Creative Support for Individuals-Round 2

Cynthia Demers is a retired visual and graphic arts instructor for junior and senior high schoolers and worked as a community education director for 23 years. She has written grant proposals for school age childcare, poetry, and visual arts with Native American speakers, summer theater, childcare resources, and field trips to art careers and art colleges. She developed Art Day with area art teachers for six schools averaging 180 art students and twelve artists. She has volunteered to review grant applications for Southwest Minnesota Arts Council. Living in Lac qui Parle and formerly Lake of the Woods counties, she brings a rural perspective to her work.; Susana di Palma is artistic director of Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theater; she founded the company in 1984. She also is an internationally recognized contemporary flamenco/theater choreographer and performer. She has choreographed more than 25 original works for Zorongo and as guest choreographer for Flamenco Vivo in New York. She has received numerous grants including a Bush Fellowship, Arts Board Artist Initiative, McKnight Fellowships, and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Next Step grants. She is a teaching artist for the Cowles Center for the Performing Arts.; Roberta Gray is the grants specialist at St. Francis Music Center, a community school for the arts in Little Falls. Gray also handles all programming for the Music Center. She has been a parent educator for the Little Falls Schools for the past 30 years and volunteers for other community nonprofits. Gray has a BA in theater arts and elementary education from Southwest Minnesota State University.; Kyle Harabedian is a member of the volunteer board of the Autoptic Festival of Comic Art. He has worked in city government, academia, and in a retail fine art gallery. Harabedian has an MFA in visual studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. His own artwork has been featured in publications such as Rock Ink Roll, Adventures in Comics, and New Faith to New World: Stories from the History of the Armenian Church. Harabedian is also the copublisher of the comic book anthology series Campfire Comics and Stories which features artists from around the world.; Sarah Lockwood: Lockwood is the ticket office performance supervisor at the Children?s Theatre Company, where she helps more than 295,000 children, youth, and their families experience theater each year. She has previously worked with Seagle Music Colony, the National Theatre for Children, Golden Horseshoe the Musical in West Virginia, the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts, and Jazz Arts Group Columbus. She graduated from Capital University with her BM in music business with a minor in management.; Theresa Madaus is a Minneapolis based dance maker and performer best known for her work as 1/3 of the choreographic collaboration Mad King Thomas. A dancer, improviser, and writer, she also moonlights as drag sensation Rock Scissors and creates performance incorporating drag and dance. As an arts administrator, she has worked with Upstream Arts, focusing on art, learning, and disability and Link Vostok, an East/West international dance exchange. Additionally, she helps organize the project Don't You Feel It Too?, a practice of public dancing for personal liberation and social healing with a focus on racial justice.; Catherine Meier: Meier is a working artist living on Minnesota?s North Shore. Meier has a BFA in studio art from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She served for several years on the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council board of directors. Her awards include several Arrowhead Regional Arts Council grants, an Arts Board grant, and a McKnight visual artist fellowship.; Miriam-Rachel Oxenhandler Newman writes primarily creative nonfiction. She is a freelance writer and has served as the editor of City South Magazine, Plymouth Magazine, and White Bear Lake Magazine. She is particularly interested in the topic of historical trauma and how it impacts communities. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. Her work has appeared in the Pioneer Press, Forward, Tablet, Currents, Dislocate, along with other publications, and has been recognized with grants from Rimon, the Jerome Foundation/SASE, and the Arts Board.; Sanaphay Rattanavong: A fiction and freelance writer rooted in the Twin Cities, Rattanavong has had work nominated for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories anthology, been a recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Arts Board, and served as a panel review member. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars.