2003 Artist Support Program

Aono Jikken, pronounced Ah-Oh-No Gee-Ken (Japanese for blue field experiment), is a Seattle-based experimental ensemble. Through structured improvisation the group creates unique music and soundscapes played on everything from traditional Asian and Western instruments to childrens sound toys, found objects, and specially invented instruments made of metal, plastic, kelp and other materials. The group also incorporates dance, theatre, film, and visual art into their live performances. Aono Jikkens work aims to balance Eastern with Western influences, improvisation with composition, and innovation with conventional approaches to their instruments. Founded in 1997 by Taiko drummer/percussionist and filmmaker William Satake Blauvelt, the group’s members have included: sound composer and instrument maker Susie Kozawa; dancer/choreographer and visual artist Yoko Murao; multi-instrumentalist and sound designer Mike Shannon; and flutist/composer Esther Sugai.

Artist Support Program 2011: Record one or more of their original scores for classic and contemporary silent cinema

Artist Support Program 1998: Produce a soundtrack for the 1926 silent film A Page of Madness.

Phyllis Fletcher is a lifelong Seattleite with roots in rural eastern Washington state. Her career in public radio journalism has been primarily at the service of Northwest listeners, with a detour to Washington, D.C. to report from NPR’s national desk.

Artist Support Program 2003: Production of “Sweet Phil from Sugar Hill,”an audio documentary about her father.

Brian Goedde is an assistant professor of English at the Community College of Philadelphia. A graduate of the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, he has written personal essays for The New York Times, The Seattle Review, and Full Grown People (The Other Awkward Age), among other publications.

Artist Support Program 2003: Record and produce a series of critical works for educational radio programming about hip-hop music

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 )

Bill Moyer co-founded the Backbone Campaign in 2003 with friends from an artist affinity group. He has dual and intersecting paths as both an activist and artist. His involvement with social change work stretches back to the ’80s, when as a student he was deeply involved in the anti-nuclear movement and the anti-interventionist movement. After a few years of studying political science and American philosophy at Seattle University, Bill went to Big Mountain to assist Dineh elders refusing to relocate off their traditional land, attended the Institute for Social Ecology, and briefly lived on an organic vegetable farm in Vermont.

On returning to the Pacific NW to live on Vashon Island, activism was replaced with performance and study of music as a percussionist and sound designer. The G.W. Bush administration inspired him to apply lessons of the arts to social change. Backbone Campaign has been a vehicle for much growth and Bill has emerged as a leader in the theory and practice of “artful activism.” He designs and produces creative political actions and provides trainings in grand strategy and creative tactics around the country.

Artist Support Program 2003: Recordings of his compositions for theatre, dance, and concert presentation in surround-sound (5.1) format.

Cynthia Rose is a British and American national based in Paris, France. She works as an author, reporter and broadcaster (BBC, NPR), dealing with culture and arts criticism. Work as Paris correspondent includes CRAFTS (UK) and The Comics Journal (US)

Artist Support Program 2023: Mix, edit, and sweeten recorded audio for a 20 minute film featuring Seattle performing arts group Typing Explosion, showcased during the 2003 Venice Biennale, an international, invitational arts festival in Italy.

Bob Rees graduated from Eastern Washington University with degrees in Music Education and Percussion Performance and a Master’s degree in Music and Music Education from Anderson University. Originally from Spokane, Bob relocated to Seattle, where he’s been an integral part of the area’s music community for more than twenty years. Bob is a Yamaha national soloist winner and a Jack Straw Artist Support grant recipient. As a performer, he’s recorded and collaborated with a diversity of artists and groups throughout the United States and internationally. As an educator, Bob believes in using improvisation and composition to strengthen students’ connections to their unique and collective relationships with music.

Artist Support Program 2003: Document his solo contemporary improvisations of multiple percussion instruments and vibraphone through audio recordings for a full-length CD.

