To describe Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson as dancers is to name only a small sliver of their creative portfolio. To be sure, they are proficient, trained dancers and have created and performed several works for Kinetic Light, the disability arts ensemble that Alice founded in 2016 and continues to lead. In Kinetic Light’s first piece, titled “Descent,” Alice and Laurel danced in their wheelchairs on a raked stage with a large ramp — stage design by Laurel — and since then have proved to be increasingly adventurous in exploring their relationship to gravity. In recent pieces, they have boldly moved into the vertical axis, sometimes flying into the air — in or out of a wheelchair — thanks to ingenious mechanisms, likewise created by Laurel.

Because accessibility is central to Kinetic Light’s artistry rather than a supplemental consideration, Alice and Laurel have also become accessibility and technological innovators. Kinetic Light is a disability arts company created by disabled artists for audiences with disabilities, and as such every performance is created from the ground up for everyone to fully enjoy. For instance, the company’s lighting designer, Michael Maag, who uses a wheelchair, lights mobility devices with the same care he lights a human body and also pays attention to the needs of neurodiverse audiences; some seats are equipped with haptic devices to allow an audience member to feel the vibration of the score; and Laurel has developed Audimance, a multi-track audio-description app that gives blind and visually impaired guests control over how to experience and enjoy the performance. 

In this interview, Alice and Laurel describe the path that led them to Kinetic Light and explain why artists and institutions, rather than viewing accessibility as a requirement or need, would be wise to embrace it as an aesthetic principle.

[post-interview edit: Laurel started working in tech in 1996, not 2016 as she accidentally states in the interview.]

https://kineticlight.org/

For fiber artist Aaron McIntosh, quilting is an act of defiant documentation. Growing up in an Appalachian family with a generations-deep tradition of quilting, he learned the craft as a boy and went on to develop his own ethos and mission, studying first at the Appalachian Center for Craft in Tennessee and then earning his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

In recent years, Aaron has placed his own personal history and metaphorical body into fabric sculptures that blend his familial and cultural background with his identity as a queer Appalachian artist. His work has been exhibited in a variety of institutions, from the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Toledo Museum of Art to Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul. In 2015, he started the “Invasive Queer Kudzu” project, a community storytelling, archiving and art-making project focusing on queer communities, past and present, in America’s Southeast. 

In this interview, Aaron, who is currently an associate professor at Concordia University in Montreal, describes why and how he claimed the South’s most notorious weed as his artistic inspiration and clears up any misconceptions about the fiber arts ever having taken a back seat to other fine arts throughout human history.

https://aaronmcintosh.com/home.html

Christopher Tin is an award-winning and genre-bending classical composer whose work has been featured in a variety of settings and media, from august concert halls to the world of video games. 

His orchestral piece “Baba Yetu,” which Christopher originally composed for the game “Civilization IV,” was the first ever musical work written for a video game to win a Grammy Award. It has since become a staple in choral and orchestral venues. He received his second Grammy for his debut album, “Calling All Dawns,” a multilingual song cycle. 

Christopher has been as adventurous in his producing as he has been in his composing. He turned to Kickstarter to help him create his subsequent two albums, “To Shiver the Sky” and “The Lost Birds,” both of which explored ecological themes. Through his crowdfunding, he not only raised all the funds necessary to pull off both expensive projects but also deepened his relationship with his many ardent fans while making new ones, bringing them along on intimate tours through his entire creative and production process. “The Lost Birds,” which features the acclaimed British vocal ensemble VOCES8, was nominated for a 2023 Grammy and has been performed all over the world. 

This past spring at the Kennedy Center, the Washington National Opera premiered Puccini’s unfinished masterpiece “Turandot” with a new ending composed by Christopher and written by Susan Soo He Stanton. The production and its new ending was a hit with critics and audiences alike.

In this interview, Christopher reveals how after decades of experimentation and success he’s finally stopped worrying whether his work was too popular to please the classical-music establishment, and he explains how he’s cultivated a legion of fans who encourage him to take ever bigger risks.

https://christophertin.com/

Matthew Fluharty is the founder and executive director of Art of the Rural, an organization that works to support and promote the work of artists and culture bearers across the country and that also aims to bridge cultural divides across urban and rural areas.

