THE ILLUSTRIOUS FACULTY and STAFF of GIA 2011:

For details on 2012 staff, please check back soon!  2011 information will give you an idea of the range of disciplines we offer!

THE FACULTY:

 
Sara Peattie is the co-founder of the Puppeteers Cooperative, which specializes in community workshops, giant puppets, pageants, and parades.  She is a member of The Back Alley Puppet Theater, which operates the Puppet Free Library, and of Puppaganda, which works in toy theater and video, and of The Construction Section which builds puppets and masks..She also runs an informational website about making giant puppets:
http://puppetco-op.org/

Eugene Uman teaches jazz and Latin music at GIA. He plays the piano, writes and arranges music. Away from GIA, Eugene runs the Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro, where he produces concerts and educational programs. He teaches at the Vermont Jazz Center and Amherst College and plays concerts whenever possible. Eugene is married to Elsa Borrero; together they are the parents of Niko and Gaia, two teens who’ve kinda grown up at GIA. Eugene’s Websites: www.vtjazz.org and www.eugeneuman.com.

My name is Cavan Meese.  I moved to VT with my family as a young boy because of their connections with the Bread and Puppet Theater, with whom I also performed while growing up and to this day. I briefly attended our very own Castleton State College as part of a program while I finished high school and it was here that I was able to study theatrical lighting design for the first time.  After graduation, I continued studying at The Univerity of the Arts in Philadelphia, Northern Arizona University, and later as assistant to various lighting designers and directors, mostly in Philadelphia and New York City. I moved back to VT some years ago and have had the pleasure of designing for Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Circus Smirkus Big Top Tour, Phish, Vermont Stage Company, The Voices Project Tour, The Northeast Kingdom Music Festival, and many other wonderful Vermont artsists. I’ve also founded The Parker Pie Company in West Glover Village out of my love for food and community, and more recently Village Hall Productions out of my love for promoting performance and design. This is my 16th summer participating in the Vermont Governor’s Institute on the Arts.

Lily Skove is a choreographer, filmmaker and video artist. Her choreography has been presented at the Chocolate Factory Theater in New York City, the Laiks Dejot International Contemporary Dance Festival in Riga, Latvia, and Oberlin College among other venues. Her dance films have been shown at Dance Theater Workshop’s Digital Series, The Ohio Short Film and Video Showcase, The San Diego / Tijuana DANCEonFILM Festival, and Dance Camera Istanbul. Her music videos made in collaboration with cinematographer TJ Hellmuth were released for The Chandeliers on record labels Pickled Egg Records in Europe, and Obey Your Brain in the States. Lily was the video editor on Synchronous Objects For One Flat Thing, Reproduced, a website and installation made in collaboration between The William Forsythe Company and The Ohio State University.  As a video artist she works for the Bebe Miller Company, and is currently working on their new piece, History. Her teaching residencies in choreography and dance for the camera have included Oberlin College and the Latvian Academy of Culture’s Institute for Choreography in Riga, Latvia. Lily is currently on faculty at the The Ohio State University teaching in the Dance and Technology program. She holds a Diploma in Dance Studies from the Laban Centre, UK, an MFA in Dance from The Ohio State University, and a BA from Wesleyan University.http://www.vimeo.com/channels/lilyskove

Molly Greene hails from Cornwall, Vermont, USA, Earth. She has been a full-time Contemplater of Big Ideas for many years now and recently graduated from the University of Vermont with a degree in ecological design. Molly has since been working as a permaculture designer-builder, construction-worker and environmental educator. She has been making art all her life and is particularly interested in drawing, comics, art-mapping and printmaking. Molly also enjoys growing food, building useful contraptions, riding her bicycle while singing, basking on river rocks and investigating urban flotsam and jetsam.  This fall, she will begin a double masters program in architecture and ecology at Yale Graduate School.

Ron Kelley is a musician. He enjoys playing with sounds and helping others to do the same. He has been playing the saxophone for 45 years! After graduating from Hartt College of Music with a degree in music education he spent the next ten years of his life touring the world with the Bread and Puppet Theater and living in New York City. He now lives in southern Vermont and teaches chorus and band at Leland and Gray Middle/High School.  He loves GIA and has been teaching there since 1994.

