2024 Artist Support Program

Danielle Bainbridge is an Assistant Professor of Theatre, Black Studies, and Performance Studies at Northwestern University, a web series creator and host, writer, and filmmaker. With PBS Digital Studios, in 2017 she co-founded the YouTube Channel and web series PBS Origin of Everything, which has now evolved into PBS Origins. The channel has 500,000+ subscribers and over 32 million views to date. In support of her ongoing memoir collection, Dandelion, she has received the 2015 Barry Lopez prize for creative nonfiction from Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, was a semi-finalist for the Kore Press 2016 memoir award, received a 2016 scholarship to the Tin House creative writing workshop in Portland Oregon, won a 2022 Anne LaBastille Writing Residency from the Adirondack Center for Writing, won a 2023 virtual residency from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and was named a semi-finalist for the 2023 St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. Her creative nonfiction and fiction appear in Moko Magazine, Killens Review of Arts & Letters, and The Mechanics’ Institute Review Online. She served as a co-host on two 2021 Daytime Emmy Nominated web series: PBS Self-Evident and YouTube Originals Booktube. From 2021-2022 Danielle also served as a host and consulting producer on PBS’s Historian’s Take, which is a 2023 NAACP Image Award Nominee and 2023 Daytime Emmy Award Nominee. Her first play, Curio, premiered at the University of Pennsylvania and appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018. In 2024 Danielle is in post-production for her first short film, based on Curio. She will be working on recording the songs and score from Curio during her residency at Jack Straw (composed by Autumn Maria Reed.) Danielle is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (BA English and Theatre Arts) and Yale University (PhD African American Studies and American Studies.)

Artist Support Program 2024: Curio, a short film about conjoined 19th century twins Millie Christine McKoy told through re-enactments, original hand bell music, and archival documents.

Dayana Capulong is a Filipinx American Queer & Non Binary artist currently on unceded Duwamish/Coast Salish Land. They are a multi instrumentalist, composer, and sound designer across various mediums.

Dayana was born in Queens, New York and has since lived in the Philippines and both coasts of the United States. At Emerson College in Boston, they earned a B.A. in Sound Design and Audio Post Production for Film and TV and is considered another Berklee College of Music “drop out.” Dayana works as an independent freelance sound designer, and mixes soundscapes for theater, podcast, radio journalism, interactive media and various mediums.

Their sonic artwork centers stories of marginalized communities seeking to tell their own experiences in art. These stories are typically journeys of struggle, resilience, connection, sacrifice, healing, and liberation.

Artist Support Program 2024: Archipelago Return Trip, a Sonic Exploration of the Homeland of my Ancestors

Antonio Davidson-Gómez is an educator and percussionist focused on fostering musical dialogue between cultures. He has studied, performed and recorded in various genres with emphases on Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Afro-Latin music. Tony has produced arts and culture programming, educational projects and community engagement initiatives for over two decades. A 2013-14 Jubilation Foundation Fellow for music in education, he has developed curricula for PBS and the EMP Museum/Smithsonian, in addition to teaching students and educators for Seattle’s Creative Advantage and various school districts. Tony is the Education Manager at Broadway Center for Performing Arts and is a speaker on music and culture for Humanities Washington, offering presentations including Saffron & Honey: Muslims, Jews and Christians in Medieval Spain and Mapping Latino Musical Migrations. Formerly a K-12 teacher, he has been a Collaborating Teacher with Cal Performances, the Silk Road Project and the Jewish Music Festival, designed a college prep course on world music and managed educational resources and wrote documentaries for KCTS 9 Public Television in Seattle. Recent musical projects include work with Tango del Cielo, Gary Stroutsos and the Early Music Guild of Seattle. Tony holds a Masters in Education from UC Berkeley and has conducted study and research trips in the Mediterranean and Latin America, most recently returning from travels in Morocco and Spain where he studied music and history.

Artist Support Program 2024 (with Trio Guadalevin): El Noroeste – A Musical Portrait of Washington’s Latinx  Communities Past & Present

Artist Support Program 2018: Continue work on the Guadalevín Project: an intimate exploration of identity and cultural dialogue which radiates across generations and continents; principally a musical collection bolstered by personal writings and historical accounts.

Artist Support Program 2015: Record music from many traditions for the Guadalevin Project, an exploration of identity and cultural dialogue combining elements of autobiography, travelogue, and musical collection.