Initially created as a blog in 2010, Art of the Rural has since then developed several long-term projects in collaboration with artists and community leaders, particularly in the upper Midwest (Art of the Rural is based in Winona, MN) and in Kentucky Appalachia. Projects have included “High Visibility: On Location in Rural American and Indian Country,” a collaboration with the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND, the first major museum exhibition highlighting contemporary art practice across these geographies; and two cultural-exchange programs – the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange and the Minnesota Rural-Urban Exchange – that have afforded scores of artists a chance to immerse themselves meaningfully in settings once unfamiliar to them.

In this interview, Matthew offers an eye-opening look at the connections between rural and urban communities, challenging the idea of a “divide” and showing how collaboration and cultural exchange are reshaping how we think about art, place, and belonging. He also details the kind of shift in perspective institutions and funders must embrace to ensure that the many artists in rural America and Indian Country continue serving their communities.

https://www.artoftherural.org/

Theater artists Annalisa Dias and Tara Moses are the co-directors of Groundwater Arts, an organization they founded in 2018 — along with Anna Lathrop and Ronee Penoi — to braid together goals that at first might seem disparate: decolonizing the arts-and-culture field and striving for a climate-just future.

Guided and inspired all along by an advisory council as well as a youth council, Groundwater Arts has created countless opportunities — whether through creative projects, consulting or virtual and in-person gatherings — for cultural institutions to learn how they can start dismantling structural inequities that for generations have exacerbated the climate crisis and have primarily harmed communities of color. Groundwater Arts adheres to the principles listed in “Green New Theater,” a document the co-founders wrote to guide American theaters in responding to the climate crisis.

In this interview, Annalisa and Dias describe the diligence and integrity with which they created and continue to run Groundwater Arts, offering a blueprint for artists and institutions looking to align their practices with justice, sustainability and true collaboration.

https://www.groundwaterarts.com/

https://www.groundwaterarts.com/green-new-theatre.html

Calling Robert Gipe an author or novelist is a bit like calling Neil deGrasse Tyson a YouTuber. Yes, Robert wrote a widely praised self-illustrated trilogy of novels — “Trampoline,” “Weedeater” and “Pop” — that follows the travails of a young woman growing up in rural Appalachia. He completed that authorly feat, however, after decades working as an educator, community builder and theater-maker in and around Harlan, KY, where he continues to reside.

Originally from Kingsport, TN, Robert moved to Southeastern Kentucky in the late ’90s after receiving his master’s in American studies at the University of Massachusetts. Initially he worked in marketing and fundraising for the legendary community media organization Appalshop in Whitesburg, KY and then became a professor and program coordinator of the Appalachian Center at Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College in Cumberland. Soon thereafter he created Higher Ground, a community theater organization that since 2002 has created and produced plays with and for the community on local topics ranging from opioid addiction to environmental degradation.

In this candid interview, Robert describes the challenges of encouraging community-wide fellowship in a politically divisive era and celebrates the role of art and artists in creating safe spaces for people of all stripes to celebrate their authentic selves.

https://www.robertgipe.com/

You might be forgiven for guessing SHHH! Ensemble to be a collection of musically minded librarians, but you’d be way off the mark. Because SHHH! Ensemble makes noise. A lot of it. On a variety of instruments. And people are loving it. Which might be especially surprising given that SHHH! mostly plays contemporary classical works, a genre that can be intimidating to many audiences. So how do they do it?

SHHH! comprises Ottawa-based life partners Edana Higham, a pianist, and Zac Pulak, a percussionist, making them possibly the world’s only professional piano/percussion duo. Since launching their ensemble in 2016, Edana and Zac have made waves in Canada’s classical-music scene, playing in venues and festivals from coast to coast and garnering raves from critics and audiences alike. They have collaborated with renowned contemporary classical composers, including John Beckwith, Monica Pearce and past Art Restart guest Frank Horvat.