Emily Eastridge is a Jack-of-All-Trades who is REALLY glad that she didn’t rack up tons of debt in order to attend Art School. Instead, Emily opted to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts on a half time basis, making her scholarship money streeeetch. Then, she decided to get a job at the school, and sneakily audited classes (which is not possible at all institutions, but worked out fantastically at the SMFA). At art school, Emily studied performance art, photography and video, which have all come in handy either artistically, professionally or spiritually. To bolster her chances of survival, Emily snatched up as many life skills as she could via internships, work-studies, skill shares, odd jobs and volunteering. This year, she helped butchered chickens for the first time! About 87 of them, took all day. She currently lives in Seattle, where she’s trying to figure out what to do next. www.EmilyEastridge.com

George Kurjanowicz’s circuitous route to carving granite in Barre, Vermont started in Poland where he was born.  Arriving in the United States at the age of seven, he proceeded to try just about every career path imaginable before settling on art in his sophomore year in College.  His B.A. in Fine Arts from Albright College in Reading PA made it official; George was now an artist.  The world did not sit up and take notice.  It took a year of teacher certification courses at Kutztown State College, also in PA, and an M.F.A. in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Poland, before doors started opening.  George began his fruitful association with Vermont in 1984.  The lure of stone proved too strong to resist and George succumbed, finding work as an apprentice in the Barre granite industry.  Now, twenty seven years later, George continues to operate the Sculpture Studio he founded in 1987.  He continues to offer his sculptural services to individual customers and granite companies across the United States as well as students searching for a mentor in stone.  
 
www.kurjanowiczsculpture.com

Geof Hewitt: I have been writing poems since I was seventeen, and have also written plays and short fiction. For several years I worked as a freelance writer, publishing articles in several magazines and newspapers. I have published four books of poems and four books of nonfiction. I love teaching, which is one of the best ways for a “professional writer” to earn a living! Janet and I live in Calais, VT; we have two grown children, and two young grandsons. I keep a small garden, which has been overrun with weeds by the time I’ve returned home from my 22 summers at GiA. I predict the same for this year. Did I tell you that I am Vermont’s Slam-Poetry Champion? I won the title in 2004 by one-tenth of a point. Lucky for me, there has not been a statewide slam championship since. I am among the state’s top nose flute recitalists. I do not have a website, but my latest book of poems, Only What’s Imagined, is available as an ebook — a completely free download from  http://www.brownfedorabooks.com/  Once you get there, go to “Collections,” and scroll to the bottom!

Samuel Rowlett was born in Leicester, England, and grew up partly in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. He proudly considers himself an adopted Vermonter.  He liked to draw as a child and since then hasn’t stopped. His favorite color is definitely red. Samuel absolutely loves making art and particularly enjoyed his art education; highlights include: a fellowship from Yale University School of Art, a B.F.A. from Pacific Northwest College of Art, and an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Samuel has exhibited his work around the country; with recent exhibitions at The Art Gym -Marylhurst University in Portland, Oregon; The Gallery of University of Texas at Arlington, in Arlington, Texas; and this spring he was selected for an artist teaching residency and exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts.
 
Lately his drawings, paintings, and large-scale installations are focused around ideas of memory, childhood, and peer-induced mythology. (Samuel thinks “peer-induced mythology” sounds quite smart. He heard it from someone whose brother’s friend heard it from his sister’s boyfriend who knew a guy who saw it written on the wall inside an abandoned house that everyone KNEW was haunted but this kid went in anyway and he came out screaming and all his hair had turned white, then he ate Pop Rocks and drank some Coke and, well, you probably heard what happened to him.) Samuel makes art and teaches, and lives in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts with his wife and two little children who provide limitless inspiration for him. When he has free time he can be seen riding his bike and fly-fishing, although not always at the same time.

www.samuelrowlett.com

Chuck Meese is the artistic director and writer for The Red Wing Puppet Theater. 2011 marks his 35th year as a professional puppeteer. He spent 20 years working with the internationally acclaimed Bread And Puppet Theater and also performs with the Boston based Puppeteers Co-operative. Chuck has appeared in Vermont Stage productions of “Mad River Rising” and “Woody Guthrie’s American Song” as well as acting and directing at The Vermont Young Playwrights Festival. He has been the technical director and production manager for the Governors Institute On The Arts for over 20 years. Chuck started playing music at the early age of 5 and currently plays in clubs and concert halls around New England. To see more go to redwingpuppettheater.com.

