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| Selina Alexander was raised on the Yukon River between Ruby and Galena and on the north fork of the Huslia river. She is a master beader and skinsewer. She has demonstrated her work in Washington D.C. and throughout Alaska. In Selina's words, "I was seven when my mother started me sewing and knitting doll clothes and my father started me trapping squirrels and weasels. At age 11 my father started me running a dog team. By age 13 my mother taught me how to make slippers and boots, more knitting and crocheting. My father taught me how to shoot guns, trap for mink, fox, otter and snare beaver. Mother taught me how to snare rabbits and ptarmigan and fishing with nets and poles. Over the year's I've learned more about beadwork from my grandmother, watching others, books, museums, workshops and listening to my elders. My Indian grandmother and mother are excellent beadworkers and skinsewers. My white grandfather was a well known painter artist and professor in San Francisco." |
| Kim Araki studied dance at the Royal Ballet School in London, England and the American Ballet Theater School in New York City. She has performed in classical ballet, contemporary dance and character dance,as well as in musical theater. Currently a dancer with the New York City Opera, Kim is also active as a dance educator and freelance performer inthe New York area. |
| Bob Athayde is the Music Director at Stanley Intermediate School in Lafayette California. He directs 6 bands and 2 jazz ensembles serving over 300 students in his program. Bob's students have received many honors including several Downbeat Magazine awards for Outstanding Middle School Soloists. Bob is an award-winning music educator, in frequent demand as a clinician. He is also a professional trumpet player and jazz pianist and has been a guest artist for 4 years at the Sitka Jazz Festival. Recognized for his outstanding teaching and musicianship, Bob has garnered a number of awards including the Gil Freitas Outstanding Music Educator Award, (1989), the Diablo Symphony Association's Distinguished Music Educator Award (1995), Charles Schwab's Teach Each Distinguished Teacher Award, the Prudential Realty Outstanding Teacher Award (1999), the AC5 Arts Recognition Award (2003), and the KDFC Outstanding Music Educator Award (2004). Bob was recently awarded the Outstanding Band Teacher of California Award by the CMEA. |
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Jamie Autrey is Professor of art at the University of Alaska Southeast. He has a Masters of Fine Arts in Ceramics, Visual Arts, and a decade of experience in teaching different forms of ceramics in the western states. He has taught children and adults of all ages. His work has been exhibited at colleges and galleries in the Northwest. In Sitka he has taught students from Mt. Edgecumbe High School as well as UAS college students. His open workshops are popular with adults who appreciate the practical expertise he shares. He uses various firing techniques including electric kilns, Raku, and pit firing, each of which will be available in his classes at Camp. Jamie was one of the organizers and instructors for the 2005 SE Alaska High School Arts Fest, and has taught at this event for several years. |
Gail Baker grew up as the daughter of an electrical engineer and an interior designer in Bellevue, Washington. Little did she know that the battle for her right (designer) or left (engineer) brain would eventually lead her to integrate the two using a unique teaching style. She is a professional artist and artist-in-residence in Alaska and Washington State. She studied fine arts and graphic arts at the University of Washington. In 2000, Gail earned a master’s degree in Creative Expression from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, California. Her studies emphasized learning styles, multiple intelligences, and art as healing. She makes leather, variform, paper mache, and latex masks; paints with acrylic and tempera paints; teaches process painting classes in her studio and at Daniel Smith Art Supply store in Bellevue, Washington; and does Art for Self Discovery presentations and intensives for Attention Deficit Disorder Resources in Washington State. Movement and visual arts go hand in hand for Gail. She shows her work at galleries in Alaska and Washington. Finally - she admits she is fired up by young peoples’ gigantic stores of energy and their ability to be explicitly original. |
| Joy Barrett is an actor, producer and teaching artist in New York City. She has performed in NY at The Cherry Lane Theatre, The Flea Theater, Tribeca Playhouse, the Sanford Meisner Theater, the Actor's Playground and Abingdon Theatre. She has also appeared in film and TV in various commercials and Saturday Night Live. She has worked regionally with La Jolla Playhouse, Book-It Repertory Theatre, Northwest Shakespeare Ensemble, Printer's Devil and The Empty Space Theatre in Seattle. Her teaching includes outreach programs with Stages of Learning in NYC, many theatre and dance companies in Seattle, the Idaho Shakespeare Festival’s tour Shakespearience, and the Open Door Theatre where she taught safety skills through dramatic live performance in an effort to free children from violence and abuse. As a producer, Joy co-created the summer festival 10 Plays, 10 Weeks, the series 4 Mondays, 4 Screenplays and has worked with Thirteenth Night Theatre Company and Francis Ford Coppola’s reading series Zoetrope Live Story. She is a graduate of Drama Studio London. |
