artist biographies.



Dennis Dalelio, photography

Kristin Harden, painter

Jessica Walz, artist/photographer

Heather Young (Iron Maiden), blacksmithing

Sally Grayson, painter

Jacky Ke Jiang, comic art and juggling

QuetzalCoatlicue, aztec dance group

Jim Alworth, pottery

Richard Amos, painting

Daniel Pass, poet

John Quant, juggler

Nate Nelson, artist/designer

Rob Larson, painter/muralist

Justin Carrier, painter/muralist

 

 

 

Dennis Dalelio:
I was born in Staten Island, NY and grew up in New Jersey, where I am currently a Fine Arts teacher at Paramus High School. I teach Photography and TV/video with the sights to begin teaching a course called Documentary for Social Change next year. I am also currently working with the Elizabeth Coalition to House the Homeless to create a photo documentary project created and printed by the kids who attend their summer program. I graduated from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1998. The work I began there continued into a photo documentary based project ranging from my thesis project, a large scale multimedia project with residents of the now demolished New Brunswick Homes (the projects) about the gentrification of their town, to the more recent project with heroine addicts who created a project about health care in the "Health Care City." I also create large acrylic paintings based in the abstract, illustrative, and surrealist styles. I've also orchestrated two large murals, one for Source's Redemption rave party and one for a musical performance during the 2001 IAM conference in NYC.
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Kristin Harden:
Kristin Harden grew up in West Milford, NJ and is a well trained artist who has been painting and drawing all of her life. She has done several shows of her work at Felician College in Rutherford, NJ. Her most recent included several realistic human form sculptures. She has done an extensive aprenticeship with sculptor Kimberly Ewald and has received several scholarships and a grant to increase her skills in stained glass, sculpture, and watercolor. Kristin has also helped create a mural for "The Land of the Misfit Toys" musical performance held during the 2001 IAM conference in NYC and hand sewn a full size patchwork quilt. Beyond that she has done several community outreach projects using art.
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Heather Young (Iron Maiden):
I started out in welding and working with metal when I was 19. I had a job at a Metal Fabricating Company working part-time in the office, and eventually I learned how to grind welds off steel and spotweld. I also learned how to oxydize steel, and some of the most common welding techniques in production shops today. Later I took some welding classes where I learned how to gas weld, braze, and stick weld (arc). This became the beginning of a whole new life in metal working and gave me the desire to pursue the art of blacksmithing. (Not to be confused with farrying, I do not make horseshoes!) I joined the Guild Of Metalsmiths in 1998 and began to take the Basic Blacksmithing classes, there were even two other women in a class of 10! Blacksmithing is my way of expressing myself and being creative. I love demonstrating at different festivals because of the excitement and the draw that other people have to an art that is almost extinct, and hear the mothers tell their daughters that "women can even have jobs like Blacksmithing". A lot people have asked me if I do this because of a boyfriend or if my dad got me into this or something like that, I just tell them that I enjoy doing this for myself and not for anyone else.
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Jessica Walz, artist/photographer:
Jessica is currently finishing her final year at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) studying interactive multimedia. She retains a deep love for photography and capturing beautiful moments in the everyday.
Jessica has spend the last few months interning with Source Ministries and aiding the Fallout in design work and setting up the art festival. Her work displayed in the gallery is a black and white series of photos. This is a portraiture series done in Spring of 2001 at the Hard Times Cafe, and it depicts the characters who like to dwell in this unique setting. Jessica has a few peices up on her portfolio site if you'd like more information about her life as an artist.
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Sally Grayson, painter:
Sally Grayson graduated from Bethel College in 1998 with a Bachelor's degree in studio art. Her paintings were created in reaction to seeing the suffering and oppression in Delhi, India.
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Jacky Ke Jiang:
Jacky Ke Jiang is an art student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design who specializes in animation and comic art. Originally from China, Jacky has developed a form of non-traditional origami he calls "Xtreme Origami."
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QuetzalCoatlicue:
QuetzalCoatlicue Danza Mexica Azteca ("Quetzal Aztec Dance Group") is a collective of Mexican-American (Chicano/as) & Mexican Natives brought together by the desire to learn and share the traditional culture of ancient Mexico. We are a grassroots effort engaged in leadership development through the learning and teaching of history, music and dance. Our dances display the history of the Indigenous people known as the Chichimeca (or Aztec) and the relationship between the human race and the universe. Each dance tells a story of balance between dual forces seeking the harmony needed to sustain life. At events we provide commentary on the historical and contemporary struggles depicted through ceremonial dances.
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Jim Alworth:
