Piper Anderson
Piper Anderson is a performance artist, author, healer, and arts educator. Her work blends poetry, song, movement, storytelling, and video to create music and performance that explores the experiences of women and their relationship to spirit, flesh, and power. In 2007 Anderson toured the country performing her one-woman show "In Her Memory" an autobiographical story of a young woman's journey to heal the wounds of intimate partner violence. The show premiered in New York City in 2006 to sold-out audiences has spawned the creation of a curriculum and a book, Seeking Wisdom: The In Her Memory Guidebook. Her writings have been featured in numerous publications and two books, How To Get Stupid White Men Out Of Office, and Growing Up Girl: Voices from Marginalized Spaces. Anderson supports young people in developing their artistic gifts as an arts facilitator with El Puente Center for Peace & Justice. To learn more about Piper Anderson visit her online at http://www.piperanderson.com/.
Torkwase Dyson
Torkwase Dyson was born in Chicago, IL and lives in Brooklyn, NY. In 2003 she received her MFA from Yale University in painting and printmaking. Now a hybrid artist she engages popular material culture and environmental ideas. In 2007 she mounted a solo exhibition at the Corcoran Museum and College of Art and Design. In 2007 she was the awarded the Nancy Graves grant for visual artist and began her work on the Black Eco Imagination: An artistic methodology, reconfiguring urban aesthetic opulence into allegories connecting the material economy to political poverty. She received a 2009 New Works fellowship from the University of Chapel Hill and awarded the 2009 Urban Mourning Project residency in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her works, complete with elements of technology, humor, fashion and ecology, strive to create an influential form shifting eco-politics toward the consideration of multiple publics and identities. Torkwase is currently working on two public performances for 2009 Grass Stains and Red-Black &OOOOPS! See more of her work at http://web.me.com/torkwasedyson/Site/dyson.html
Piper Anderson is a performance artist, author, healer, and arts educator. Her work blends poetry, song, movement, storytelling, and video to create music and performance that explores the experiences of women and their relationship to spirit, flesh, and power. In 2007 Anderson toured the country performing her one-woman show "In Her Memory" an autobiographical story of a young woman's journey to heal the wounds of intimate partner violence. The show premiered in New York City in 2006 to sold-out audiences has spawned the creation of a curriculum and a book, Seeking Wisdom: The In Her Memory Guidebook. Her writings have been featured in numerous publications and two books, How To Get Stupid White Men Out Of Office, and Growing Up Girl: Voices from Marginalized Spaces. Anderson supports young people in developing their artistic gifts as an arts facilitator with El Puente Center for Peace & Justice. To learn more about Piper Anderson visit her online at http://www.piperanderson.com/.
Torkwase DysonTorkwase Dyson was born in Chicago, IL and lives in Brooklyn, NY. In 2003 she received her MFA from Yale University in painting and printmaking. Now a hybrid artist she engages popular material culture and environmental ideas. In 2007 she mounted a solo exhibition at the Corcoran Museum and College of Art and Design. In 2007 she was the awarded the Nancy Graves grant for visual artist and began her work on the Black Eco Imagination: An artistic methodology, reconfiguring urban aesthetic opulence into allegories connecting the material economy to political poverty. She received a 2009 New Works fellowship from the University of Chapel Hill and awarded the 2009 Urban Mourning Project residency in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her works, complete with elements of technology, humor, fashion and ecology, strive to create an influential form shifting eco-politics toward the consideration of multiple publics and identities. Torkwase is currently working on two public performances for 2009 Grass Stains and Red-Black &OOOOPS! See more of her work at http://web.me.com/torkwasedyson/Site/dyson.html
Ebony Noelle Golden is the daughter of Pearl Glover, Bertha Sims and Betty Sims. She is a native of Houston, TX. Ebony holds a BA in English Literature and Poetry from Texas A & M University an MFA in Poetry from American University and a MA in Performance Studies from New York University. Ebony is an artist and cultural worker who has been awarded grants from the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Fund for Southern Communities, North Carolina A & T University and New York University. She has been published by Black Issues and Books Review, American Book Review, Obsidian, Pluck, and Third World Press. Ebony serves as the creative director of Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, a boutique arts consulting group, based in NYC and NC. Her current projects include, "Gumbo Ya/Ya or This is Why We Speak in Tongues", Images: for Younger SiStars, The Community Writing Intensive, i hear you breathing for me/ an embodied blues for meagan williams (multi-media performance) and "again, the water carriers" (a full length book of poetry). Ebony's work is informed by her ancestral and spiritual family, guides, and homes, primarily. She can be reached at bettysdaughterarts@gmail.com or http://www.bettysdaughterarts.synthasite.com/.
