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THE DIRT PALACE
PEOPLE OF THE PALACE
KAI VAN VLACK
Kai Van Vlack moved to the Dirt Palace to sublet for a summer and refused to leave. She spent her 20s studying biology, working in kitchens, and living in windowless rooms across Brooklyn. Above all she craves variety and does a little bit of everything within the framework of DIY punk. She is a member of the bands Trophy Hunt and Maafa.
Ella es una warmi de les Ayllu Runa y la diáspora indígena.
She can be found @bodyimprovementclub, both DMs and snail mail are encouraged and appreciated
NAFFISATOU KOULIBALY
hey folks!! my name is naffisatou koulibaly ((everyone calls me naffi for short)) and I am the newest resident at Dirt Palace! I was born and raised in various parts of RI, but since high school, I've been central to Providence. my body of work includes lots and lots of poetry–which has always been my one true love. these days it feels like all I have to show of this love is a collection of unfinished poems that I hope one day to return to and complete. although, I know, as do many other poets, that a poem is never truly finished. my writing is interested in examining the phenomenon of growing up. to put it another way, i like talking about the inherent heartbreak of being a 23 year old girl and everything that makes the experience so beautiful and tragic.
SES HOUGHTON
ses (like the beginning of sesame!) is a self taught handpoke tattooer, illustrator, printmaker, photographer, and recovering cosplayer. their queerness, disability, and love for little guys is what compels (coerces?) them to create. as a born and raised rhode islander, ses sometimes struggles with change and drives that are longer than 10 minutes, so now the dirt palace is stuck with them!
check out their work at: https://www.fernfloods.com or @fernfloodsart
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EXYL
EXYL is an animator and filmmaker from Singapore. Despite their best efforts, every film they make is a love story. They are currently teaching, living and animating in Providence, Rhode Island where they hope to stay for a long time. They deeply believe in the power of animation to be poetry and meditation and control and chaos and magic and catharsis and fun and play. Most of all they believe animation should be easy and should be free, and they are currently working to realise this for themselves and the people around them.
Find them @exu.de or at exylspace@gmail.com or at www.exyl.space
They'd love to hear from you, and they're always ready to say hi!
John-Francis Quiñonez
John-Francis Quiñonez (They/Them) is a Desert Flower & Current Resident of Providence, RI/ a Queer Writer & Multimedia Artist/ Maker of ice creams / Events Guardian/
Member of the Queer.Archive.Work. project & Binch Press/ has a collection of Poems with Write Bloody Publishing (‘22) entitled Keep Your Little Lights Alive (Poems After Kate Bush’s "Hounds of Love" & Others)/
is thinking a lot about Emerging.
PEOPLE OF THE PAST
LN CELESTINE FOSTER
LN Celestine Foster has been questioning linear time and has cultivated an obsession with 90s Toyota trucks and going swimming on hot days. She/they is an interdisciplinary artist who has helped to run DIY event/practice spaces in Troy, NY & Philadelphia, PA. LN’s personal focus is on improvised sound and movement, performance, costumery, and painting with a penchant for themes of reuse, repair, punk, and trash. After a brief stint in the world of astrophysics, LN transitioned into the role of a (recovering?) academic in the field of Science and Technology Studies, and is continuing to roll beyond and out of that sphere to who-the-hell-knows-what. They play solo live sets as (LN) Celestine, in the duo Wall Wymyn, and as DJ Celestine serving 90s rave-ish acid house & techno. They deeply believe that the dancefloor is political and transformative.
Instagram
YSANEL TORRES
A young Afro-Caribbean artist learned to “fly” through manipulating her materials. YSANEL started as a poet and became primarily a public artist in her historic hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. She grew up in the South Side of Providence alongside a large population of people from Dominican Republic, where both of her parents were born and where most of her is family is from.
Today, she experiments with a personal collection about her identity that she will exhibit in the month of September (opening Sept 11th) at the Aborn Gallery, 95 Empire st (second floor).