Judy Dow: I am an Abenaki educator. There is no word in the Abenaki language for art or time because these things are incorporated into daily life.  So, I teach science, history and math through art. I teach about the interconnection of the land, history and material culture we have with us today. Having taught in 42 states and three provinces in Canada I have had wonderful opportunities to share and to continue my learning. The adaptations indigenous peoples have used as their environments changed have created the most amazing baskets and beaded patterns. It is important for me to see these adaptations and technical skills live on. These skills often get lost in today’s fast pace world where it is easier to just buy a kit. My work has been on exhibit throughout the US and Canada including a display at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, Mc Cord Museum and  the Botanical Garden in Montreal, University of Vermont, University of South Dakota and the University of New Hampshire, Strawberry Bank Museum and the Pocumtuck Museum in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Some of my baskets were also part of a three year tour with Honor the Earth Impacted Nations visiting NYC, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, Portland, Denver and Chicago and more.

Marcel Freda has been acting and directing in central Vermont for the past 15 years. As director of the Peoples Academy High School theater program for the past six years Marcel, along with his devoted group of high school actors built what has been called “…one of the best drama programs in Vermont.” They have twice represented Vermont at The New England Drama Festival. While directing and teaching has quickly become a passion of Marcel’s, acting is in his blood. He covets his opportunities to get on-stage and perform (mostly with the semi-professional Waterbury Festival Players) and is very excited for the chance to pass along this love of performance to GIA students. He had been and RA at GIA for the past 4 years and considers GIA his second family. This year Marcel has been enjoying the challenges and excitement of his new roles with his second family, which include being Co-Director of the GIV Winter Weekend this past February at Goddard College and teaching his character development class at GIA this summer.  For all of you who will be joining GIA this summer Marcel would like to say “Welcome to the family!”.

Isaac Littlejohn Eddy lives in New York City and has been performing with the Blue Man Group as a Blue Man for the past eight years. He also is a cartoonist and animator and has been published in the New York Times and Time Magazine online, The New Yorker, and the Herald of Randolph Vermont. Being a student, RA, and faculty member at GIAV are some of the most formative experiences he’s had in becoming an artist and a performer. In March this year Isaac taught a workshop at the University of Michigan with the cartoon editor of the New Yorker, Bob Mankoff, that was based on his classes he taught at GIA last year. Check out his work here: IsaacLittlejohneddy.com

Verandah Porche works as a poet in residence, songwriter, performer and scribe. Based in rural Vermont since 1968, she published The Body’s Symmetry and Glancing Off, and has pursued an alternative literary career, creating collaborative writing projects in literacy and crisis centers, hospitals, factories, nursing homes, senior centers, a 200 year-old Vermont tavern and an urban working class neighborhood. Listening Out Loud documents her residency with Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT. “Come Over,” is a cd of songs written with Patty Carpenter, performed by the Dysfunctional Family Jazz band is currently available. And Sudden Eden her new poetry collection will be published this summer. Her play for voices, The Broad Brook Anthology will be performed in November 2011. Verandah has shared her work at Vermont State House, the Palace of Friendship in the former Leningrad, and at the John Simon Guggenheim Museum. She was a founding member of the GIA faculty.
 

• Website:www.verandahporche.com

       To hear “Come Over”:   http://www.dfjbmusic.com/
 
story corps interview:
http://storycorps.org/blog/east-mobilebooth/springfield-ma/muse-for-hire/

JULIA MORGAN-LEAMON

Julia Morgan-Leamon likes to think about time and memory and how truly bizarre they are. She makes sense of things by painting, making videos and taking her sketchbook traveling. Most recently she was painting in Egypt while a revolution was going on! She teaches a lot of fabulous young people in schools, colleges, and museums and now, Governors Institute for the Arts! Way back when, she went to Mount Holyoke College and later, Vermont College for an MFA where she meant lots of cool people because that’s just how Vermont is. Oh, and she has 15 year-old triplets who juggle, play soccer, run cross-country races and seldom argue! Together with them and their Dad, she has a dog, two cats, three llamas, seven chickens, and an iguana down south in Massachusetts. Her website is www.jmorganart.com

KAT KHELBLAU—Production Manager

Bio Coming Soon….