Tosha Y. Grantham
Tosha Grantham is an artist, writer, and independent curator who lives in Hyattsville, Maryland. She has exhibited in New York, Washington, DC, Panama City and most recently in Los Angeles. Grantham received a BA from Georgetown University, an MA from Howard University, and is currently completing a PhD in Art History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Tosha Grantham is an artist, writer, and independent curator who lives in Hyattsville, Maryland. She has exhibited in New York, Washington, DC, Panama City and most recently in Los Angeles. Grantham received a BA from Georgetown University, an MA from Howard University, and is currently completing a PhD in Art History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Nina Angela MercerNINA strives to tell our stories with a raw, honest, and bold voice. She creates works for performance in the spirit of sacred ritual born of the African Diaspora fused with the often absurd (and beautiful) tones and textures of contemporary urban life. She works toward the space where the sacred meets the profane ... where the absolute imperfection of humanity circles back into the divine. Her craft is informed by travel throughout the Diaspora. She privileges aesthetics rooted in the performance and ritual of Carnival, the Chocolate City's GoGo music and its all night jam sessions, block parties, praise and spirit ciphers, street festivals, graffiti 'bombing' and muraling, the corner, the kitchen, the porch, the drum and the rhythm's pocket, the stoop, and 'the grove' (of now and then), dismantling boundaries of time and space to create hybrid 'realities' where the living and dead commune to make life. Nina’s multi media theatrical production, “Gutta Beautiful,” has been staged in Washington, D.C. at The Warehouse Theatre (2005) and The Woolly Mammoth Theatre (2006), and in New York City at Henry Street Settlement/Abrons Arts Center (2007). Nina’s writing has appeared in Musings and In the People’s Hands. She was awarded a fellowship to the First National Conference of Women of Color Writing Drama in 2008 (Chicago), where she participated in the panel, “Writing Beyond the Realistic Center” and debuted her one woman performance piece, “Racing My Girl, Sally.” She currently teaches at Medgar Evers College (CUNY) in Brooklyn. For more of Nina’s writing, check out http://www.windowsdoorsclosetsanddrawers.blogspot.com/
Ayo Ngozi
Ayo Ngozi is a visual and performance artist and co-founder of the DC-based ensemble Painted Lady Performance Project. Her work with textiles, sculpture, and performance draws on a wide range of influences, from urban and industrial landscapes to African cosmologies to the masquerade traditions of New Orleans.Ayo has exhibited and performed at Numark Gallery, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, DC Arts Center, the Capital Fringe Festival, the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution, and is currently creating collaborative performance works in New Orleans, New York, and Washington, DC.
Ayo Ngozi is a visual and performance artist and co-founder of the DC-based ensemble Painted Lady Performance Project. Her work with textiles, sculpture, and performance draws on a wide range of influences, from urban and industrial landscapes to African cosmologies to the masquerade traditions of New Orleans.Ayo has exhibited and performed at Numark Gallery, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, DC Arts Center, the Capital Fringe Festival, the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution, and is currently creating collaborative performance works in New Orleans, New York, and Washington, DC.
Sybil Roberts
Sybil R. Willliams has spent the past twelve years cultivating her craft as a playwright and dramaturg. Her work has been professionally produced by Chicago's ETA Creative Arts Theatre; New York's National Black Theater; Pittsburgh's Kuntu Theatre; and at the University of Pennsylvania. Her play DREAM OF OPHELIA was nominated for a prestigious JEFF award in 2000; and LIBERATING PRAYER: A LOVESONG FOR MUMIA has been published in AUGUST WILSON AND THE BLACK AESTHETIC edited by Dr. Sandra Shannon. She recently completed a reading of her one-act play titled ZIMBABWE at Harlem's Rebel Theatre. The work was also presented at CALARTS this past January as part of the "Arts In the One World" Conference. ZIMBABWE is a work-in-progress that speaks to motherhood as a powerful, global force for social change. As a dramaturg she has worked at the Alabama Shakespeare Theatre, The Lark Play Development Center, and The Arkansas Repertory Theatre, where she still serves as Artistic Associate. As a dramaturg, she recently completed a three-year project creating a docudrama to celebrate the lives of the Little Rock Nine on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Central High School Desegregation Crisis titled OUR LEGACY: IT HAPPENED IN LITTLE ROCK written and directed by Mr. Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. She also continues to serve as dramaturg for their first new play festival called VOICES AT THE RIVER. Sybil R. Willams is an adjunct professor at The Catholic University of America and American University in Washington DC.
Sybil R. Willliams has spent the past twelve years cultivating her craft as a playwright and dramaturg. Her work has been professionally produced by Chicago's ETA Creative Arts Theatre; New York's National Black Theater; Pittsburgh's Kuntu Theatre; and at the University of Pennsylvania. Her play DREAM OF OPHELIA was nominated for a prestigious JEFF award in 2000; and LIBERATING PRAYER: A LOVESONG FOR MUMIA has been published in AUGUST WILSON AND THE BLACK AESTHETIC edited by Dr. Sandra Shannon. She recently completed a reading of her one-act play titled ZIMBABWE at Harlem's Rebel Theatre. The work was also presented at CALARTS this past January as part of the "Arts In the One World" Conference. ZIMBABWE is a work-in-progress that speaks to motherhood as a powerful, global force for social change. As a dramaturg she has worked at the Alabama Shakespeare Theatre, The Lark Play Development Center, and The Arkansas Repertory Theatre, where she still serves as Artistic Associate. As a dramaturg, she recently completed a three-year project creating a docudrama to celebrate the lives of the Little Rock Nine on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Central High School Desegregation Crisis titled OUR LEGACY: IT HAPPENED IN LITTLE ROCK written and directed by Mr. Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. She also continues to serve as dramaturg for their first new play festival called VOICES AT THE RIVER. Sybil R. Willams is an adjunct professor at The Catholic University of America and American University in Washington DC.
Vanya M. RobinsonVanya M. Robinson is a native Washingtonian who has committed herself to the healing power of personal storytelling through the arts. A visual, performing and literary artist, Vanya has shared her own stories both on stage and off. As an activist artist, she has used these mediums to encourage self-reflection and healing. She fully believes that the foundations of our communities depend on our ability to share our stories and celebrate the commonalities and the differences. Vanya currently serves as the Managing Director of Ocean Ana Rising, as well as one of the organization’s Artists in Residence. She is also the creator of SOULVIVAZ.com, a website committed to the voice and wellness of today's "warrior" women (WoRk!). She has been a participating artist with the Painted Lady Project, and was a core cast member of Gutta Beautiful. Vanya currently lives in New York with her 5-year-old son and is working to further her literary and educational pursuits while also singing and performing with the rising indie artist and band, Voodo Fe’.