Jim Alworth is a potter in the Twin Cities area with a studio currently in Northeast Minneapolis. He graduated from Bethel College in 2002 with a BA in Philosophy. His work is high-fired stoneware fired in a soda atmosphere. The whole process from a ball of clay to finished glaze-ware is an exploration of surface, form and texture. By entering soda ash and sodium bicarbonate into the kiln at the right temperatures he can trace the paths of the flames through the kiln via the way the soda adheres to various parts of each pot. Each pot that comes out of the kiln has a distinct identity determined by the placement in the kiln, form, and texture. These different factors create exciting variation and endless possibilities making Jim's work an endless form of exploration.
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Richard Amos:
Richard Amos has sent us a atatement about his art- I guess that would be an "artist statement" then- so here that is:
The Art within me has a desire to come out to be seen by all; I paint as I feel, to share a piece of myself.
In the art that I do I like, for it to reflect life in symbolicness. Many of my paintings have bluejeans gessoed to the canvas which makes it protrude from the canvas. Looking at the picture it appears to be flat, yet upon close inspection and feeling the observer can see what's really going on. I hope that you enjoy my work as much as I did/do painting them!
Peace be with you
Richard Amos
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Daniel Pass, poet:
I am a recent graduate of Bethel College and a long time member of Park Avenue Methodist Church. My writing primarily stems from several things. First, I grew up in the intensely urban neighborhood of East Phillips in South Minneapolis, where green spaces are longed for and even the smallest signs of natural beauty are cherished. Second, my family has its roots in Scotland, a land with an ancient tradition of bards and songsters using their faith in their art. To me, a part of spirituality means being a faithful steward of creation. "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit." (1 Corinthians 6:19) This has inspired much of my poetry. I try to think of it as applying not only to our human bodies, but that the Earth is also a temple of the Spirit, it is God's artwork.
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John Quant, juggler:
John Quant has been juggling for 6 years. He has performed freelance with his brothers Jacob and Josiah in their trio "The Juggling J's," doing corporate shows, block parties, church events, and talent competitions. John has been the president of the Juggling Club at the University of Minnesota for the last two years, and has performed with them at the University, at the State Fair, and on an episode of Almanac on Channel 2. John is currently a Senior at the University of Minnesota. He hopes to graduate in December with his B.A. in English, and pursue a Masters in Hebrew Bible at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem next summer.
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Nate Nelson, artist/designer:
Nate Nelson is an Artist/Designer with a background in printmaking of all types. While primarily a furniture designer, his interests and pursuits include process, materials, environmentally sustainability, and natural form. He will be leading a workshop on screen printing. Imagery is provided, you layer and compose a design on shirts provided, or print on the shirt off your back!
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Rob Larson, painter/muralist:
Being an artist is a way of life, a volunteering to get dirty with myth and story. A way that seeks to see the familiar as strange; a way of seeing that is aware of the trickery amidst the flickering light and shadows that surround us day in and day out, night in and night out. Our eyes are always on the pursuit to capture what is fleeting, and what advances toward us is our realization that the physical and the spiritual are one and the same, indistinguishable. Arriving at the place where everything waits, it is here and only here, the realm of ghosts and the holy ghosts where we are met by those irreversible indifferent patterns of nature astonishing us with their ancient now. Our eyes blink, amazed by the transient form held forth holy through time. We watch and dance alongside forms that play in depths, rising in chaotic storms of memory, burning epiphanies from within. Quiet still voices whisper during our moments of danger, guiding our little compact mysteries, our bodies, through the traps and blessings of fate. Those ambiguous qualities of nature, alive in our dreams, a realm that is beyond our knowing, saturates the mundane experiences of our daily life with the strangeness and sexuality of that holy realm. This is the way to live. The artist seeks to live the dream.
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Justin Carrier, painter/muralist:
I was born the son of a poor cajun girl in southwest Louisiana and raised by a poor cajun family in a wonderfully hard environment that breeds a love of the simple, the ugly, the broke, and everything else rejected by those too good for our kind. As a child I learned to struggle with the knowledge that all these concepts were very much alive in me and in fact I embodied them. From having an illegitimate Mexican father which always served as a constant reminder that I was different, to the time spent growing up in project housing and white ghettos. These environments and the circumstances of my life taught me to appreciate the beauty that comes from the grimy, dirty, and raw realities of the calloused hand, disillusioned, broken hearted, simple man who is struggling to keep some since of hope in a world that reminds him everyday how much it detests him. Consequently the art I create reflects these ideas, drawing influences from urban wall art, tattoo parlors, gritty concrete, my cajun heritage, the bible, and all the beautifully broken individuals I have known and loved. The mediums consist of whatever I have access to, what properly fits the statement of each piece, and conveys the thought most effectively. My art is my voice, a means to communicate with a world that otherwise would not listen to a damn thing I had to say. My hope is that somewhere in the midst of all my rambling, you might catch a whisper from God as well.
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