Tara Beyhm is an animator, filmmaker and writer who lives in San Francisco. Tara’s 2006 animated short, The Dollhouse screened internationally and earned awards including “Best Animated Short” in the Reel Women’s International Film Festival and an Honorable Mention at the Beijing Student Animation Academy Awards. In 2006 Ms. Beyhm also earned the Leo Diner Memorial Award for Excellence in Filmmaking. Tara’s current projects include an animated documentary on Atlantic City, New Jersey and writing for
television. [MORE] |
| Jonathan "J" Bradley is one of the top call technical sound and lighting producers living in Seattle. He has been working full time in the field since 1990 and has been involved in producing a variety of events including theater, concerts, rodeos, and jazz festivals. In addition J taught classes for 5 years at the University of Montana in audio production. Among his many diverse projects, J has been the sound man for four years at Seattle's premier jazz club, Jazz Alley. This year J has been on the road between Russia and the United States as production manager for the Russian State Ballet. |
Andrea Burck is an active accompanist, music educator and children’s choir director in Aurora, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Andrea has been involved with music and kids since graduating in 1989. She has been on staff at Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan, has taught elementary and middle school music and choir in Wisconsin and Illinois and continues to work with preschoolers and kindergarten classes during the school year. She has been an accompanist for the Young Naperville Singers, an area children’s choir (1999-2002,) and continues to accompany many school choirs, studio recitals and soloists in the area. Andrea maintains a piano studio in her home and co-directs and accompanies the children’s choirs at her local church. |
John William Burck has been a string educator for over 18 years at the elementary, middle, and high school levels in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Mr. Burck earned his Bachelor of Music from the University of Iowa and Master of Music Education from the VanderCook College of Music in Chicago, Illinois. Currently, he is the interim music department chair at Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, Illinois. In 2007, The Grammy© Foundation recognized the Waubonise Valley music department as one of the top three high school music programs in the country for music education. In addition to his administrative duties, Mr. Burck directs one of the six curricular orchestras, teaches string technique classes and co-directs the extra curricular strolling ensemble, the Warrior Strings. In June 2007, Mr. Burck and 45 members of the Waubonsie Valley Orchestras traveled to Europe with performances in Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Summer music experiences have always been a rich and important part of Mr. Burck’s life. He attended his first summer music camp as a middle school student at the University of Iowa and it changed his life forever—leading him to study music at the U of I with violist, Bill Pruceil and into a career in music education. He has been on both staff and faculty at the Interlochen Arts Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. He has served as conductor of the junior orchestra at the Cedar Arts Forum’s String Camp in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Twin Lakes, Michigan. Members of his family have attended Suzuki Camps at Stevens Point, WI, Snowmass Village, CO, and this summer, the Sitka Fine Arts Camp! |
| David Clark is a media artist who lives and works in Halifax, Canada. He works in multiple media: collage, net.art, installation, and film. He is perhaps best known for his website ‘A is forApple’ (www.aisforapple.net) that has been shown at over 50 festivals and museums around the world including Sundance, SIGGRAPH, and Transmediale in Berlin. It won ‘Best in Show’ at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austen and First Prize at FILE2002 in Sao Paulo Brazil. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and theWhitney Program in New York and the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto. He teaches film and media arts at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) University in Halifax, one of North America's leading visual arts universities. His personal website is www.chemicalpictures.net. |
| Ryan Conarro is an actor, director, and educator living in Juneau. He's performed Off-Broadway and on national tour with the British-American classical theatre company Aquila. He's also performed in several productions with Juneau's Perseverance Theatre, including Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Noises Off, and Metamorphoses. Ryan's directing credits include Arctic Magic Flute, his new adaptation of Mozart's classic, which toured Alaska with the Juneau company Opera to GO! in winter 2007. His direction credits include Don Pasquale for Opera to GO!; Twelfth Night, and As You Like It for Perseverance Theatre's education department; and several musical theatre productions at Juneau-Douglas High School. Ryan often works as an artist-in-residence for the Alaska State Council on the Arts in various Alaskan communities. Before moving to Juneau he was a morning show host and public affairs journalist for KNOM radio in Nome, and he now heads Juneau's KTOO high school broadcast journalism project. Ryan studied theatre and English at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He attended Atlantic Theatre Company Acting School in New York, the International Theatre Workshop in Amsterdam, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art's Shakespeare Intensive in London. |
| Marco
d'Ambrosio
loves sculpting music, especially the kind that enhances the visual
arts. In fact, creating music that is evocative, enlightening,
and entertaining is a natural result of Marco's creative expression.