Check out more on YSANEL.com
NATASHA BRENNAN
Natasha Brennan is an illustrator, printmaker, and educator based in Providence, Rhode Island. They graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2020 and are currently an artist in residence at the Dirt Palace. They have taught for RISD’s Project Open Door, The Core Organization, and are teaching at City Arts this coming spring. They have volunteered with, ran one workshop at, and made two community based artworks for the George Wiley Center in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Find them at natashagbrennan.com and @_natashab15 on instagram.
JOSEPHINE DEVANBU
Josephine Devanbu is an artist trying to disentangle arts funding from white dominated institutions and decision makers. She co-runs Look At Art. Get Paid.– an artist project that pays folks who don’t normally visit museums to come critique them– with Maia Chao.
Instagram
ANNELI SAAYE HENRIKSSON
Anneli Sanaye Henriksson is a snail with Multiple Sclerosis. She spent 10 wild years living in Chicago before moving to Providence to live and work at the Dirt Palace.
DANIELLA BEN BASSAT
Plays music in Mother Tongue, The Daffy and Daisy Chain, and Taskmaster. She also works with motors, zines, and paint sometimes in combination and sometimes separately. A classic rock enthusiast, she has been famously referred to as "the Neil Young of Delaware"
Mother Tongue - http://mothert0ngue.bandcamp.com
Taskmaster - https://taskmastr.bandcamp.com/
Store - http://www.storenvy.com/stores/649684-club-darnell
XANDER MARRO
Xander Marro (American b. 1975) has been living the good life in the feminist sub-underground for too many years to count on her long bony fingers. She draws pictures (usually narrative), makes movies (usually not narrative), produces plays with elaborate sets and costumes (usually narrative, but confusing), and then makes stuff like quilts and dioramas (probably narrative?). Her work is often about spiritual relationships to the material stuff of this world. Co-founder of the Dirt Palace in 2000 AD (feminist cupcake encrusted netherworld located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket river, which is to say in Providence, RI USA). Her studio (and heart) is there still.
PIPPI ZORNOZA
Pippi Zornoza is an interdisciplinary artist working in sound, performance, installation, video, and printmaking. She is a co-founder of the Dirt Palace feminist art collective in Providence Rhode Island. Formed in an abandoned library in 2000, the Dirt Palace has since embodied the oxymoron of “Underground Institution”.
Her work has been published in the Winton 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
Zornoza has performed in the musical projects VVLTVRE, Bonedust, Worms in Women and Cattle, Master of Pussy, Sawzall, and Wold. She has numerous self released albums as well as records on both the ANNIHILVS and Corleone Record labels. In 2016 her solo project under the moniker RECTRIX will release on Peace Street Recordings.
Pippi is also the star in the cult movie classic, Die You Zombie Bastards, directed by Caleb Emerson. Someday she will direct and perform in a musical where she will star as death.
CODY ROSS
C.R. is exploring, in feverish throws, the affective space of the encounter. Not everything has to be pastoral or astrological— some things are right in front of you, like parking lots. “Contests for discursive power can be specified as competitions for the material or rhetorical leverage required to set the terms of, and to profit in some way from, the operations of an immanently self-corrosive incoherence of definition.” I look to you, now, as I would look over the lip of a cliff.
NORAA NEITHER KAPLAN
Noraa Neither Kaplan is a gay freak born and bred in Providence, R.I.P. Noraa is a poet, countertenor, painter, zinester, composer, performance artist, biblical translator, clothing designer, self-proclaimed psychological researcher, book artist, activist, folk punk, Jewish community organizer, liturgist, theatre artist, events planner, amateur historian and archivist, pianist, installation artist, anarchist, and whatever else she wants to be.
You can watch her neverending humiliation unfold on twitter @transbitch or be swept away with her tragic beauty on instagram @endofmen
GABY HURTADO-RAMOS
Gaby Hurtado-Ramos is a printmaker and multimedia artist from Houston, Texas via Tucson, Arizona. She owes much of her work to the border and its shifting identities that can’t be tethered by the state or legality. Her most recent prints and books engage in queer intimacy and the horizons of how we can love each other. Aspiring tough guy but really a tender tortilla cumbia bb.
CYNDI WU
Cyndi wants to make clothing and has instead made a lot of yarn and cloth. She is an MIT and a RISD dropout.
GRETA SCHEING
Greta is an art jock. She roller-skates, animates and makes small books. Very much into mail & collaboration, send her a letter and you’ll get one back.
O HORVATH
O Horvath is a Providence-based library worker and cold attic witch. They make comics, prints, paper toys, freaky little dolls, loud sounds, and drawings of girls with complicated hair (among other things.) In 2011 they recieved the Xeric Award for Comic Self Publishing for their comic "Tiny Bangs" and will be releasing a book with Portland's Sparkplug Press later this year. You can contact them at patchthatsweater AT gmail DOT com.
MAREN JENSEN
Maren Jensen was born in Oregon in 1988. She makes drawings, newspapers, and fabric sculpture.
Marenjensen.net
DANA HENG
Dana Heng is an artist who identifies strongly with place. She is a first-generation Khmer-American raised in Providence, RI. She went to college in Vermont, where she explored the rural landscape, and also curated arts and music events with regional creators. Her major creative interests are dependent to the context of and interaction to the place and community which surrounds her, and this usually manifests in mixed media, collaborative projects, political art, and heavily orchestrated dinner parties. A six-month stint in the socially isolating, barren land of Arizona helped balance the hectic and overwhelming aspect of social art-making, and she was able to develop her creative practice to focus inward, thinking about how her experiences in the desert intersects with family and identity. She rerooted in Providence in 2016, and is now a resident artist mentor at New Urban Arts.. Her current creative practice remains interdisciplinary and in interaction with the community. Some of her best works can be found in a perfectly cooked pot of jasmine rice, on dinner plates, and in happy bellies. These days you will likely find her making papier-mâché sculptures, silkscreen printing, exploring performance art, and pruning her indoor trees.
Find her work here. Live work & life updates can be found via Instagram @bitter_mel0n.
MEGAN MANOWITZ
Megan moved to Providence in the winter of 2017 rom NYC and have been mainly spending their time here exploring what it’s like to work in solitude through drawing and playing dress-up. Before then, they spent their time creating new realities through experimental events- a 24 hour show that featured a baptism and sunrise meditation, a 12-hour karaoke party, a surprise birthday party for a stranger that was Frozen-themed (but scary). They also write poetry and make art objects like mouse pads and pencils that they sell at random fairs. They had a poetry book come out in September 2016 through TXTbooks called A Stick With A Rock On It, and manage bands with Citrine Management. They have a newsletter where they send out new poetry and art updates that you can sign up for here
ALISON NITKIEWICZ
is a feminist silkscreen and installation artist living in Providence, RI. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Printmaking in 2013.
BRIDGET FERRILL
Bridget Ferrill is a composer, engineer, and sound artist working in Providence, Rhode Island. In 2015 she graduated from Brown University with a BA in Music: Multimedia Electronic Music Experiments. Ferrill also studied sound engineering at Greenhouse Studios/Bedroom Community in Reykjavík, Iceland. She is a co-founder of OpenSignal, an artist collective concerned with the representation of race and gender in experimental electronic music and art. Formed in 2013, OpenSignal curates festivals, lecture series, and other events, and also releases digital and vinyl recordings. In 2015, Ferrill co-founded the label All Female Parliament, under which she released her debut, "Desiring Machine." Ferrill has also released material on OpenSignal and Untergang Institut. She has performed and toured internationally under the moniker Bridget Feral.
soundcloud.com/fferal
NINA RUELLE
Nina Ruelle works in textiles and printmaking and has an undying fascination for the natural world. She studied visual art and biology at Brown University, graduating with a BA in 2013. She has also spent time in residence at the Mildred's Lane Art Complex(ity).
SARAH ROSE LEJEUNE
Sarah Rose is an (overly) nostalgic papermaker, printmaker, sculptor, and collector. Much of her time is dedicated to hiding, sewing, and writing letters. SR's most recent work grapples with the harshness of impermanence and the discomfort of solidity. It can be found at http://www.sarahroselejeune.com/.
JIEUN REINER
holds a BFA in Printmaking from RISD and works in a variety of mediums including but not limited to printmaking, photography, painting, writing, drawing, sculpture, and all things in the realm of possibility that also make sense. Her current day job is as a bookbinder and restoration artist. She can be classified as an extreme hobbyist, dabbling in such things as kaleidoscope making, bread baking, tending to her (as of last count) approx. 150 plants, learning new things, and being the coolest and most fun person in the entire galaxy.
Much of Jieun's work is focused on dreams and the nature of memory and forgetting, intangibles and transitions, reality and fiction, symbols, translation between forms, words, sincerity, and inventories. She likes rocks, "science", moons, bird beaks, guts, the feeling of sand between fingers, bioluminescence, envelopes, cross sections, and the sea. Vist her website: www.jieunreiner.com
RACHEL LEWALLEN (R.Lew)
Is a complete genetic mutation, boasting the label of "red-headed, left-handed, identical-twinned, queer artist". She holds a BFA in Performance Studies from the University of North Carolina and currently works as a performance artist, theatre-maker/actor/director, writer, and solo saxophonist in Providence, Rhode Island.
MUFFY BRANDT
was born in 1981 in Pennsylvania. She has been involved in many projects, some more successful than others.
Muffy graduated from RISD in 2004, majoring in Film/Video and Painting.
She has a business www.muffybrandt.etsy.com selling hand screen printed textiles and garments as well as jewelry.
In May of 2012 Muffy graduated from the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies where she majored in Photo Journalism and Mutlimedia Storytelling. See her recent work at www.vimeo.com/muffybrandt
Muffy occasionally does stand up comedy as Sandy Kaufman.
She is thrilled to be a part of the Dirt Palace.
THEA ULRICH
Dorothea Ulrich is a multimedia artist who has always wanted to fly. After escaping a small and rather puritanical New England town by running away to be an aerialist in the circus, she studied painting and sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Dorothea uses performance, video, sculpture, painting, writing...and anything else she needs to create her work.
In her work, Dorothea questions and investigates the nature of reality and narrative, particularly the human desire to have a meaningful function in a meaningful world. She plays with the creation of context and the need for transformation, exploring how we define, use, construct, and distinguish space. She is particularly captivated by the idea of 'potential space'-- the distance between perceiver and perceived-- and how technology alters our sense of ownership of self and narrative. By creating, rejecting, and questioning these spaces, Dorothea explores the sense of psychic isolation that can emerge from a world of ready answers and defined existence.
Otherwise, (doro)Thea spends her time singing with the Assembly of Light choir, dancing and flying as much and as often as possible, and leaving space for spontaneity and play.
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ANGELA DIVEGLIA
Angela DiVeglia is a roving puppeteer, self-taught artist and musician, public librarian, and champion pen pal. She originally hails from post-industrial South-Central Massachusetts, and returned to Providence in 2013 after disentangling herself from the magical net/ insidious kudzu of the American South. A graduate of Amherst College (B.A., English) and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (M.S., Library Science), Angela is thrilled to be living and working among the talented residents of the Dirt Palace. Visit her website at aldiveglia.weebly.com
MIMI CHRZANOWSKI
was born in Chicago to old-world Polish parents and grew up in small-town Wisconsin.
Although drawing has always been her bread and butter through school and life, she can't commit to anything so she tries to make everything.
Play time as a kid included watching cartoons, swimming during the day/biking in the afternoon/roller skating at night, and illustrating cards and drawing imaginary characters. Play time in the now is pretty much the same. Play time is very, very important. http://bbytown.tumblr.com
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JAMIE 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.
SAM MERRIT
Sam Merritt majored in Sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design. In the years since she has enjoyed artist residencies at Dirt Palace and Machines With Magnets, where she has concentrated on fashion, printmaking, and fiber arts. Her work is energetic and present, often very large, often speaking of pop culture and waste, putting women in the center, and utilizing materials and artistic practices that are light on the earth.
In 2012 she taught herself digital embroidery and launched the line Double Vision Embroidery, creating original embroidered patches and small works. These embroidered pieces follow in the tradition of American embroidered patches, yet through considered design and manufacturing practices, exist in contrast to the future garbage that is fast fashion. Employing the balance of fun and meticulous care that color all her work, these simple, potent, small scale pieces serve as take-away versions of her much larger works.
whalelovergirls.com
ETSY
KIMI CAKES
Kimi Rich is a self taught multimedia artist from Newport R.I. Taking inspiration from her bizarre travels and odd day dreams, most of her work focuses on the darker nature of reality with a hint of magic.
ELIZABETH POTENZA
is glassmaker currently living and working in Providence, Rhode Island.
The origins of early science and the refinement of glass are inextricably intertwined. Historically the development of glass as a scientific device allowed humans the ability to see, test and experiment with the natural world in a way that far surpassed the limitations of the naked eye and brain alone.
I am fascinated by the forces of nature, which are invisible to the common eye: air pressure, evaporation and condensation, gravity, the passing of time, etc., yet with the aid of glass I am able to affect, to see, to measure and draw awareness to these earthly actions.
I think it wise to remember the basic functions of planet Earth are uncontrollable.
I also want to be a locomotive engineer and sea cucumber harvester.:
DIANA JOY
is a gypsy eurotrash beast with the intention of ruling the world in style via ritualistic music video and performance. Expert in clothing/costume design and construction and manipulating audio and video. Schooled throughout Europe in clown, mime, and bouffon. She can run a marathon, do pull-ups, pimp out the best outfits, and is way funnier than all your friends. She currently presents herself as a damaged 80s pop icon. Look out bruisers! Diana Joy is a terrifying woman!
dianajoy.net
SHIRIN ADHAMI
Shirin's original name was Roshika. Shirin means "sweet" in Farsi but no one knows what Roshika means. It may mean "blessed by Shiva" or it could be a misspelling of Roshilka, a folkloric water spirit.
Shirin is an artist, writer and educator. Her artwork is photographic, film and performance. Shirin was born in Stockholm Sweden, and has lived in Pakistan, England and Massachusetts. She has a BA in Religion and Art History from Amherst College and MFA in photography from RISD.
GLENNA VANNOSTRAND
Glenna Van Nostrand graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2008. She majored in SIM, a program dedicated to new media studies, with a focus on lighting design and performance. While taking an electronics projects class, she began rewiring old telephones and radios and started a solo project known as Omnivore. Glenna moved to Providence, Rhode Island and resided at the Dirt Palace, where she contributed to collaborations such as Bonedust and Sexaphone. In 2011, she recorded her debut at Machines With Magnets for Feeding Tube Records. She spent two months traveling though India last year and is currently developing new work involving light// sound// video manipulation under the guise of Talisman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDCuNyej4zc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U62bIfXR_ew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzBWGcH67Ik
http://thewire.co.uk/archive/issues/22847/the-wire-tapper-31
REBECCA MITCHELL
?b 1982
?Pisces 2
?Week of the Loner
?Day of Heaven and Hell
Born in the Bible Belt. Loves Jesus; not joking. Raised by an understated Methodist percussionist gone Zen and a chic square-dancing bohemian. Brought up singing in the classical tradition. Began playing guitar and writing in bands at 14, gigging with a fake ID at 15. Ran screaming from the Midwest in 2001, began to regret it in 2003. Laments a bad case of cosmic isolation, but not as much as she used to. Turn-ons include well punctuated text messages, scholarly musicianship, and drinking like a grown up. Music projects include Whore Paint, Sexaphone, Made In Mexico, Blood Sacrifice, Assembly of Light Women's Choir, and something without a name yet. The good news is, she's a visual artist now.
ANNAPURNA HIMAL WAGNER is an estonian-american nihilist autodidact.
she has lived in every time zone in the continental US.
since 2005, she has been the core bassist of the goetic-theurgical murder jazz assault phenomenon known as Mating Dance. (Psychedelic people in love = ritual murder.)
she contributes her cutthroat and impassioned paucity of musical skills to several other projects including: Ganja, Vvltvre (with Pippi Zornoza), and All Pigs Must Die (with s.k. redfearn.)
in august 2007, she left Bugress, Maine for Providence. Divine or otherwise.
her initiation to the Order of the Dirt Palace was sealed with the rite of The Whipping With The Extraneous CSA Fennel.
Within the benevolent and elegant confines of the Palace, she studies witchcraft, Playboy Magazines from the 70s and the walls.
SASHA WISEMAN
b. 9/20/86, 3:19am, lat.41.82 long.-71.24
joined the Dirt Palace as a feral teenager, and emerged five years later as a woman of numerous and varied talents. Do you need a life-sized edible gingerbread house, or for a circuit breaker to be installed in your actual house? Are you planning a costume ball, or looking for a collaborator on your sci-fi theater project? Maybe your cable access show lacks a distressed heroine. This is the woman to call. Sasha spent several years touring the basements and warehouses of America, both as a member of collaborative noise and performance projects and under her solo synth moniker, Coppertone. She also held a dizzying array of straight jobs during this time, from live audio engineer to strip club waitress to small business owner. She moved to Los Angeles in 2009 for basically no reason at all. The summer of 2011 brought Sasha back to New England, where she began her undergraduate education at the age of 25. She currently studies the translation of the subjective human experience into mulit-media platforms-- talk about a marketable skill!
CARRIE COLLIER
Carrie Collier can't stop coming back to Providence, and she never even drank from the Benefit St. Fountain. Is the city haunting her, or is she haunting the city? Her dream-ghost is often wandering the corridors, warrens, and lofts of the Dirt Palace
LI PALLAS
The first thing to strike Li Pallas' ears was Suicide is Painless on the hospital TV set in the Bronx. She argued "poetic license" in first grade and mastered the I Ching by nine. In Seattle she spent several years banding together with a wild pack of family poets, singing sultry versions of "Because the Night", and making spare cash as a live tarot reader. In Providence she lived out the fantasy of The Boxcar Children at the old Olneyville Library in her best David Byrne pajamas collecting dust and love letters when she wasn't otherwise squashbuckling countrysides or wandering the desert mastering sustainable design. She left due to some humidity on the south coast accidentally fastening her to an otherwise chaste leather couch at the New Orleans Community Print Shop. Later she free'd herself to attend grad school in the basement of the Corcoran Museum. In the absence of profit motive, she finds herself driven to produce that which acknowledges difficulty and makes the world more bearable. Currently she resides in Los Angeles designing dead media such as activist paperbacks and wordpress sites while forging alliances with the Catalina Eddy to occasionally reflect the city's mood with clouds.
KRISTINA BROWN
b. 1981
A transient artist, with a stubborn DIY ethic, Kristina had travelled across the country, up and down, side to side, in every way imaginable before finding herself in the dark cold nook of the Dirt Palace. Having more space and time to create than she had ever experienced, she explored new avenues of performance and scale. Generally, she likes to keep her hands busy to maintain peace of mind with almost any materials that suit her ideas. From building rafts to designing choir robes and theatre sets, to sewing, printing and making zines, she sees every project as an exciting challenge.
Her newest challenge is adjusting to being a mother. This new identity has made it ever so important to focus her creative energies towards community building and social revolution. She is a founding member of Libertalia, a collectively run radical community space , and started the Wild Child Care Cooperative, a community of radical parents working together to share the joys and burdens of raising the next generation. She is happily anticipating the birth of her second child.
SERENA JV
b. 1987
serena was born in the desolate ice-tundra of norway in a possibly dishonest alternate reality. requiring a skill in order to survive the frozen white hell, she learned the ancient art of "timberframing" which may or may not actually exist. she made many skill-trades in exchange for basic sustinance, but was eventually destroyed by the international viking army for undisclosed reasons.