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THE RAs: 
 

Emily Climer is a current student at Bennington College, where she studies dance with Susan Sgorbati, Terry Creach, and Dana Reitz, and also pursues work in education and mediation. Emily grew up in Athens, OH, where she began her dance training at Factory Street Studio. She has had important workshop experiences at the Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, ME and the Movement Intensive in Compositional Improvisation in Lancaster, PA. Emily is tremendously excited to join the GIA community this year as an RA and cannot wait to meet everyone in June.

Genevieve Coe is from the greater Middlebury, VT area, where her family lives with a menagerie of collected critters. She is a senior at Mount Holyoke College where she is studying Psychology and Culture, Health, and Science while cultivating her reputation as Librarian Extraordinaire and Explorer of Abandoned Buildings. She is just barely returning stateside from a semester in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she recieved a fellowship to study Public Health Policy and Economics. Genevieve’s artistic pursuits include drawing, painting, messing around with film photography, and wishing she knew more about printmaking. This avid letter-writer and postcard-sender is incredibly excited to return to GIA for her second year as an RA.

Eliza Rainville lives in Montreal is starting her fourth and final year at Concordia University as a student of Psychology. She has been spending the last few years going to school and working, which has unfortunately left her less time to spend making art than she would like. BUT Eliza does have an artistic background in drawing, painting, and sculpting and loves exploring new avenues of self-expression. Now she plans on revisiting her artsy, fun loving roots for her second year as an RA and can’t wait to get the GIA party started!

Noah Mease is a very recent graduate of Middlebury College where he studied theatre and Spanish. His play about Federico García Lorca’s visit to Vermont in 1929 was performed at Middlebury and excerpted in the local literary publication The Salon. He’s also done a fair amount of set design, some acting, and plenty of techy things. He’s spent the last four years writing, directing, and acting with the Middlebury Radio Theater of Thrills & Suspense where he wrote, among other things, ongoing series about super heroes, dark fairy tales, and schlocky horror. Noah is from Williston, VT.

Audrey Kiely recently finished her sophomore year at Wesleyan University where she is double-majoring in Theatre and Psychology.   Audrey is so excited to be an RA at GIA for the first time this summer!  After GIA, Audrey will work at Peter Gould’s “Get Thee to the Funnery” Shakespeare camp, and is happy to be one third of the starting team for the Funnery’s brand new Junior  camp this summer.  Audrey loves to perform both musically and theatrically, and in her free time loves to cook.

Malina Leslie is a red-headed giggle fest who recently graduated from the University of Vermont with a BA in English and Art. She fuses the two together to make comics, varying in length from one panel to entire graphic essays. She is currently interning with the great cartoonist Alison Bechdel and spends her summers working at a river/rafting and outdoor gear store in Pennsylvania.  She has lived for significant chunks of time on four of the seven continents and has gotten really good at decorating envelopes because of it.  She has recently become interested in the process of costume design and stamp carving.  Originally from Hardwick, Vermont, this will be her first time back at GIA since she was a student there in 2005 and she is absolutely thrilled!

Andy Gagnon just finished his second year at UVM where he is a music education major.   Andy attended GIA as a student in 2007 and is looking forward to his second year as an RA.  Andy is excited to meet all of the GIA students!  Andy this, Andy that.  Andy wishes you could have a chance to tell him about yourself.  And you will at GIA! WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Woody Leslie, multi-instrumentalist, book artist, and amateur cartoonist, is returning for his fifth year as an RA at GIA. He grew up in Hardwick, VT and upon graduating Hazen Union went to Wesleyan University to study music—a mix of North Indian and other world music (including a year spent studying the sitar in Varanasi, India) as well as experimental and contemporary music, and sound art. In 2008 he founded One Page Productions, an artist book printing press specializing in books made from a single sheet of 8.5” x 11” paper (check out OnePageProductions.com). After a year hitchhiking around New Zealand with a ukulele, and six months in California exploring printmaking and quantity-over-quality art at F&F Studios, Woody has moved to Brooklyn where he works as a barista.

Karlie Kauffeld was born and raised in Newfane, Vermont. As a wee one she enjoyed running through the woods and sitting on logs. Now, she enjoys music. In fact, she’s studying music education at the University of Vermont.  She has vowed to read every Harry Potter book this summer because in elementary school she stopped half way through the fourth and now feels embarrassed. Karlie is quaking in her boots with excitement to be an RA this summa’!