As a performer on lute, theorbo and Baroque guitar, August Denhard has appeared with Baroque Northwest, Seattle Baroque, the Concord Ensemble, Chicago Music of the Baroque, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Camarata Pacifica Baroque, and many other ensembles specializing in early music. He is an accompanist/coach for 16th and 17th century song at Ars Vocalis Mexico in Morelia, Michoacan.

Gus has given numerous solo recitals and is in demand as an accompanist of 17th century vocal music. He performs regularly in a lute song duo with tenor Eric Mentzel, with the Turkish udist/composer, Münir Nurettin Beken, and with the Japanese kugo harpist Tomoko Sugawara.

In addition to his activities as a performer, August Denhard is the Executive Director of Early Music Seattle, the Pacific Northwest’s oldest and largest presenter of early music.

Artist Support Program 2024 (with Trio Guadalevin): El Noroeste – A Musical Portrait of Washington’s Latinx  Communities Past & Present

Artist Support Program 2012 (with Eric Mentzel): The English Cavalier Songs, a program of duets for lute and tenor.

Artist Support Program 2008 (with Münir Nurettin Beken): A Meeting Place: Medieval and Renaissance Music for Lute and Ud

Artist Support Program 2002: Cusp of the Baroque, a CD of works for solo lute.

Abel Rocha is a Mexico City-born folklorist, singer and multi-instrumentalist who performs music of Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Chile and Argentina. He is a foundational member of groups including Trío Guadalevín. Correo Aereo, and Los Flacos and was recently the subject of the KCTS 9 Seattle Emmy-nominated documentary, Los Artistas.

Artist Support Program 2024 (with Trio Guadalevin): El Noroeste – A Musical Portrait of Washington’s Latinx  Communities Past & Present

Rasheena Fountain’s work is multidimensional. She grew up playing southern gospel and blues on lead guitar in church. You can catch her spitting a verse on an experimental beat she has produced and performed under her hip hop alias. You might find her riffing over a slow Mississippi delta blues bassline. For two decades, she has sought to transcend colonial boundaries through a turntable and a mixer as a DJ, with drum and bass, UK grime and 2-step, hip hop, dancehall, and house music as her transports. As a PhD student, she focuses on blues music, mood, and logic as a way to reorient notions of environmental imagination and advocacy. Through that work, she hopes to connect with her ancestral ways of knowing, to help welcome communities traditionally left out of mainstream environmental advocacy, and to fight myths about Black people and the environment.

Fountain has centered creativity in her decades-long work in environmental advocacy and social justice. Her artist interviews, creative nonfiction, poetry, and essays have been published in ZORA, HuffPost, swamp pink, You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography, Black Embodiments Studio Journal, Mountaineers Magazine, and more. She is  a former Walker Communications Editorial fellow with the National Audubon (2017). Fountain received a 2021 Honorable Mention from the Trillium Arts “Miss Sarah” Fellowship for Black Women Writers and was a top five finalist for the Solstice Magazine 2022 Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize for her poem “Not an ‘other’ climate poem.” She has partnered with the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) to highlight Black environmental stories through interviews and writing and performing eco-poetry. Through a partnership with NRDC and #Ham4progress, Fountain’s poem “Hope isn’t a vacant lot” was performed by Hamilton cast member Lencia Kebede in a visual production and distributed on Hamilton and  #Ham4progress social media accounts. She wrote and performed her poem, “A Mother’s Justice” celebrating Hazel M. Johnson, the Mother of Environmental Justice, for NRDC’s National Poetry Month celebration in 2022. Fountain has taught nature writing workshops at the Henry Art Gallery and TreeSong Nature Awareness Retreat Center. She co-produced a poetic mixtape to Henry Art Gallery for their publication series on artistic responses to the Packaged Black art exhibit (2022). She was awarded a Barclay Simpson Scholars in Public fellowship through the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington for her digital storytelling series Sustaining For Us (2023). Her first book Starfish Blues: A Memoir will be released in Spring 2024 with Chin Music Press.

Fountain earned a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a MA.Ed. in Urban Environmental Education from Antioch University Seattle in partnership with IslandWood. Fountain has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington Seattle, where she is currently a Ph.D. student in English literature and culture.