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LAUREN FISHER
is a Providence-based artist who works with a focus on large-scale installations, drawings and performance. Her interactive installations implement architectural forms, sound, and light to create ethereal, responsive environments that challenge perceptions of space and experience. Her collaborative performances implement sound and movement to enact ambiguous narratives, and create unusual spatial soundscapes. These explorations of external spaces, untenable structures, and abstruse narratives inform every facet of her work. Lauren has exhibited at Space 1026 in Philadelphia, and at Blutenweiss Gallery in Berlin, Germany. She has performed at PS1 in N.Y., at the Whitney Museum of American Art in N.Y. and at the Fringe Fest in New Orleans, LA.
NATALJA KENT
is a Photographer/Artist living and working in Providence, Rhode Island. Her past works span the mediums of installation, performance, sound and drawing with photography at the hub of the wheel. She has work in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and has shown in galleries in the US, England and Japan. Currently she is focusing on her fine art and freelance photography practice, shooting a portrait series, editorial and commercial work.
www.NataljaKent.com
SAMANTHA H. PIERCE
Samantha H. Pierce is a multimedia artist. Sam's favorite media include drawing, printmaking, audio and installation. Other interests include riding bikes, gardening, creating events and collaborating. What attracted her to the Dirt Palace? Being close to lots of radical musicians in Providence, the chance to learn screenprinting, and the fantastical world that is the Palace.
ARLEY ROSE TORSONE
Arley-Rose is an illustrator, hand-letterer and music lover who spends her time creating designs for Ladyfingers Letterpress, the custom invitation and greeting card business she started with her wife Morgan Calderini in Providence in 2011. As a member of the Dirt Palace from 2005-2008, she learned how to screen print, record her own music, cook vegan food (Worcestershire sauce is not vegan, btw) - all while being inspired by her amazing new studio mates and pals for life.
ALEXANDRA GOLDBERG
is a member of the planetary society, has almost perfected her rosettalatte, and enjoys the blog of Roseanne Barr. She has illustrations featured in such publications as and Paranoia Magazine and Candy Butcher, and has built puppets for organizations such as the CYL and Dollywood. Some of her personal goals and projects include completing her degree in Library Science, continuing her studies in tarot, and finding and playing all the pinball machines located in NYC.
KATE GRONNER
survives exclusively off of chickpeas and chard, and possibly drinks as much tea, coffee, and other beverages as the whole dirt palace combined. She relocated to the providence from chicago during a blizzard in february 2006. She is excellent at loosing her cell phone, climbing trees and parallel parking pippi's van. She works in various mediums, such as embroidery, drawing, crochet, papier mache, carving, and printmaking, and is contemplating working in film again in the near future. Her interests include taxidermy, old pick up trucks, stereocards, blankets crocheted in striped patterns, succulents (and select other plants), her accordion, wood paneling, nature guides, encyclopedias, her mother's button collection,objects with a history, and the olneyville new york system. Rest in peace Salty.
CASSIE THARINGER
grew up in vermont—-but redneck vermont, not hippie vermont. she shares a birthday with george washington, teddy kennedy, frederic chopin (though his birth date is contested,) her great aunt faith, and julius "dr. j" irving, and someday they will all form a superstar basketball team together. she has been known to make costumes, undies, lampshades, little boxes with stories in them, movies, collages, drawings & sometimes prints, overly-conceptual installations involving ebay, and various apple desserts. she is fond of obscure children's books from the 70's, listening to the radio, irish whiskey, wendell berry, things that really happened, popcorn, and salt. currently, she is learning about herbs (cultivation and lore), and pondering the inevitable, imminent apocalypse.
IAN C. COZZENS
is a queer & trans artist, organizer, and human. He moved to Rhode Island in 1999 to go to architecture school, and learned how to make silkscreened posters through informal networks of nerdy print maniacs in Providence's art & music scene. He also got involved in urban activism projects, including becoming an artist mentor with high schoolers at New Urban Arts, and has ended up deeply enmeshed in this tiny, beautiful city full of friends, colleagues, and weirdos.
