Arts Experiences

Cecilia Cornejo: Cornejo is a documentary filmmaker, artist and educator engaging rural communities in southern Minnesota in a multilayered exploration of home. Locally rooted yet globally minded, her work examines notions of belonging and the immigrant experience while exploring the traces of historical trauma on people and places. An inaugural recipient of the 2020 McKnight Fellowship for Community-Engaged Artists, Cornejo?s work has received support from multiple organizations, including the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her film work has been shown nationally and abroad and is currently distributed by Women Make Movies.; Courtney Martin: Martin is a working professional fine artist and designer and has been for many years. She has exhibited internationally from London to Italy and her work resides in private collections in London, Ireland, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Los Angeles and New York. Martin is also a freelance web designer and has volunteered her design services to non-profits as well as served on the board of directors at the non-profit User Experience Professionals Association of Minnesota. In 2007, she received an Artist Initiative Grant from the MN State Arts Board and the National Endowment for The Arts. She has studied art all her life and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an Associates Degree in Web Design from Minneapolis College.; Xan Mattek: Mattek graduated from Wichita State University (Wichita, KS) with a bachelor of fine arts in musical theater performance. Hard work and amazing teachers led her to obtaining a full ride scholarship at WSU. Because of her training there, she has performed and taught professionally around the United States. Her favorite creative projects include interning at the Lovewell Institute for the Creative Arts where she assisted students in writing, choreographing, directing, and producing a full-scale musical in just under three weeks and ?Final Fest Music and Arts Festival,? a community arts festival started by herself and two peers seeing a need for all ages spaces in Wichita, Kansas. Performance credits include; Escape to Margaritaville (Old Log Theatre), A Christmas Carol (Guthrie Theater), Energy Time Trek (National Theatre for Children), You?re A Good Man Charlie Brown and Newsies (Crane River Theatre). Along with her work in theater Xan is passionate about community arts engagement with projects such as "Final Fest Music and Arts Festival" and "R Sound Presents: Poetry and Music Open Mic".; Daniel Pinkerton: Pinkerton is a Minneapolis-based playwright and lyricist. He holds an MFA in playwriting from the University of Minnesota. Pinkerton has concentrated on writing musicals since 2002. The MSAB has supported development of The Ballad of Mary Mallon (2004), Hard Times (2016), and Cold Planet, Warm Heart (2022). He has been awarded an NEA Composer-Librettist Fellowship and a Playwrights? Center Jerome Fellowship in Playwriting. Pinkerton is a co-producing artistic director of Fortune?s Fool Theatre, where he has co-produced 13 shows since 2006. He is also on the board of Open Eye Theatre and has served on 14 MRAC panels since 2005.; Jayne Rothschild: Rothschild is the executive director for Honors Choirs of Southeast Minnesota, leading the organization since 2010 in all areas of administration including development and applications for funding. She previously worked with Roanoke College Children's Choir (Salem, VA), and in promotions and marketing for Ryan Partnership (Westport, CT). Rotchschild is a graduate from Gustavus Adolphus College with a BA in organizational management and sociology.; Eun-Kyung Suh: Korean-born textile installation artist Eun-Kyung Suh received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA, USA. Since 2008, she has focused on a series of sculptural vessels as a metaphor for personal, family, and cultural memories. These sculptural vessels are created from diaphanous textiles, utilizing a design originally inspired by Bojagi, a traditional Korean art form. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; Conrad Wilde Gallery, Tucson, AZ; Nord Gallery, San Antonio, TX; Galerie sei-un-do, Zurich, Switzerland; Montreal Center for Contemporary Textiles, Montreal, Canada; and Barabas Villa Gallery, Budapest, Hungary. Her textile work was featured in Textiles: The Art of Mankind by Mary Schoeser Thames & Hudson, Dec 2012. In 2020, Suh was awarded the inaugural McKnight Fellowships for Fiber Artists, and she currently serves as a professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.