He started to play the trumpet when he moved from Italy to the
US at age nine. He works as an independent film composer, music
producer and performing artist in the San Francisco bay area.
Marco has done sound production and soundtracks for Lucasfilms,
Dolby, THX, Sony Classics, PBS. He has created soundtracks for
the films: Vampire Hunter, Haiku Tunnel. Music and the emotion
behind it are what he will share at Camp.
[ MORE ] |
W.
Scott Davis received his first intensive exposure to the arts as a student at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp in the early 1980s. Inspired by his teachers at that time and by the friendships he made at the camp, he continued to pursue the performing arts throughout college, studying mime and dance extensively while at Princeton University. He was the artistic director of the Princeton Mime Company. After living and teaching in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, for two years after college, Scott returned to New Jersey and co-founded Loon Soup, a mime and physical theater company that performed and taught nationwide. He moved to Seattle to study law at the University of Washington in 1995 then in 2000 joined Lingo Dance theater, a contemporary dance company under the direction of KT Niehoff. He has toured with the group to Japan, Cuba, Ecuador, Germany, Canada, and throughout the States. Davis has also collaborated with members of the dance faculty at the University of Washington and produced his own work in Seattle, New York, New Jersey, and Ecuador. Over the years he has served the Sitka Fine Arts Camp as a counselor in the 1980s, a teacher in the 1990s, and as Artistic Director from 1998 to 2006. He is on the faculty at the Northwest School in Seattle where he is the chair of the Theater Department and teaches Mime & Movement and Street Law.
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| Anthony
Denaro. A native of Philadelphia, Tony
Denaro is a member of the Rock Steady Crew, hailed by The New York Times as "the foremost breakdancing group in the world today" As a member of the group, he has performed and taught throughout the world. Tony has also taught and toured for several years in association
with the Rennie Harris Puremovement
Company and its Legends of Hip Hop show. As a member of the
company¹s outreach and education program he has taught his
style of b-boyin and hip hop to hundreds of students. Tony was recently seen on the national television program "Dancing with the Stars" featured with the Rocky Steady Crew He is the guy with the baseball cap. Watch here: click. |
| Wade
Demmert, bass trombonist, performs
throughout the Pacific Northwest. He has performed with a variety
of national and international musical artists and ensembles including;
the Seattle Symphony and Opera Orchestras, the Pacific Northwest
Ballet Orchestra, Bellingham Music Festival of Music, Broadway
Shows, Pavarotti, and the Moody Blues. In addition he can be heard
on numerous movie, television, and theme park soundtracks. Wade
holds a Master of Music degree from Rice University. Wade grew
up in Sitka and attended the Sitka Fine Arts Camp as a student. |
| Mark Dungan is a fine art photographer & educator. He got his first camera when he was eight years old and has been making images ever since. Mark has been published in the Pinhole Journal, Harper’s Ferry Review and Lyle Rexer’s Book, Photography's Antiquarian Avant-Garde: The New Wave in Old Processes. His work has been exhibited nationally and his photographs are in collections in the United States and abroad. Mark was selected for an artist-in residency program for Studio’s Midwest where he used low-tech cameras and alternative processes to document roadside Americana in Illinois. His passion for image making is matched only by his enthusiasm in teaching photography to others. Mark has taught a variety of workshops to children and adults in Washington, Oregon, Utah and Maine. He has taught courses at The Maine Photographic Workshops, Portland Community College and Clark College. Currently, Mark is teaching Photography at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. |
Christian Fabian bass player for the Lionel Hampton Big Band was born in Sweden and raised in Germany. He studied for four years at the Maastricht Conservatory in the Netherlands before receiving a scholarship from Berklee College of Music in the U.S. Christian lives in NYC and has performed extensively on the national and international jazz scene with such jazz notables as Gary Burton, Cheryl Bentyne, Ed Thigpen, John LaPorta, Bob Mintzer, Jon Hendricks, and has recently joined the Gianni Russo Big Band. He recently released two highly acclaimed solo CDs "Across The Tracks" and "Curtain of Life" . [ MORE ] |
| Andrew
