acceptable presence. The characters that emerge through her performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific, forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant. Uretsky is also an independent curator as well as the Exhibitions Manager at New Bedford Art Museum/ArtWorks!. She currently lives in Providence, RI and is the drummer of the queer punk duo Bed Death.