Artist: Julie JAO
Bio: Julie JAO is a painter, print-maker and performer living in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis. She has exhibited at the Vines Arts Center, Minneapolis Convention Center, the 801 Gallery and Rifle Sport among others. She has performed at The Southern Theater, Bedlam Theater, New York Fringe Festival, Patrick’s Cabaret, Intermedia Arts and many other places including conventional theaters, street fairs and parades. She is mostly know for 5-minute “Speed Painting” performances, but she has also created three longer works for the stage: Stuck with God, La Sistina Infinita: The Unruly Julies paint the Sistine Ceiling and I, Not I. She recently completed a short animation, Kassandra and the Bus that was part of MinnAnimate 7, a homegrown animation festival. It can be viewed online at her website, jaoart.com or her youtube channel juliejaoart. Please message or follow or like or say hi in person, she loves connecting and is interested what you have to say.
Name: Jeremiah Soup
Bio: Jeremiah Soup is a growth-oriented illustrator, painter, and maker residing in Minneapolis. Using figurative art and suggested narratives, Jeremiah intertwines shape, line, and form to create or reinforce specific moods, environments, and ideas within their work.
Jeremiah creates with an emphasis on versatility and accessibility to all humans.
Name: Kat Purcell
Bio: Kat Purcell (they/them) is a radical nonbinary transexual performer, lighting designer, experimental producer and theatrical director local to Minneapolis, MN. From intensive classical training to agit-prop street art performance to lighting design and production management, their diverse & comprehensive experience has led them to the conclusion that art and performance are key to galvanizing the healing and activism of communities. Kat is best known in the Twin Cities for co-producing Patrick’s Cabaret’s Lightning Rod, an explicitly political flash theatre intensive for artists. They are also a passionate activist and organizer, with a focus on prison abolition, immigrant detention and fighting for the bodily autonomy of queer and women folk. Kat graduated from the London International School of Performing Arts and is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Name: Zoë Koenig
Bio: Zoë Koenig is a dancer and choreographer from Madison, WI now based in Minneapolis, MN. She has performed recently at Queerly Contemporary Festival (New York City), World Dance Alliance Global Summit (St. John’s, Newfoundland), Going Dutch Festival (Elgin, IL), Detroit Dance City Festival (Detroit, MI), and Milwaukee Fringe Festival (Milwaukee, WI). Zoë was a member of the Kanopy Dance Company II in Madison, WI from 2011-2014 before attending Beloit College where she worked with numerous choreographers and was awarded the 2017 Chavey Family Endowed Award in Dance for outstanding performance. Her latest work is a dance film co-produced with videographer Edward Otto exploring mental instability and displacement entitled UNSKULLED.
Name: Joél Valdez
Bio: Joél Valdez is a visual and performance artist and who focuses on the intersection of race, sexuality, and nature. His choreography and visuals explore understanding Latinx, specifically Mexican-American, and queer identities within a hostile political climate by performing urban movement centered in freedom and expression.
Joel holds a BFA from the University of Minnesota College of Design in Graphic Design and Studio Art. He works as a designer with fashion, food, and lifestyle clients across the design industry.
Name: Stephen Patterson
Bio: Stephen Patterson is a dance artist new to the Twin Cities. He is a graduate of CalArts, a member of Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater and is also working with Alternative Motion Project.
Artist: Camille Horstmann
Bio: Camille Chong Yuanya Horstmann is an artist and collaborator based in the Twin Cities. She is currently pursuing her Bachelors of Fine Arts in dance at the University of Minnesota. Her work includes performances at the Ordway with TU Dance and later Ananya Dance Theater. Camille has also been a part of several theater productions in the Twin Cities, including Speechless with the Moving Company, as well as works at Mixed Blood Theater and the University of Minnesota Opera. Camille’s primary mission in dance is to create works with artists outside of dance. It is in collaboration that she believes the most influential pieces are created with the potential to live on in memory.
Artist: Gabriel Rodreick
Bio: Freaque is for the derelicts, the heretics, and the tree stumps. A tattered voice, made of strung out words, hung to dry over broken chords on his mother’s piano. This new venture from Gabriel Rodreick was created in his childhood dining room, on the piano he played for 11 years before a spinal cord injury took away his hands. In a wooden womb of darkness, he took what he had and rose above a society that constantly tells us we are not enough, that we’re only worth the possessions we own, the money in our bank accounts, and our status on the corporate ladder. He fights these messages with creations rooted in the idea of decomposition. The corporate state is hell bent on consumption and production, exhausting our resources for sustainable life and profiting off of war, natural disasters, genocide, and the poor and marginalized life on earth. All the while attempting to maintain order. But order is not sustainable in a natural world. Change is inevitable. This world will decompose into something new. Freaque is here to tell that story.
Artist: Cow Tipping Press
Bios: Cow Tipping Press creates writing by people with developmental
disabilities, giving audiences a new way to think about this rich form
of human diversity.
Mary Ayetey is a writer who has autism who writes stories about
Henriette and Bobbi and Blu. She writes about everything especially
fiction, poetry and songs. She makes Jewelry, Greeting Cards, Soaps
and Fire Starters. She likes Game of Thrones, Wonder Woman, Star
Wars, The Avengers and Stranger Things. Mary is a very nice lady and
she doesn’t bite.
Kong Moua likes reading, movies, and is a big fan of romance. He likes
to draw and loves to cook in the kitchen. He likes Pepsi, and loves to
swim and play board games.