Hames is the choir teacher at Blackfoot High School in Idaho. He began singing in choir at the age of 9. From that first experience, he formed an intense love and passion for the choral art. A student of Dr. Scott Anderson's Choral program at Idaho State University, Andrew was an assistant conductor with the the Concert and Chamber Choirs. As a member of the Chamber Choir, he performed throughout Europe. Originally from Sitka, Andrew was extensively involved in the music program. While in high school he was a member of various honor choirs including All State, All Northwest, and the Sound of America National Honor Choir. Andrew is a former student of the Sitka Fine Arts Camp.back to top |
| Sara Hartland-Rowe lives in Halifax Canada. She is a visual artist who works primarily with painting and drawing. Her work of the past several years has been concerned with humanity’s blundering and puzzled relationship to the world. She has considered these ideas in sewn drawings, large-scale wall-paintings and more traditionally-structured painting and drawing. She has also taught for many years at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and at the Halifax Independent School.[MORE] |
Marcia Hartsock works professionally as a medical illustrator in Cincinnati, Ohio. She earned her BFA in Painting from the University of Cincinnati, and an MA in Illustration from Syracuse University. She worked for ten years in the Medical Illustration Division at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Since 1984 she has owned her own illustration studio, specializing in medical and health education for clients all over the US. She has taught illustration techniques and media to teens and adults, and has been Adjunct Faculty at Northern Kentucky University Department of Visual Arts. Her clear, colorful illustrations have won several national awards from the Association of Medical Illustrators and the Rx Club, and have been exhibited at the Cincinnati Art Club, Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, University of Cincinnati, Winston-Salem State University, New York Society of Illustrators, and the Palazzo Bagatti-Valsecchi in Milan, Italy. Her professional work combines both traditional and digital techniques. While on her camping vacations she enjoys filling her sketchbooks with pencil, ink, and watercolor imagery. |
| Robert Hoffman, is a Tlingit artist and woodcarver from Kake, Alaska. "I encourage all kinds of innovation to traditional arts forms; to deviate from conventional rules and medium. Art is not static, it is evolutionary. New technology is an artist's tool. When I am genuinely creating, there is no room for guilt. I have not forsaken the Old Ones. They are smiling. And clapping." |
| Sharon Jensen, originally from South Dakota, is an actress and comedian currently living in Los Angeles, California. She performs sketch comedy with her group Pretty When You're Angry at various theaters in L.A., and she performs improv at the famous I.O. West theater in Hollywood (formerly known as Improv Olympic), with her group Supermodel. Before relocating to L.A., she lived in New York City for almost 9 years, during which she toured with the off-Broadway play Maybe, Baby, It's You, performed sketch comedy with the Jakes (winner of the first annual Caroline's Comedy Club sketch-off competition) and performed improv and sketch comedy with Chicago City Limits at their NYC theater, as well as on the road in their national touring company. She also spent three years doing stand-up comedy at various NYC clubs, including Caroline's, Comic Strip Live, and Stand-Up NY. She has taught improvisation to kids of all ages at numerous workshops with both Chicago City Limits and L.A. Connection. She received her B.A. in Drama from Vassar College. |
Julie Kelly. The late, respected jazz critic Leonard Feather once said of jazz singer Julie Kelly, “Julie Kelly radiates a sense of joy and spontaneity. Listening to her, you are reminded that jazz singing is still alive and well!” Feather’s successor at the Los Angeles Times, the veteran critic Don Heckman, referred to Kelly as having, “one of the finest vocal jazz instruments of the ’90’s.” Born in Oakland, California, Kelly grew up absorbing herself in gospel, blues, and jazz in addition to pop and classical music. She immersed herself in Brazilian music during a year spent in the country, and immediately afterward enrolled in The Juilliard School, where she studied composition and music theory. After Juilliard, she returned to California, where she began her recording career. She now has seven records to her name, and during her time in California she has collaborated with jazz greats Benny Green, Nat Adderley, Ray Brown, John Clayton, Ross Tompkins, Bobby Ojeda, Gary Foster, and Alan Broadbent. Learn more about Julie Kelly at www.julie-kelly.com. |
| Jara
Kern, is a flutist, educator, and arts administrator. She taught and performed in New York for five years, appearing at the 92nd Street Y as well as regularly performing with the New England Symphonic Ensemble and the Queensborough Symphony Orchestra. She graduated from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in 2001 and earned her master’s degree in flute performance from the SUNY-Purchase Conservatory. Her administrative pursuits include running the Education Department of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for two years, and, currently, working in marketing for the Madison Symphony. She is completing her MBA in Arts Administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jara is the Associate Director of the Sitka Fine Arts Camp. She lives in Madison with her husband and four parrots. |
| Valerie
Limbrunner has a wide background in dance. She has studied everything from Vaganova Ballet technique, to African dance, to traditional modern Graham Technique. She is a former member of the Oregon Ballet Theatre. Valerie began here training in Oregon at Newport School of Dance and continued with professional training at the HARID Conservatory of music and dance in Boca Raton, Florida. She has danced with Hartford Ballet, Fort Worth/Dallas Ballet, Dallas Opera and National Opera de Bordeaux in France. Valerie has taught summer dance camps at Newport School of Dance in ballet technique and flamenco. |
| Edward
Littlefield attended the University of Idaho where he majored in instrumental and vocal music education, with an emphasis in percussion. There he studied percussion with Daniel Bukvich. He has played in the showband on various cruise ships for Carnival Cruise Lines in the Carribean and the Bahamas. Ed was previously the music teacher at Sitka High School. He has toured throughout the country as the percussionist for the critically aclaimed Dallas Brass. He is currently a member of the percussion ensemble: Juxtapercussion and a freelance musician and clinician in the Pacific Northwest. Ed is a former student of the Sitka Fine Arts Camp. |
Beverly Mannis an actor, mask theatre performer/educator, and mask maker. She is an independent artist and tours with several theatre companies including Faustwork Mask Theatre, based in Toronto, and Figures of Speech Theatre based in Freeport, ME. Beverly has performed in over 40 states, Canada, Mozambique, South Africa, and Peru, with an appearance on “Good Morning, South Africa". She was a company member of IMAGO Theatre based in Portland, Oregon from 1986 – ‘89 and again in 1992-‘93 performing mask, movement and visual illusion touring the U.S., Germany, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong with appearances on “Good Morning, America” and the Disney special “New Vaudevillians, Too.” She was a company member of TheatreSports, an improvisational theatre company based in Seattle, Washington. For the past seven years she has been busy collaborating with several artists in the state of Maine, and is currently in the process of creating a new duo show with storyteller/musician Jennifer Armstrong. Beverly has taught numerous workshops and residencies in mask making, mask theatre techniques and theatre improvisation throughout Maine, across the U.S. and abroad. She is listed on the Maine Arts Commission Artist’s Roster and The Alaska State Arts Council Artist-in-Residence Program and is affiliated with The Maine Alliance for Arts Education. This is her twelfth year teaching at The Sitka Fine Arts Camp. |
| Hank
Moore began playing music 40 years ago in North Carolina. Starting on the trumpet, he played in marching bands for nine years. At the age of 18, Hank started playing the guitar in rhythm & blues, rock n' roll and gospel groups. Singing and playing piano in the "church of rock n' roll" for most of his life, Hank still implements these rhythmic techniques in his blues and Celtic playing. He now lives in Sitka, teaching and playing guitar. This summer he will be releasing his second CD. |
| Brian Neal performs over one hundred concerts annually throughout the country as a member of the Dallas Brass, one of America’s foremost musical ensembles. Brian is a native of Miami, Florida. After earning music degrees from the Manhattan School of Music in New York and the University of Miami, Brian earned positions as principal trumpet of the Miami Symphony Orchestra and the Miami Bach Society Orchestra. He has been a soloist with those orchestras, as well as the Florida Philharmonic, Ensemble Monterey, and the California Symphony. Equally at home as a composer, Brian’s compositions have been performed at both the Aspen and Waterloo Music Festivals. Brian has also received commissions to write music for the opening of the Bayfront Park outdoor amphitheater in Miami and for the opening of the Miami Symphony's tenth anniversary season. A member of the faculty of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Brian resides in Miami with his wife, Karen, and their three children. |