Photo by Amy L. Piñon

Artist Support Program 2024: Dropped Down Blues, a speculative blues poetry audio-visual project and companion album

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, and writing coach. She lives on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020) was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica’s writing and reviews appear in several publications, such as Orion, The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Ecotone, Terrain.org, and Poetry Northwest. Her award-winning memoir, A Little Bit of Land, was published by Oregon State University Press in September 2022.

Artist Support Program 2024: Her Deepest Ecologies podcast

2022 Writers Program

Adrienne Mackey is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the potential of performance and play. With her company, Swim Pony, she’s created works including Survive!, a 22,000 square ft choose-your-own-adventure installation exploring humanity’s place within the universe; Lady M, a feminist take on Macbeth; The Giant Squid, a “crypto-zoology-horror-comedy” performed in science lecture halls; and The Ballad of Joe Hill, a play with music created for Eastern State Penitentiary about the execution of a historic labor icon.  Most recently her work has focused on explorations fusing games and theater with works like TrailOff– a mobile app performance created with the PA Environmental Council using GPS to embed original BIPOC stories onto nature trails; The End – a month-long mixed reality game exploring fears about mortality; Aqua Marooned!, a wildlife card game commissioned by the Alliance for Watershed Education; and War of the Worlds, a game/theater hybrid with Drexel’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio looking at gentrification as an invasive force. Currently, she’s working on a new transmedial game to combat loneliness called The Forgetting. She’s also a classically trained soprano and funk musician (featured on America’s Got Talent), former chemist, and teaches acting, directing and devising for University of Washington’s School of Drama.

Artist Support Program 2024: The Forgetting, an interactive game combining site-specific theater and geolocative audio

Positively Positive (they/them) is a multifaceted artist and an African-American/black queer, transgender, nonbinary, HIV positive at birth educator, spoken word artist, and a hip hop emcee who is a survivor of violence. Positively Positive’s artistic journey is a testament to resilience.

They hold a graduate certificate in Environmental Education from the University of Washington’s Islandwood enriching young minds through science investigations and literacy-enhancing lessons .

Positively Positive conducted impactful and meaningful undergraduate research on HIV stigma within the LGBTQ community during a study abroad in Ghana.

Their dedication to the arts led to a Seattle Office of Arts & Culture’s King Street Station Studio Residency Award in 2021, awarded the Cry Baby Studios Residency in 2020 and now a current Jack Straw Artist support residence of 2024 to record their album Breaking the Chains of Silence, a narrative on overcoming hardships and trauma as a young person born with HIV giving hope to survivors. Positively Positive’s commitment to community service is exemplified through their AmeriCorps volunteer work with City Year, Youth Speaks Seattle, the Student Conservation Association (TheSCA), Seattle Parks and Recreation.

In their free time, Positively Positive practices Vipassana meditation while listening to audiobooks. Their favorite authors are Charlie Jane Anders, Brandon Lacy Campos, Angie Thomas, and Becoming Michelle by Michelle Obama. They possess remarkable talents in freestyle rap and in beatboxing.

Artist Support Program 2024: Breaking Chains of Silence: Non-fiction essay, prose, spoken word.

Transonic merges eclectic backgrounds to create a sound that blends hip-hop, R&B, and soulful jazz elements. Korbin’s journey from Virginia’s rhythms, through military experience, to music production training shapes his powerful compositions. Meysha’s Ohio roots and the PNW’s cultural vibrancy fuel their insightful songwriting and performances rooted in a transmasculine perspective. Their collaboration is a testament to the power of shared passion and diverse musical influences.

Artist Support Program 2024: Original music project blending hip-hop, R&B, funk, soul, and jazz, channeling ancestral roots into a transformative narrative of Black trans resilience and artistry.

Self-taught engineer, producer, and rapper Gama was originally inspired to get into music by fellow Houston artists Cumbia Kings. At age 15 he scraped enough money together to buy a used Macbook and start learning how to make beats. Lyrics became an outlet for his emotions, processing the poverty and violence normalized around him. When his cousin invited him to Washington to help run a donut shop, he took the chance for a fresh start.

Barely a year after moving to Washington, CUT featured Gama and his song ‘Styrafoam’ in a video. Gama describes his musical style as rugged, dark, and ethereal. His current inspirations include Smino, Monte Booker, The Weeknd, and DJ Screw. Past collaborators include Savage Realm, Deante’ Hitchcock, and CJ Kasino.

Artist Support Program 2024: Producing an EP reflecting on his experiences in the year since moving to a small town in Washington from his hometown of Houston, Texas.