Curtis Taylor is a narrative filmmaker and playwright. In Seattle he operated the underground theater Vodvil from 1996 to 2006, and under these auspices created original folk operas, cabarets, recitals and sound art installations. His recent work has combined mannered musical languages (murder ballads, sacred choir and opera) with historic stage traditions (ballet, vaudeville and burlesque) to consider themes of art, life and time.

Artist Support Program 2011: Audio production design for The White Days, an original play.

Artist Support Program 2008: Record music featuring the Compline Choir of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle and sound design for Church Weather, a short film that completes a trilogy on the theme of song as visual narrative.

Three Dollar Bill Cinema fosters deeper community engagement by showcasing queer film programming, educational experiences, and social dialogue. They provide access to films by, for, and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people and their families, and a forum for LGBTQ+ filmmakers to share and discuss their work with audiences. They curate themed screenings throughout the year and produce programs in partnership with other arts, cultural, and service delivery organizations in the Greater Seattle area.

Artist Support Program 2003: Jason Plourde and Sean Weakland of Three Dollar Bill Cinema recorded and produced the narrative component of amateur films created by 93 year old Harold O’Neal over the past 70 years.

Ellie Belew lives in the world of stories we tell ourselves and each other. She writes them down as novels, short prose pieces, and community histories. Belew has published one novel, Run, Plant, Fly (with audio CD produced through Jack Straw’s Artist Support Program); two labor histories, Fully Involved, Bringing Power to the People; and curated and edited About Wallowa County, an anthology of multimedia contributions by the people who live there.

2017 Writers Program

2003 Artist Support Program: Run Plant Fly, a CD based on her novel by the same name.

Etienne Cakpo is an award-winning professional dancer, choreographer and musician from Benin, West Africa. He teaches and performs traditional African dance from Benin as well as contemporary African dance styles, and has been building his dance and music repertoire for nearly thirty years. He directs Gansango Music & Dance, a performing arts group that works with public libraries, schools and independent arts agencies locally and nationally to make performance of dance and music from Africa available to a wide range of audiences, including young children. Etienne has received a number of awards for artistic excellence, including: two-time Recipient of Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship for Excellence in Performing Arts (2013, 2006); danceWEB Europe’s 2007 Scholarship Program (2007); Dance Omi International Dance Collective residency award (2006); and UNESCO-Aschberg Bursury for Artists Award (2005- 2006).

Artist Support Program 2016: Produce an album of original music that fuses traditional rhythm, vocals and percussion from Africa with modern world music styles.

Amy Caron is an uber-multidisciplinary artist based in Salt Lake City.

A gifted athlete, Amy spent her formative years excelling in gymnastics and figure skating.  Shortly after she began underage drinking, Amy ditched the candy sports for the pure adrenaline rush of aerial ski jumping and went on to compete at the World Cup level for the US Freestyle Ski Team.  Her training prompted her move to Utah (skier’s mecca) in the early ’90s.  Thankfully a string of gnarly injuries and mind-altering concussions eventually knocked some sense into her.  She opted to mellow out and convert to contemporary art—a career path sure to be a piece of cake.

Amy’s choreography, theatre, sculpture, large-scale installations, photography, performance art, animation, furniture design, video art, and short films have toured nationally and internationally at museums, galleries, theaters, film festivals, universities, and raw spaces, along with some splendidly dubious venues she will never tell her mother about.  Selected solo exhibitions/residencies include totally legit institutions like Duke University, the University of Utah, and BCA Center.  Amy received a Creation Fund grant from the National Performance Network and gigantic commi$$ions from Performance Space 122 and The Leonardo Museum.  Her work has been shown and recognized everywhere from remote Alaska to cosmopolitan Hong Kong where she won awards (well, one award to be exact).  Described by curators as an artist of  “abnormal ambition,” Amy’s body of work extends from one-minute video art to a massive 4,000 square foot sculpture. 