Laura Oakes Cannon enjoys dabbling in many art forms, but values above all the art of being a person. She spends a lot of time playing music, specifically playing the trumpet and singing. Laura spent much of her childhood wandering along leylines in Woodbury VT and singing in the bathtub before attending the University of Vermont where she played a lot of music and learned about religion, sociology, French language, and women’s and gender studies. More recently she started trumpeting with a Salsa Dura group in Burlington, VT. Laura is very excited to spend her 5th summer working with the amazing students, faculty, and staff of GIA before stripping her life of complication and heading to China, Taiwan, and Laos for 3 months to travel, visit family, and think about life.

Ericc James Cram enter’d the world in a hospital hallway in Machias,
ME. Father’s youngest of three and number 4 of Mother’s litter of six,
it was said he was born smiling. Raised with seals in Maine and
hurricanes in the Carolinas, Cram settled and grew to fruition in a
fluctuating family of many (pets included), in Springfield, VT. A
lover of art + song since infancy, there was much for young Cram to
learn from dolls ‘n’ dress-up, as a rampant use of imagination
persisted thru the majority of his childhood. Too big for small town
Southern Vermont, he moved in with his father in St Louis to finish
high school (immediately after GIA rock’d his 15 year-old world).
Writing plays, singing in choirs, and collecting many a classroom
doodle were the highlights of his teenage experience. Since being
liberated by the acquisition of a high school diploma, Cram has
discovered the Pacific Northwest via veggie oil-fueled shortbus,
arranged and executed a two-month solo art tour of Western Europe, and settled into an ever-forming, self-entertaining, expression-rich
community in Burlington, VT. With a lifelong commitment to making art and sharing music, thru alter-ego Imaginary, this recently-inducted RA will continue to spend his days exploring friendly, neighborhood
archetypes, and dredging thru darkness, to deliver the light.

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The RADMINISTRATION:

Elizabeth Dotson-Westphalen (Director) is a trombonist, singer, educator, and composer originally from Woodstock, Vermont. She has played and recorded music with jazz musicians (Matt Wilson, Kenny Wollesen, Chris Potter), indie rockers (St. Vincent, Escort, The Silent League, Jill Sobule), and pop stars (Michael Bolton), and has had the opportunity through music to travel the world.  This winter she traveled to Russia to play jazz, and last year she spent 3 weeks teaching music in Quito, Ecuador.  She holds a BA in Psychology from Harvard University and an MA in Jazz Performance from Queens College.  She has just moved from New York City to Los Angeles, where her closet is filled with jeans, t-shirts, and sequined dresses.
 
www.elizabethjazz.com

Sophie Wood (Director of Operations) is a clown, poet, dancer, director, puppeteer, piñata maker, letter writer and farmer. Born and raised in Vermont, she graduated from college with a degree in “theatre for social change with an emphasis on agricultural politics,” and promptly landed a job in her field. She writes, builds, directs, and performs a member of The Royal Frog Ballet, a performance collective in Western MA, and teaches theater as the co-director of “Get Thee To The Funnery” Summer Shakespeare Program in Chelsea, Vermont. She enjoys gardening, sequins,  and feels like a genius when wielding a staple gun.  
 
www.theroyalfrogballet.com

Corey Harrower (Director of Student Life) is a dance artist and teacher. He has worked with GIA since 2002.  He performs his own choreography and works with various other choreographers in the US and Europe.   Most often these include Bi-Product Performance, Skoveworks, and Sensdance.  In NYC, he studies with Janet Panetta, among others.  He is originally from Middlesex, VT.

Martha Israel (Nurse): I have been a school nurse for 20+ years in both Maine and Vermont. Have been working at Rumney Elementary School in Middlesex for the past 15 years. I also work for the Department of Mental Health and on the Psychiatric Unit at Central Vermont Medical Center.       

I have two children - Mollly 23, and Amos 18 and live in East Montpelier with my bloodhound Lucky, cocker spaniel Ginger and a 15 yo barn cat named Max. In my free time I read, work on my old house and ride my horse Dakota. This will be my third year as the GIA nurse - and I love it!