Suchitra Iyer has been passionate about Indian classical music from a young age, starting her journey with the south Indian Carnatic genre. In 2013, she had the opportunity to learn the north Indian Hindustani style of vocal music while on a long-term stay in India. She continued her training with Vid. Srivani Jade in Seattle and made a smooth transition to the Khayal genre. Suchitra has performed for organizations such as Northwest Folklife Festival, Ragamala Seattle, Indian Performing Arts Project, Pratidhwani, Indian American Community Services, Seattle Tabla Institute as well as the Karnatic Hindustani Music Circle of New England. She is a recipient of the Heritage Arts Apprenticeship Program grant from Humanities Washington and her work has been supported by the Sammamish Arts Commission. Suchitra is deeply committed to preserving Indian classical music and passing it on to the next generation. She teaches Hindustani music to students of all age groups at her home studio. She also conducts workshops at schools as part of enrichment music programs.

Artist Support Program 2024: Record an album of Hindustani music compositions by Indian American composers in the Greater Seattle area.

Greg Kramer is a veteran of the Seattle music scene.  Greg has performed, toured and recorded with countless groups including True Loves, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Sol, and Wheedle’s Groove. Greg released his first solo project, “Tell Me EP” in 2020, which has garnered much acclaim and over 3 million streams. Greg’s self produced solo project is a unique blend of Hip-Hop, Soul and Jazz all tied together by the trombone.

Artist Support Program 2024:  Complete his first full length album of original music.

A 4th generation Chinese American artist, Cheryll Leo-Gwin was born in Canada during the US Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943) and Canada’s Chinese Exclusion Act (1923-1947) when Chinese were forbidden immigration in both countries.

Her Chinese American father and Chinese Canadian mother married in 1939 and laws of their lands forced them to live apart in their respective countries. American by birthright, Cheryll was denied American citizenship. Senator Warren Magnuson helped this American family immigrate to Seattle.

Raised in Seattle’s Beacon Hill, a then all white community, with no Chinese friends, she wondered where she fit. Earning her MFA at the UW, she retired as an educator and arts administrator, then traveled extensively to China to discover the meaning of being Chinese.
Chinese Civilization: The patriarchal society never recorded women’s births, deaths, or marriages. They remained anonymous, abused, neglected, forgotten, and murdered.

Over 20 years she collected oral histories from women who survived the Cultural Revolution, and from Chinese American women who fought for civil rights in the 1960’s and 70’s.

Recently, through two archaeologists, she discovered the journey to America taken by her grandfather in the mid-1800s as a physician.
Cheryll’s work is informed by this historical and biographical past.

Artist Support Program 2024: A Chinese American View of America’s Wild West

Jack Straw Atrium Gallery 2023: Larger than Life

Comedian and journalist Lee Nacozy grew up in Austin amid her big Lebanese family. She then moved west until arriving in Seattle in 2010. She is a studied improviser and storyteller who loves to teach social-justice improv. She has most recently worked as an editor for Prison Journalism Project and for Real Change and as a host of The Moth. Her stand-up comedy is born of deep neuroses and gender jokes, and makes most people laugh.

Artist Support Program 2024: A podcast about working in comedy

People of Flow, a Seattle-based collective since summer 2023, uses the power of music to express joy, resistance, and truth. We are a diverse blend of creatives who find common ground in the transformative power of music.

Our music isn’t just for listening; it’s an invitation to join. We regularly perform at local art events and venues, creating a welcoming space where communities come together and celebrate shared experiences.

Whether you’re seeking joyful anthems, powerful statements, or honest truths, People of Flow is an experience waiting to be shared. Come raise your voice with us and find your place in the flow.

Artist Support Program 2024

A former Broadway assistant director, Nicole Pouchet is a novelist and writer/director for the award-winning fantasy series, Strowlers. She is currently in pre-production on the feature film, Her Mad Hatter, an adaptation of the best-selling fantasy romance novel.

Her horror/social thriller short, Retch, premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) in 2019, won Best Film at the Seattle Black Film Festival in 2020, and has shown on DirecTV, Amazon, PBS, and Alaska Airlines. Her subsequent films — a sci-fi short called Such an Honor and a fantasy animation/live action blend called Lioness have been official selections at dozens of festivals worldwide.