Artist Support Program 2003: Record a soundtrack of electronic sounds, found sounds, classical music, and spoken-word for a short experimental digital film about anticipation.

Elizabeth Falconer is one of the few American masters of the koto, a traditional zither from Japan.  She began playing the koto in 1979. She earned a junshihan (associate degree) from the Seiha Koto School, studying under Nagane Utayumi. This school focused on classical works. She later moved to Tokyo and studied under the esteemed Sawai Kazue and Sawai Tadao at the Sawai Koto School, and earned a Shihan (master’s license) at the Sawai Koto School, which focuses on contemporary works.

Artist Support Program 2005 (with John Falconer): Production of the album Affinity, by the duo En.

Artist Support Program 2000

Artist Support Program 1998

Jeff Gardner is a native of Los Angeles, California and a graduate of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. After graduation Jeff began acting professionally in Washington D.C. where he appeared in Little Women at the Kennedy Center, Skylight at The Studio Theatre, Henry V, Henry VI parts I-III and Measure for Measure, all at the Shakespeare Theatre. Other regional credits include Our Town and The Seagull (with Gwyneth Paltrow and Christopher Walken) at Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts. He also garnered rave reviews and a best of the fest award for his one-man riff on TV entitled, ‘Kill Your Television’.

Artist Support Program 2003: Record a soundtrack for Kill Your Television, an experimental televised theatrical work created using voice, found sounds, electronic sounds, and music.

Mark Polishook directed the music composition and theory programs at Central Washington University. He’s been a professor of jazz piano at the University of Maine at Augusta and a Senior Fulbright Lecturer at the Crakow Academy of Music in Poland. Dr. Polishook has been a resident artist in the Aarhus Computer Science Department, at STEIM in Amsterdam, and at CREATE at the University of California Santa Barbara.

He has a DMA in Music Composition from the Hartt School of Music, a masters’ degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and the Manhattan School of Music. His undergraduate degree is from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Artist Support Program 2003: Record a composition consisting of computer-generated sound, trombone, and percussion.

New Media Gallery 2002-03 (with Lisa Hutton): Revisiting September 11, 19[72]

Ellen Sollod is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Pacific Northwest. Her practice includes large scale, site-specific public art, multimedia temporary installations, artist books, photography and photo-based works. Born in NY and raised in South Carolina, she moved successively north and west, finally alighting in Seattle, where she has made her home for the last 25 years. Ellen has a BA in art history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a MA from the Institute for Urban Studies, University of Maryland. She served as Assistant Director of the Dance Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, Executive Director of the Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities and the Seattle Arts Commission. Since 1993, she has devoted herself to her public and studio practice, maintaining an activist role on behalf of the arts in civic life. She recently served as Vice Chair of the Seattle Design Commission and as a member of the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture Public Art Advisory Committee. Ellen has traveled extensively to Europe, SE Asia, Africa and Latin America. All of this has influenced her work.

Major public commissions include Seattle’s Mercer Corridor, Brightwater Wastewater Treatment Plant, San Jose Light Rail, Olympia, WA Gateway Corridor, Bellingham, WA Arts District, Pier Park (Portland, OR), Morrill Meadows Park (Kent, WA), Harborview Medical Center (Seattle, WA). Her bookworks are included in such collections as Yale University Center for the Book, NYPL Spencer Collection, University of Washington Special Collections and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

New Media Gallery 2011-12 (with Johanna Melamed): Outside In/Inside Out: The Inner Life of Jack

Born October 21, 1923 in Netherlands, Alie Elisabeth Wiegersma Smaalders lived through the German occupation before becoming a librarian in Amsterdam. She traveled to the United States in 1952 on a Fulbright scholarship at Carnegie Mellon and later attended UCLA. She worked as a reference librarian, studied writing and translated stories from her native Frisian and Dutch into English.

Artist Support Program 2003: Recorded The Sky was a Brilliant Blue, a collage of memoir, fiction and nonfiction stories about World War II.

2001 Writers Program