Conversations from the Barn

Ann grew up surrounded by flowers in a home beside a lake. She spent her summers in the garden and her winters buried in seed catalogs and old botanical books. Ann's work still tells the story of a tryst between garden and wild. Relying on materials that are often local and foraged, her colors, textures, and shapes reflect the beauty of the changing seasons. She has created designs for private dinners, lookbook shoots, restaurants, and weddings. And her Instagram account (@dearhyssop) is a must-follow.

Vie Boheme is a Motown native, blossomed creatively in Pittsburgh and refined in Minneapolis. She is a multimodal artist; a choreographer, a dancer, singer, actress, poet, writer and producer of her own works. She brings athletic agility to her vocal performance by singing and dancing in unison, eliminating the boundary between the visual and audio experience. She weaves sentiment and storytelling through poetry and monologues in marriage to her choreography. Her choreography is designed to give a glimpse into the sometimes dark and complex emotional spaces people experience that seem elusive and ever present. The intentionality of her work produces a passage for viewers to connect to their own visceral experience.

Kendra is a painter who has shown nationally and internationally, with shows at the Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Var Gallery, Milwaukee, WI and at Beijing Normal University, China. Currently, she is director and owner of James May Gallery and enjoys curating and maintaining an active studio practice. We got to have a conversation with her at the end of her artist retreat at Everwood.

"My oil paintings examine the longing for identity and the subsequent expectations associated with identity and memory. I question how identity is constructed through images, place, memory, decoy, and the miniature."

Inspired by the women who used to live on the land at Everwood Farmstead and the rich history that has followed them, a story has taken the form of an audio play which was fully created at the farm called: "The House At Echo's End." Enjoy!

Book by: David Darrow Music/Lyrics: Cat Brindisi-Darrow

Conceived By: Cat, David and Derek Prestly

Safely Featuring: Serena Brook & Michelle Brindisi

Jess Arnold has played in the Twin Cities three-part harmony folk band Eustace the Dragon for six years and is pursuing her first solo project. She enjoys harmony, musical chaos, group sings, and the evening hour when everyone is singing drunkenly all over the place.

Jess is enamored with relationship and story, and sings songs that are rich in both. Her melodies stir up a forgotten past as her voice effortlessly weaves through the often untouched parts of the heart. Lilting, piercing, in love with the earth and its inhabitants, Jess's performance speaks of the quiet, mesmerizing intensity of a midnight campfire. She is convinced that we are all diamonds.

"Mayer's is a subtle but moving magic." - mnartists.org Megan is an artist working with choreography, dance, experimental video and photography. She obsesses over minimalism, mimicry, tenderness, wry humor, loneliness, fake bad timing and exacting musicality. Her work offers glimpses of internal terrain and unexpected expressive delicacies. By exposing tiny emotional undercurrents concerning the body, she constructs a unique perspective of what dance can be: virtuosity in vulnerability and a victory in a gesture.

James Kennedy is a multi-disciplinary theatre artist based in New York City. As a playwright, composer, and director, his work has been produced and presented by Actors Theatre of Louisville/The Humana Festival of New American Plays, The Washington National Opera/The Kennedy Center, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and Superhero Clubhouse, among others. In addition to his freelance work, he is currently the composer-in-residence with Playing for Others in Charlotte, NC and has spent six summers as the Artistic Associate for Education and Outreach at The Orchard Project.

Jeremiah is a playwright, librettist, songwriter, singer/actor, storyteller and producer who has worked professionally in the Twin Cities for 25 years. He runs two theater companies with his wife, Vanessa – Theater for the Thirsty and Bucket Brigade. Jeremiah is a published children's author, former adjunct professor in playwriting, voice over and on-camera talent, member of the Dramatist Guild, participant in Nautilus Music-Theater's Composer Librettist Studio, and proud father of three.

Raki is a queer, Jewish fiction and poetry writer. She's the author of The Things You Left, The Memory House (a 2020 MN Book Award finalist), and The Other Body. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for fiction among others. She lives in Minneapolis. Miriam was born in Ireland and raised in the Southern United States. She is the author of two queer historical novels, An Impossible Distance to Fall and The Unbinding of Mary Reade. She lives in Minneapolis, but also calls Asheville, North Carolina home.

Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Lao American writer. She was born in a refugee camp in Nongkhai, Thailand and immigrated to Minnesota in 1985. Because of her unique background, her work is focused on creating tools and spaces for the amplification of refugee voices through poetry, theater, and experimental cultural production. Recorded at the end of her 2020 Artist Retreat, listen in on our conversation about her new play, zombies and cannibals, and spirits of the land.