Karen Carlisle Neal enjoys performing a broad range of musical styles and languages, mastering a diverse repertoire from Renaissance to modern vocal literature and jazz. Currently, Karen is the professor of vocal literature and diction at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. She serves as soloist with the Church of the Epiphany and is the first soprano in the professional chamber ensemble, “Seraphic Fire”. She has been soloist with ensembles in Paris, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami. This past season's highlights include performing with Seraphic Fire and the New World Symphony in a Baroque concert featuring conductor Robert King, working as a background vocalist on Shakira's latest album, and singing Bach's Cantata #52 for the President of the United States. In 2004-2005, she performed six complete Bach cantatas as part of Epiphany's ecumenical celebration of Bach's works. As oratorio soloist, she has also sung with the Miami Bach Society and the San Francisco Chorale. In the field of modern music, she was the premier vocalist with New Music Works of Santa Cruz, California, a cutting-edge group committed to presenting the works of contemporary composers. Karen holds a Vocal Performance degree from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She was also a Tanglewood Fellowship recipient and has studied French repertoire intensively in Nice with Dalton Baldwin, in Paris with Jean-Francoise Ballevre, and at the Àbbe Royaumont in Asnières-sur-Oise, France with Daniel Ferro. back to top |
| Robert Ponto is Associate Professor of Conducting and director of bands at the University of Oregon. He conducts the Oregon Wind Ensemble and supervises the graduate program in wind conducting. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he received degrees from the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Prior to his appointment at the University of Oregon in 1992, Ponto held conducting/teaching posts at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, East Carolina University, Pacific Lutheran University, and in the public schools of West St. Paul–Mendota Heights, Minnesota. Ponto’s frequent appearances as guest conductor include the Detroit Chamber Winds, the Interlochen Arts Academy Band, and numerous state and regional honor bands throughout the United States. Ponto has also earned respect as a creative and inspiring teacher of conducting, working with students throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His ensembles have appeared at state, regional, and national MENC conferences, regional CBDNA conferences, and at the Bang On A Can contemporary music festival in New York City. |
Marilyn Reischke has been teaching piano students for over 30 years. She graduated from Biola University in La Mirada, California with a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance. Before moving to Sitka two years ago, she was an active member of the Oregon Music Teachers Association and entered students annually in the OMTA Syllabus program. . Marilyn has been a church organist and pianist since high school and has had many opportunities to accompany vocal and instrumental soloists as well as a variety of groups. While living in Eugene, Oregon she accompanied the Women’s Choral Society and University of Oregon students.. Marilyn maintains a piano studio in Sitka and enjoys working with students of all ages. |
Ward Serrill’s most current film, The Heart of the Game, shot over seven years, debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and was released nationally by Miramax Films. The film won high praise across the country from Jay Leno, Ebert and Roeper (”an Oscar level piece of work”), People Magazine, USA Today, O Magazine, Rolling Stone and others. The film was nominated as Best Documentary Screenplay by the Writer’s Guild of America and won the Billie Award for Best Entertainment by the Women Sports Foundation. Ward has written, directed or produced over 40 short films for progressive causes. He holds a degree in business administration from the University of Washington and is an adopted member of the Cape Fox Clan, Tlingit Nation. Ward lives on a houseboat in Seattle, plays harmonica, writes poetry, and is an avid tango dancer. |
| Julia Smith is an actor, director, and theatre teacher. She graduated from Miami University with a B.F.A in theatre performance and moved to Seattle where she completed a literary internship at The Seattle Children’s Theatre. She has also studied with notable teachers from The Goodman and The Steppenwolf theatres in Chicago, and apprenticed under the prominent director Lisa Peterson at La Jolla Playhouse in California. As a theater director she has directed plays at the Freehold Studio and Hyperion Theatre in Seattle. She took a long break from the theatre world to do a little traveling and exploring around the world, but has recently decided to establish some roots here in Sitka, AK. She taught two acting classes this past fall, in the elementary and middle schools in Sitka, and was just accepted into the Alaska Artists-in-Schools program. Prior to moving to Alaska she taught theatre classes to students of all ages at Two Roads Theatre in Seattle, The Seattle Children’s Theatre, and at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago. She is still an avid traveler and escapes into the outdoors every chance she gets. |
