Contributors

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Contributors

Scott Andrews is the editor of Hearsight Magazine and an arts writer who covers the Valley's climatic changes. He can be reached at edit@hearsight.com

Cassandra Coblentz is currently the Associate Curator at SMoCA.

Cassandra has her BA in Art History and English from Cornell University and her MA from The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She was head of academic initiatives at The UCLA Hammer Museum and has worked at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; DIA Center for the Arts, NY; and The J. Paul Getty Museum, LA--in both curatorial and education departments. She has done internships at LACE, LA; The Project, LA; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Stephen Wirtz Gallery, SF; Capp Street Projects, SF; and Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica.

Effie Bouras has worked as an intern architect on notable building projects throughout North America, including the Guggenheim and Hermitage Museums in Las Vegas, Nevada. She has also written for and has had design work featured in a number of publications; most recently she has taken part in a group show at the San Antonio International Airport, and has worked as a collaborator on a sound installation, "Dark Space," which was held at the Contemporary Arts Collective in Las Vegas. She has recently received her PhD in Urban Design at the Arizona State University, while continuing to draw, write and collaborate with designers on building projects. She can be contacted at info@premisestudio.com

Jesse Meeker: Video Artist
The tall, furry red man they call Jesse Meeker (aka Jessy Jamboree) is an interdisciplinary artist working with video and sound. In 2008, he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University. After months of assisting new media artist and professor of art, Dr. Muriel Magenta, Jesse relocated to San Francisco with pockets full of grants and awards for his video production and creative development through the creative collective, Human Mirror Project.

Tania Katan is an author, playwright and performer. Her memoir My One-Night Stand With Cancer is the winner of the 2006 Judy Grahn Award in Nonfiction, an honoree of the 2006 American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award in Non-Fiction, and a finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award. Since the success of her first book, Tania has been performing her one-woman show, Saving Tania’s Privates (adapted from My One Night Stand With Cancer), which made its European premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2008 where it was a critical success! In the U.S. Saving Tania’s Privates has been seen at such prestigious venues as ACT in Seattle and The Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. Katan is a regular contributor to The Advocate, Compete Magazine, Stand Up To Cancer’s online magazine, and others.

Ann Klefstad is a practicing artist and chronic writer. She was a founding editor of mnartists.org, a project of The McKnight Foundation and Walker Art Center. Ann is contributing editor to Public Art Review, and was recently the arts and entertainment writer on the Duluth News-Tribune.

AJ Sabatini is Arthur J. Sabatini. He has written extensively on the arts, performance, experimental music and theater. He is a founding member and, presently, Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance at ASU. His play, Certain Explanations: Magical Walking was featured at the Phoenix Fringe Festival in May.

Gregory Sale is an interdisciplinary artist based in Arizona. Sale is currently producing Love Buttons, Love Bites, a series of projects in the public sphere taking on love, loss, and language by flirting with the fluid parameters of public and private, prose and poem.

Susan Skrzycki writes about dance from the past-perspective of the rehearsal hall and the stage. She performs occasionally with Phoenix's Scorpius Dance Theatre, but for articles on Hearsight she passes on the view from the wings to take a look at the performance with the rest of the audience.

Kathleen Thomas

Merilyn Jackson has written on dance in Phoenix and is now principal dance critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Ted G. Decker
Phoenix based independent curator and art consultant Ted Decker is a veteran advocate of contemporary art in Arizona. He received his M.A. in Art History (Latin America - Cuba) from Arizona State University, and has worked with Scottsdale Museum of Contempory Art and ASU Art Museum prior to opening his own arts consulting firm. The Ted Decker Catalyst Fund, established in October 2003, makes legacy investments in artists’ futures by awarding advocacy, marketing, and mentoring mini-grants to encourage artists to more effectively position themselves for success in their careers.

www.tedgdecker.com

Erik Kalstrom is trying to be a writer. He uses too many adjectives and is a student. He is currently living in Duluth, Minnesota with a very large lake.

Sagrario Berti
Currently Berti is a curator and researcher specialized in the study of the image within the contemporary visual culture. She lives and works in Caracas, Venezuela. M.A. in Art History: Europe, Asia and America, Sussex University, England (2005). Specialization in photograph conservation, registry and management collection, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, New York (1994). B.A., Universidad Central de Venezuela, (1987).

Richard Dailey is a writer, film maker, and Editor-in -Chief of Afterart News, in Paris, France.

Joe Baker is a painter and curator. For the last five years, Joe was Lloyd Kiva New Curator of Fine Art at the Heard Museum. "Interventions: Making a New Space for Indigenous Art," was too good to let linger in the catalogue of his last exhibition, Remix: New Modernities in a Post-Indian World, so is reprinted here with the kind assistance of the Heard Museum. Baker is currently the Director of Community Engagement at Herberger College of Art at ASU.

Kevin L. Richardson is an illustrator, graphics artist and cartoonist. He was the founding web designer for Hearsight Magazine. He is the author of the graphic novel, Bitter Pill, and draws other illustrations for Hearsight.

Sloane Burwell, local fashionista and music maven, writes for Phoenix New Times and has been online since 1993. You’ll find her at the Downtown Public Market every Saturday, clutching coffee from Lux, a recyclable shopping bag and wonderful local produce. "Online and all About the Food: The World Wide Web Goes Local" is reprinted here from Edible Phoenix. We just had to see it with hot links.