Here they explain how they decided to join musical forces and how they’ve developed the “avant-accessible” style that at each performance invites an audience to take a meticulously curated and delightful musical journey with them. 

On January 26 of 2024, San Francisco Ballet premiered a commissioned work by Canadian American choreographer Aszure Barton. It was titled “Mere Mortals” and explored the science and ramifications of AI through the ancient myth of Pandora. With a brand-new score by world-renowned British electronica composer Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points, and video and sound design by Barcelona-based Hamill Industries, “Mere Mortals” was a big gamble for new artistic director Tamara Rojo as she closed out her first season with the Ballet.

It paid off. Not only was “Mere Mortals” a hit with critics, with the San Francisco Chronicle calling it “a passionate success,” but it also proved to be a box-office bonanza, so much so that San Francisco Ballet brought the production back to the stage just three months later for several encore performances. Perhaps more importantly, many in the audience were first-time ballet-goers, many of whom saw the piece more than once.

In this arts climate when so many dance companies are struggling to get even their regular audiences back in the door, what was it about “Mere Mortals” that made it such a hit? In this interview, Aszure opens a window into her choreographic practice and how it may have contributed to an event equally invigorating to her dancers and her audience.

Aszure is the artistic director of Aszure Barton & Artists, which she founded very early in her career as a creative outlet for the collaborative and anti-hierarchical instincts she’d had to repress in her dance education. Two decades later, Aszure Barton & Artists, which includes a core staff of creative collaborators, has created work all over the world with a wide array of artists and institutions, including Mikhai Baryshnikov, Nederlans Dans Theater and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Aszure is currently the choreographer in residence at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and is also developing a new piece in partnership with trumpeter and composer Ambrose Akinmusire. 

In 2016, while earning his doctorate in music at the University of Southern California, Alexander Lloyd Blake founded the choral group Tonality. His initial aim was to create a choral ensemble that would represent and celebrate the full diversity of Los Angeles’ population. That done, Tonality started to focus each concert on social-justice issues, from global warming to gun violence, always providing audiences with an array of resources to encourage activism and change.

Tonality’s repertoire is as varied as its membership, ranging from Gregorian chant to contemporary pieces in a variety of styles and genres, but Alex’s commitment to harnessing the power of choral music to foment social change has remained central. In just eight years, Tonality has garnered nationwide attention. In 2020 Tonality received the Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, and in 2022 Alex and Tonality’s work were featured on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.” They’ve released two albums, and just this past spring, Tonality won its first Grammy for performing on composer Carla Patullo’s album “So She Howls.”

The ensemble has collaborated with a number of world-renowned composers, including Reena Esmail and Michael Giacchino, and has performed with such artists as Pete Townsend, Lara Downes and Björk. They have also sung for TV and film soundtracks, including “Space Jam: a New Legacy.”

Here Alex explains what led him to found Tonality and details the intricacies of leading a choral ensemble that has to remain increasingly nimble and focused.

https://www.ourtonality.org/

https://alexanderlblake.com/

Costume designer Kristen P Ahern has been thinking about sustainability since childhood, when her parents, her mother in particular, instilled in her a passion for environmental responsibility. As an adult, she has centered that passion in her art, in 2018 founding Conscious Costume, an information-and-resources clearinghouse with a clear vision: “Every costume created in harmony with people and planet.”

Although Kristen now lives in Pittsburgh, PA, she still has deep roots in Chicago, where she designed for several theaters and also managed a few costume shops in the area. Chicago is also where Conscious Costume’s costumes-rental facility continues to operate, giving area designers and theaters greater access to reusable materials and costumes. It is also in Chicago that Kristen, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, created Artist Resource Mobilization (ARM), an organization that matched out-of-work designers and costume-shop artists with mask-production opportunities. In the pandemic’s most dire year and a half, Artist Resource Mobilization was able to provide garment artists with $35,000.

In this interview, Kristen explains what responsible costume design and production entails and offers a primer in how designers and costume shops can take small-to-large steps to ensure they protect the well-being of their onstage and behind-the-scenes artists as well as the environment.

https://www.kristenp.com/

https://www.consciouscostume.com/