Melissa Vandenberg
Born and raised in Detroit, Melissa Vandenberg is an artist, educator and curator living in eastern Kentucky. Her recent creative inquires investigate fear, impermance and power with everyday materials like fabric, stickers, temporary tattoos and found objects. Current events, nationalism and ancestry play a fundamental role in her studio practice through imagery of flags, gravestones, life-vests and atomic explosions. Additionally, she is exceptionally fond of mustard and cilantro, not together though.
Elsewhere Project | Sew To Speak
Lauren Bullock
Lauren Bullock was born in Boston, Massachusetts but spent most of her life in Georgia where her interest in the arts developed from an early age. Her formal studies in textiles began at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design’s Pre College Program where she first studied pattern screen printing. She also traveled to Japan to study cultural techniques such as dye resist with rice paste, paper spinning and weaving. Currently, she is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Georgia. Her creative work concerns ecofriendly art and design by constructing fabric from discarded materials, employing multiple strategies such as weaving, sewing, soft sculpture along with other contemporary and traditional techniques in order to give used objects a new purpose or identity.
Elsewhere Project | Reflect Inward
Peter Pendergrass
2013 Resident
Peter Pendergrass is a multidisciplinary artist from Greensboro, NC. Working primarily in visual media and performance, Peter's work focuses on gender, sexuality, and personal identity; contemporary political issues, especially feminist movement; the evolving role of technology in culture; spirituality beyond the context of major organized religion; and the intersections thereof. He currently lives and works in Oakland, CA, but has yet to establish a permanent home besides Greensboro, which he loves very much.
Elsewhere Project | SanctuWHEREium
2013 Production Intern
James Huckenpahler
James Huckenpahler tosses away the software manuals before making images on his laptop. He is represented in Washington DC by Hemphill Fine Arts, teaches new media at George Washington University, is a fellow at Provisions Library, and serves on the advisory board of Transformer, non-profit, artist-centered organization that connects and promotes emerging artists locally, nationally and internationally. His current work-in-progress, "Allegories," is an illustrated history of the capital city.
Elsewhere Project | The Inscrutable Women of Pompeii, NC in the Year 10,000AD
Jenny Lee Craig
Jenny Lee Craig is an artist and a cultural producer currently based in Vancouver, BC. Her projects are diverse and interdisciplinary, often striving for community engagement and collaboration. Though she is inspired by almost everything, her work often draws directly from craft, DIY, surrealism, and storytelling. Highlights from her extensive list of accomplishments include competing in the FINA World Synchronized Swimming Championships in Riccione, Italy in 2012, writing and directing a play about a tender jewel that goes for a journey in a giant hat, and acting as co-director for the Tin Can Studio.
Samantha Persons
Samantha Persons is an interdisciplinary artist, who is currently working towards her MFA in Sculpture/New Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute, as well as studying internationally at the International Ceramic Studio in Kescskemet, Hungary. Her work is heavily engaged in issues of personal autonomy and social agency, individualism, and gendered space and materiality. She makes immersive installations that incorporate built shelters, complex written narratives, props, sound and video.
Elsewhere Project | A place for lost bois and girls
Joan Vorderbruggen
Joan Vorderbruggen is a storyteller, designer, professional nurse, community, organizer, public art administrator, and rather giggly. In 2012, Joan created and ran the "Artists in Storefronts" project, assisting over 80 artists from 5 to 80 years old with exhibits of original work in under used commercial storefronts. In addition to creating a [temporary/pop-up/tactical] urban art gallery, her project commissioned three permanent murals, hosted dozens of community events, tours, festivals, and over 25 live performances in alternative spaces. In just eight months of participation, seven properties with a combined vacancy of over 15 years acquired short and long-term lease agreements. Joan maintains the focus of her public art practice around the Whittier neighborhood of South Minneapolis, where she has been a resident since 2008.
Elsewhere Project | I Wish...
Carmen Tiffany
Carmen Tiffany received her BFA from Minnesota State University in 2005, and her MFA from the University of South Florida in 2010. Working in several mediums, including installation and video, Carmen has exhibited in the United States and Europe. Carmen focuses on personal histories and imaginative storytelling using references from popular and consumer culture.
Suzy Kopf
Originally from the awesome, San Francisco, CA, Suzy Kopf is currently based in hip-center of the universe, Brooklyn, NY. Suzy devotes most of the time she isn’t dodging the question, “Which city do you prefer, Brooklyn or San Francisco?,” making prints and paintings with a focus on the shifting American landscape and our evolving relationship with the digital. She graduated magna cum laude from Parsons with a BFA in Fine Arts and Eugene Lang College with a BA in Art History. This summer she will begin her MFA in Painting at MICA. She is passionate about preserving the arts in public schools, color coded organizing systems and tipping well. She can parallel park better than you.
Elsewhere Project | The Compartment Store
Monica Lacey
Monica Lacey is a multi-disciplinary artist from Prince Edward Island, Canada, whose work focuses on the beauty of the broken, overlooked, or discarded. Monica spent many years traveling, working in the film industry, and developing her skills as a writer, dancer, and yoga teacher before returning to studies in Textiles and Photography at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. She believes deeply in the power of the arts to uplift, teach, and transform and regularly volunteers her time to those ends. She has received several awards and grants for excellence in her work as well as for service to her community. She lives in Charlottetown, PEI with her musician & digital artist husband, her trouble-making yet adorable cat, and a 3 minute walk to the ocean.
Elsewhere Project| Elsewhere Oracle
April Bartlett
April Bartlett is a textile artist based out of Dawson City, Yukon Territory, driven to explore contemporary ideas through a traditional craft. Her recent artistic work is focused on the themes of navigation and the mapping both cognitive and physlcal landscapes.
Elsewhere Project | The Urban Explorers Guide to the Elsewhere Commonwealth
Nick Szuberla
Nick Szuberla multimedia artist and the director of The Prison Poetry Workshop, a national radio series that connects audiences with the genre of prison poetry found within US jails, detention centers and prison. He works with Appalshop - a 40 year-old non-profit multi-disciplinary arts and education center in the heart of Appalachia producing original films, video, theater, music and spoken-word recordings, radio, photography, multimedia, and books. Dedicated to the proposition that the world is immeasurably enriched when local cultures garner their resources, including new technologies, to tell their own stories and to listen to the unique stories of others, Appalshop’s education and training programs support communities' efforts to solve their own problems in a just and equitable way.