Kate Sullivan is the Director of Creative Writing at The Episcopal Academy in Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was named a Teaching/Writing Fellow, and where she studied under novelists Marilynne Robinson, Ethan Canin, and Elizabeth McCracken. Kate loves teaching writing as much as she loves writing itself, and she has taught classes in poetry and prose to undergraduates at the University of Iowa, high school students at The Taft School, and elementary school students in Blue Hill, Maine. In 2003, she was invited to teach a “writing boot camp” to the now famous “Freedom Writers” in Long Beach, California. She has also worked as an editor, a waitress, a referee, a travel coordinator, and a housecleaner. She grew up in New Hampshire, but now lives in Narberth, Pennsylvania, where she’s hard at work on a novel and a collection of short stories. |
| Mike
Sullivan is a jazz arranger, saxophonist, and electric bass player who lives in Sitka Alaska. Originally from Seattle, Washington, he attended the Berklee School of Music in Baltimore, Maryland, where he majored in arranging and studied saxophone under Joe Viola. He was a staff arranger with the 5th Air Force Band in Tokyo, Japan for 3 years and then continued as a freelance musician. He has performed with many personalities including Sarah Vaughn, jazz violinist Joe Venuti, comedian Red Skelton, and Billy Eckstein. He is an airline pilot and spends his free time arranging and mentoring young musicians interested in jazz. |
Skyler Sullivan's work as an actor, mime, and dancer has been seen all over the country and in Europe. Skyler received his BFA from Emerson College in Musical Theatre. Skyler is a graduate of the international school of comic acting, in Reggio Emelia, Italy. After meeting mime, Tony Montanaro, his path changed to physical theatre. His love of movement theatre and circus landed him in San Francisco, where he worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and trained with the Circus Center. Next stop was NYC. Skyler currently lives in Brooklyn,..He has worked with such companies as Bread and Puppet, Sesame Street, and the American Mime Theatre. He also teaches circus arts, and is on the faculty at Strasberg and the New Victory Theatre. Upcoming projects include Carol Churchill’s, “Mouth Full of Birds” in NYC. After finishing at at Fine Arts Camp this summerhe will join Circus Minimus’ summer tour as a ring master. |
Sara Thomsen has over 16 years of dance training in a huge variety of styles. She started with ballet, jazz, modern, African, and martial arts. Since she began partner dance in 1996 she has studied with top US and international coaches in ballroom, latin, west coast swing, theatre arts, salsa, and argentine tango. In addition to her dance training, she is also a yoga instructor with a strong understanding of anatomy,that gives added depth and clarity to her instruction. Sara lives in Seattle, Washington where she teaches, performs, and choreographs for children and adults. Her current passion is running youth programs in public and private schools. |
Tim Weiss holds diplomas from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels, Belgium and degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. In his fourteen years as music director of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, he has brought the group to a level of professionalism in performance that rivals the finest new music groups in the United States and Europe. In a recent New York review, Anthony Aibel wrote, “under the direction of Timothy Weiss, [the ensemble] presented unbelievably polished, superb performances—impeccable performances—of extremely challenging recent music…” His repertoire is vast and fearless, including masterworks, very recent compositions, and an impressive number of premieres. A much sought-after guest conductor in the U.S., he is the chair of the Division of Conducting and Ensembles at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and holds the Ruth Strickland Gardner chair in music. His former professional affiliations also include: Director, wind ensembles and instructor of theory, Interlochen Arts Academy, 1990-93 resident conductor, International Music Festival, 1996-98, and Interlochen Arts Camp, 1991-96, 1998. This is his third summer at Sitka Fine Arts Camp.
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Vinnie Wilhelm is a graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied with the novelists Marilynne Robinson, Ethan Canin, Edward Carey, and Chris Offutt. Vinnie’s short fiction has been published in the Harvard Review, the Southern Review, Glimmertrain Stories, and elsewhere; his book reviews have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. He has taught fiction, poetry, and non-fiction writing to both high school and college students, in addition to working as an editor, busboy, deliveryman, political organizer, bureaucratic peon, peanut vendor, house painter, radio journalist, and carny. He currently lives in Oakland, California, where he is waiting tables and writing a novel which he believes to be about Leon Trotsky, Hollywood, and the mob in Cuba. back to top |
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