Nicole continues to write/direct projects that incorporate social commentary into genre film. She has served as a Board Member for Destiny City Film Festival, for Northwest Screenwriters Guild, and for Zombie Orpheus Entertainment; and as a lecturer for the University of Virginia, Clarion West, SIFF, and Women in Film.

Artist Support Program 2024: Her Mad Hatter, a feature film adaptation of a best-selling novel about the Mad Hatter and a modern-day, grown-up Alice falling in love despite illnesses.

Jacqueline Tabor stands proudly in the realms of jazz, blues, and swing, captivating audiences with her resounding voice, elegant demeanor, and captivating stage presence. Renowned as one of the foremost vocalists in the region, she has claimed the prestigious Earshot Jazz Vocalist of the Year award on four occasions and has been honored with the Seattle-Kobe Sister City Association Award for her remarkable contributions to cultural exchange.

Also known as the “Seattle Chanteuse,” Tabor’s distinctive blend of bluesy allure and magnetic charisma infuses her performances with an unparalleled depth of emotion, drawing inspiration from the rhythms of everyday life to convey profound human experiences. From the hallowed influences of Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Sarah Vaughn to the contemporary resonance of Cecile McLorin Salvant, her repertoire resonates with a soulful authenticity that transcends time.

A sought-after collaborator, Jacqueline’s artistic journey has seen her forge powerful alliances, such as her dynamic partnership with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra since 2019. Notably, her poignant tribute to Billie Holiday garnered widespread acclaim and recognition, solidifying her status as a transformative force in the jazz landscape.

Amidst the challenges of the pandemic, Tabor’s creative spirit flourished, leading her to explore new avenues of expression through poetry, original compositions, percussion, Blues, and swing dance. In collaboration with the acclaimed musician Marina Albero, she crafted the captivating production “Don’t Explain: A Musical Conversation Between Billie Holiday and Nina Simone,” a poignant reflection on resilience and triumph. It was awarded Concert of the Year in 2022 by Earshot Jazz with acclaim and respect from the Seattle community.

Beyond her musical pursuits, Jacqueline Tabor is a dedicated educator, sharing her expertise as a faculty member of the Seattle Jazz Academy and imparting invaluable lessons on performance and authenticity to aspiring vocalists.

As she assumes a role on the Board of Directors for Seattle’s own KNKX radio station, Jacqueline Tabor remains steadfast in her commitment to championing equity and inclusion within the arts community, embodying the spirit of a true artist-advocate.

Jacqueline Tabor remains a beacon of empowerment, strength, and love, leaving audiences spellbound and yearning for more with each unforgettable performance. Collaborating with a roster of esteemed musicians, she continues to cultivate a community-centered experience that celebrates the rich tapestry of musical diversity.

Artist Support Program 2024: Naturally, Blue, an album expressing Jacqueline Tabor’s life experience in song via jazz, swing, and blues.

Veile is a Filipino content creator born and raised along Puget Sound. The podcast they’re starting through Jack Straw’s Artist Assistance award was inspired by the fact that you don’t have to do ‘big things’ or be a local celebrity to be interesting or worthy of celebration. The things we do for each other are meaningful, no matter who hears about them.

Veile’s taken podcasting and video-journalism classes at Green River College, and kind of an eclectic list of local art workshops. Their digital media work includes a prior podcast, running a YouTube channel, graphic and motion design, and social media management. They were interviewed by BuzzFeed and Bored Panda once upon a time. And one of their favorite people in the world is a kid named Cyrus, who loves Charizard and spam musubi.

Artist Support Program 2024: Anyone Can Be Cool, a podcast providing a space for local people to be celebrated, and challenging us all to practice brave, difficult growth.

Arami Walker is a musician, author, and activist focused on uplifting the notion of community in our culture. Her music is a fusion of jazz, RNB, soul, and alternative songwriting. She graduated from UCLA in 2015 as a distinguished scholar and a Gates Millennium scholar. As a musician and poet, she has performed At Langston Hughes Performance Art Institute, Seattle Art Museum, Northwest Folklife Festival, Waco Theatre North Hollywood, and more. As an author, she has collaborated with an initiative called Seattle Restored to install a large scale installation of her writing in Pioneer Square, Seattle. Arami has published three poetry books focused on culture, music, identity, and race. Her first album, A Universe by Nature, is available on Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora and Tidal.

Artist Support Program 2024: You Are, a personal Development app that utilizes mediation, soundscapes, poetry, affirmations, and creativity exercises to inspire users to live a more fulfilling existence.