MIchael David Little is a painter and musician in downtown Phoenix. His documentary video, which will appear two seasons from now on PBS's American Experience, tells his story of living and painting in semi-homeless conditions for four years, to making his own gallery.

Grisel Pujalá was born in Cuba. She studied at Marymount College and Hunter College, CUNY in New York City, obtaining her doctoral degree from the University of Miami
She has taught Philosophy, Humanities and Spanish literature and language at Miami Dade College, State University of New York at Buffalo, Mt Holyoke and Amherst Colleges in Massachussets.

She has published several critical essays in academic journals. Among others: Revista hispánica moderna, (Columbia University, NYC); Nueva revista de filología hispánica, (Colegio de Mexico, Mexico); Anales de la literatura española, (Universidad de Alicante, Spain); and Perspectiva docentes, (Universidad de Tabasco, Mexico).

She has lectured extensively in Avant-Garde Cuban Art, and women in the Arts, Philosophy, and Spirituality. She has two books published: Four Essays on Cuban Poetry, Miami: Torre de Papel, 1993 and Seven Essays on the Poetry of Amando Fernandez, Miami: La Torre de Papel, 1996. She also has one book forthcoming from Ed. Mellen Press: The Idea of American in Spanish Postmodern Thought. At the present time, she teaches at Arizona State University West in Phoenix, Arizona.

Kathleen Thomas

Kade L. Twist is an installation artist, poet, and sound artist. His recent multi-media installation, Just As I Am, is currently featured in New American City: Artists Look Forward presented by the ASU Art Museum. A new multimedia installation, The Way The Sun Rises Over Rivers Is No Different Than The Way The Sun Sets Over Oceans, will be included in Remix: New Modernities in a Post-Indian World co-presented by the Heard Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian in the fall of 2007. His poems have been published in the anthology Pine Meoquane by Digitalis Publications, and literary journals such as South Dakota Review, Tempus, Windmill, April, as well as numerous arts and literature zines. Twist has read his poetry at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., and at many art galleries and universities.

Twist’s works address urban Indian experiences of isolation, familial and clan displacement, economic and political disenfranchisement, substance abuse, and the pervasive hope of returning "home."

Twist also performs with experimental noise bands Kavigre in Phoenix and Unola in Washington D.C.

Being a top-flight sommelier was not an option, Dave Johnson was born into it. Dave's ancestral origins trace back to the Johnston's of Annandale in Scotland (who derived from the Frankish Crusading Joinvilles of Champagne).

Since 1734, as vintners, shippers, and negogotiants, Nathaniel Johnston et Fils, have supplied wines to Emperors, Aristocrats, and even our own Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson. Although, missing the "t" in Johnson's original surname, he is a Johnston to the core. While working for Master Wine Maker, Jean Marie Johnston, Dave assiduously attacked the UK Market and carefully honed his craft and palate. Within two years he was the "enfant terrible" of the stodgy British Wine Market elite.

Dave worked his way across the Atlantic where he has expertly chosen wine for restaurants with impressive pedigrees that are known for their wine programs. From restaurants as varied as Churrascarias to Vietnamese, Rustic New American to modern Mexicano, Dave is never at a loss to be able to pair exciting food with the appropriate and engaging wine.

Dave is currently the Wine Director at Sol y Sombra, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Ken LaFave has written about dance and music for many publications, including Dance Magazine, Phoenix Magazine, and The Arizona Republic and Kansas City Star newspapers. His article "Composing Grief" gives us an insider's look at music making with a preview of the Phoenix Bach Choir's performance of LaFave's composition "Spires" and Chris Scinto's "Voices from the Aftermath: A New York Requiem." His weekly radio show about the arts, "Two on the Aisle," is aired every Sunday at 7 pm on
KPHX 1480 AM, Air America Phoenix

Ken LaFave

Lara Taubman is an art critic and independent curator. "Holy Land," a
psycho- geographical portrait of the desert, was co-curated by Taubman and Joe Baker and was on exhibit at the Heard Museum last year. "Phoenix: The Land of Somewhere," organized by Taubman at Modified Arts with new works and performance made for the exhibit by Angela Ellsworth and Tania Katan, Denis Gillingwater, Carrie Marill, Jen Urso and Steve Weiss and Leslie Barton. Lara Taubman writes for many reviews including Art Forum and artnet.com.

Kathleen Thomas did the groundwork for her review of three painters at Perihelion Arts last month while shepherding Phoenix Art Museum's Contemporary Forum to the First Friday artwalk in Downtown Phoenix. Before working for the museum, Thomas was a gallerist in Phoenix and Scottsdale.

Kathleen Thomas

Leslie Barton is particularly informed about Theatre in My Basement. As director of Modified Arts, she is responsible for presenting many of the group's performances. As a musician, Barton brings a performer's sensibility to her writing.

Leslie Barton

Steve Weiss runs No Festival Required, a micro-cinema showing at the Phoenix Art Museum and Modified Arts. When not on the phone with other indie filmmakers, Weiss is a location scout for the majors and a photographer.

The article about the group exhibit at ASU Art Museum, "New American City: Artists Look Forward," was written by freelancer Oriana Parker. A prolific writer, her words have appeared in many forms, from travel stories to industrial ad copy. Her writing on the arts has appeared in The New Yorker, Phoenix Magazine and Artbook of the West.