K2 Family Foundation

We are pleased to announce the award of our 2012 Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Artist in Residence, to digital media artist Andrea Polli.

Andrea Polli is a digital media artist living in New Mexico. Her work with science, technology and media has been presented widely in over 100 presentations, exhibitions and performances internationally, has been recognized by numerous grants, residencies and awards including a NYFA Artist’s Fellowship, the Fullbright Specialist Award and the UNESCO Digital Arts Award. Her work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art News, NY Arts and others. She has published several book chapters, audio CDs, DVDs and papers in print including MIT Press and Cambridge University Press journals.

She currently works in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop systems for understanding storm and climate through sound (called sonification). Recent projects include: a spatialized sonification of highly detailed models of storms that devastated the New York area; a series of sonifications of climate in Central Park; and a real-time multi-channel sonification and visualization of weather in the Arctic. In 2007/2008 she spent seven weeks in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation funded project. http://www.90degreessouth.org

As a member of the steering committee for New York 2050, a wide-reaching project envisioning the future of the New York City region, she worked with city planners, environmental scientists, historians and other experts to look at the impact of climate on the future of human life both locally and globally.

She has received a Master of Fine Arts in Time Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2000, she was voted Teacher of the Year at Columbia College in Chicago in recognition of her work connecting students to the wider community through collaborative projects. These projects included performances and exhibitions at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art and a large scale public art project connecting 5 neighborhood arts organizations with live web streaming, an exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center and six billboards. Pause. was featured as the Millennium Community Artwork for Illinois and funded by The Mid Atlantic Arts Council and Ameritech.

Polli is currently an Associate Professor in Fine Arts and Engineering at The University of New Mexico and Mesa Del Sol Endowed Chair of Digital Media at the University. She served as the founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media Program and as Director of ARTS Lab at the University from 2009-2010. From 2005-2008 she served as the Director of the Integrated Media Arts Master of Fine Arts Program at Hunter College/CUNY. From 2006-2009 she was co-chair of the Leonardo Education Forum, an affiliate of the MIT Press and the College Art Association of America (CAA) that promotes the advancement of research and academic scholarship at the intersections of art, science, and technology and from 2004-2008 she was co-chair of the New York Society for Acoustic Ecology, a multi-disciplinary group exploring the urban sound environment and a chapter of the American and World Forums for Acoustic Ecology, for which she now serves as Vice-President.

Applications for our 2012 Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Artist in Residence program are now available!  All applicants are asked to download and complete the application packet.  Applications, sample work, and the deposit may be submitted no earlier than October 1, 2011 and must be postmarked no later than December 31, 2011 and received by January 5, 2012 to be considered in this year’s round.

We are pleased to announce the award of our 2011 Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Artist in Residence, to writer Wendy Call.

Wendy Call is a writer, editor, translator, and teacher of creative writing. She has become something of an itinerant Writer in Residence, holding that position in 2011 at Cornell College of Iowa, the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park of Vermont, and The Studios of Key West. She has also been Writer in Residence at a dozen other institutions, including the New College of Florida (2010), Seattle University (2009) and Seattle’s Richard Hugo House (2006-2008).

Wendy’s narrative nonfiction book, No Word for Welcome (University of Nebraska Press, 2011), explores how economic globalization intersects with village life in a region of southern Mexico called the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Grants from the arts commissions of Seattle (2006), King County (2007), and Washington State (2006 and 2009), as well as the Oberlin College Alumni Association, supported the research and writing of the book. Wendy was a 2000-2002 Fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs in the Mexican isthmus—the setting of No Word for Welcome.

She co-edited Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University (Plume/Penguin, 2007) with Mark Kramer. Telling True Stories, an anthology of writing advice from some of the country’s best-known writers of nonfiction, is currently used as a core text in university writing courses throughout the United States, as well as in a dozen other countries.

Her nonfiction writing and her translations (from Spanish) of poetry and fiction have appeared in more than fifty magazines and literary journals, and in several anthologies. In many publications her photographs accompany her writing. In 2011, with an Artist Support Residency from Seattle’s Jack Straw Studios, Wendy will complete a trilingual audio CD of her English translations of poems by Zapotec-Mexican poet Irma Pineda. She will collaborate with the poet, who will perform the Zapotec and Spanish originals of her poems.

Wendy has worked as a writer and editor since 2000. Before that, she devoted a decade to work for social change organizations in Boston and Seattle. She holds a BA in biology from Oberlin College and a MFA in writing and literature from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She is a member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop, founded by Sandra Cisneros. One of her current writing projects, a cycle of essays on grief and loss, was supported by grants from the American Antiquarian Society, and the arts and culture commissions of the City of Seattle and King County.

Wendy has recently taught creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, as well as newsrooms in the United States and Mexico, public libraries, community centers, public high schools, and county jails. In 2008 she worked with a team of writers and publishing industry professionals to design and present Artist Trust’s Literary EDGE program, an annual professional development program for writers throughout Washington State.

The daughter of a middle-school math teacher and a career Navy officer from rural Michigan, Wendy grew up on and around military bases in Florida, Pennsylvania, southern California, and southern Maryland. She currently lives in Seattle and Miami.

The Fish Belong to the People,
Nov 6, 2010, Camden Opera House

The Fish Belong to the People William Hyler’s locally shot feature-length documentary that premiered at the 2009 Camden International Film Festival, will be screened Saturday, Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. at the Camden Opera House, Elm Street/Route 1. The event is free with a suggested donation of $10 at the door.

Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. for a pre-screening selection of hors d’oeuvres prepared by chefs from Paolina’s Way and Café Miranda, as well as Scott Yakovenko, formerly of Port Clyde Seafood Co. Freshly-caught fish for the evening will be provided by the Midcoast Fishermen’s Cooperative, which is featured in the film.

Following the film, there will be a panel discussion with fisherman Glen Libby, president of the MFC and chairman of the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association; Jennifer Litteral, policy director for the Island Institute; Sen. Chris Rector, R-Thomaston, who serves on Maine’s Business, Research and Economic Development and Marine Resources committees; and filmmaker Hyler. Rob Kelley, a member of the Midcoast Maine Fishing Heritage Alliance, will moderate.

Since its premiere, the film has become an important resource for those seeking to understand the challenges that fisheries currently face. The film focuses on the efforts of a group of family fishermen in Port Clyde who have come together as the Midcoast Fishermen’s Cooperative to save their fishery using environmentally friendly methods and selling directly to their customers under the brand name Port Clyde Fresh Catch.

This event is co-sponsored by the Midcoast Maine Fishing Heritage Alliance and the K2 Family Foundation. MMFHA is a nonprofit foundation devoted to connecting fishermen to their communities through education, research and outreach, as well as keeping them safe at sea. The K2 Family Foundation seeks to support individuals who strive — through art, education, or action — to promote more creative and sustainable ways of living.