Ian was at the Dirt Palace from 2004 to 2006, and he still lives and works in Olneyville, just a couple blocks up the hill — making art through drawing, printing, and building, putting together events in Providence's artist & queer communities, and teaching screenprinting at AS220's Community Printshop. He strives to find a balance between the pull of sociable spaces and community projects — and the quiet studio practice and solo bike explorations that open up possibilities for drawing, working, and figuring out new things. He aspires to more multiplicity, more contradiction, and more self-actualization.
Some evidence of his activities can be found at: www.secretdoorprojects.org
LAURA ZAYLEA
is an experimental filmmaker. She recently co-wrote/directed Hold The Sun, an experimental feature film that was awarded Best Avant-garde Film at the 2010 Amsterdam Film Festival in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Best Experimental Feature at the New York International Film Festival in Los Angeles, CA. Zaylea’s experimental 16mm hand-processed short films have screened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, CA, Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley, CA, PS1 in Queens, NY, and the Notthatbalai Art Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malasia. Her queer-themed video work includes Lydia Li and Camouflage Pink, for which she received an independent distribution grant from the Open Meadows Foundation. Zaylea studied experimental filmmaking with artist Janis Crystal Lipzin at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she received her MFA in Film in 2008, and with artist Leslie Thornton at Brown University, where she received her BA in Art-Semiotics in 2003. She currently works as a Film Lecturer at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA and is developing Closer Than Rust, her second feature film.
is an interdisciplinary artist who experiments with storytelling. Her works include animated films and videos, drawings, prints, illustration, installation projects, and artist/small-press book publications. Through the playful invention of characters and events, she investigates our relationship to natural phenomena, the built environment, history and current events, as well as aspects of cognition and consciousness.
Her animations have screened at festivals nationally and internationally, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. She has been awarded grants for her film/video work from the LEF Foundation, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and The Free History Project. She has exhibited her drawings and prints in Providence, New York, San Francisco, Portland, and Los Angeles. Her books can be found in independent stores like Ada Books(Providence) and Quimby's(Chicago), or purchased online from Little Otsu. She has completed residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, as well as participated in an animation workshop at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. Most recently, she designed an installation project for the DeCordova Museum Biennial, at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Massachusetts.
She holds a BFA in Film/Animation/Video from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. In 2011, she relocated from Providence, RI, to Chicago, IL, where she is currently an Assistant Professor of Animation in DePaul University's School of Cinema and Interactive Media.
POLINA MALIKIN
Polina was born in Russia, grew up in the Bronx, has lived and traveled near and far, and currently resides with her nutty family in the heart of the heart of the heartland in Missouri. Equal parts hope and despair have propelled her to work as an artist, teacher, and community organizer, in the US and abroad. For the past several years, Polina has been presenting work under the name "The Archaeology of the Recent Future Association"; A.R.F.A. is the catch-all moniker for many projects and things, created individually and collaboratively: films, zines, print, installation, sculpture, music, and writing. (And, in fact, the name was born right in the Dirt Palace kitchen, of a feverish mind in the middle of the night, when the group embarked on its first collective art show and worked for 24 hours straight to create it!).
is a painter, carpenter, teacher and a feminist living in Oakland, California. He was part of the D.P. from 2001-2002 and learned how to hang drywall there and use a screw gun. For this he is eternally grateful. His current work has focused on queer history, and fantasy. In the last five years, he erected a monument to the dreams lost throughout the AIDS crisis, made a visual biography of a genderless society, and most recently began a series called 'house of no', which begins to address a queer relationship to architecture and geographical location.
ERIN ROSENTHAL
b. 1976 Planet Earth
creator of shadows, sculptures, and sounds as drummer/percussionist and singer in Crude Hill, Urdog, Sleepy Bones, and more guises to come. a shape shifter of cut-paper prints and dancing feet, she transforms ordinary objects into forms for focusing the ground state and exploring the myriad realms of mystical experience. most recently, she tends to spend as much time outside as possible, learning from plant and animal teachers.
AKA Jhonni Glug came to fruition in a small Tower in korean, after being given instructions from a satellite orbiting around europa, Jhonni began growing her beard in order to knit a bridge into space and past. a battalion of cats has been enlisted to do the actual knitting.
ROBIN NANNEY
LOUISE DECURTIS
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