Associate Artists working with Will Cotton Taissia Basaria Taissia Basaria was born in 1987 in Mytishchi, Russia. Her work combines the aesthetics of 19th century Romanticism with Russian regionalist painting traditions and using HD technologies of today to illustrate that all is not lost in the fight for the conservation of nature and the people who inhabit it. A big part of the inspiration behind the work was Basaria’s childhood spent next to the Elk Island National Reserve and witnessing firsthand the connection between humankind and the wilderness. Basaria received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2010. In 2016 she was awarded the Trelex residency in the Amazon region of Peru. In 2017 Basaria returned to the Amazon in collaboration with Tambopata Macaw project to document bird conservation in the region. In 2019 Basaria received her MFA from New York Academy of Art and was awarded the Altos de Chavon teaching residency in the Dominican Republic. Basaria currently lives and works in New York City. Gabe Cortese Born in Key West, Florida, Gabe Cortese is a Florida- based figurative painter. Cortese graduated in 2017 from the University of Central Florida with a BFA and is currently pursuing his MFA at UCF in Studio Art. Interested in intersectional identities and the male body, Cortese’s work is centered around his identity as a queer Latino male. In his work he explores topics of otherness, gender performance and sexual identity. Growing up in “American” culture but becoming intricately immersed in his Puerto Rican and Argentinian roots, he is conscious of the standards of masculinity as each culture defines it. Using the male body as a vehicle, he navigates through the complexities of desire, sex, and performative roles of masculinity. Lindsey Kircher Lindsey Kircher earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Drawing and Painting from the Schreyer Honors College at the Pennsylvania State University in May 2019. She was recognized with the Creative Achievement Award for the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State, the Kara D. Berggren Award recognizing the most “outstanding piece of artwork” in the undergraduate juried show, and the Alfred/Christy/Fink/Davis Creative Innovation Award. In January, she held her senior honors thesis show “Babe Cave.” In summer 2018, Lindsey was nominated and selected to attend the Yale Norfolk School of Art, where she studied with other young artists from around the country. In August 2019, she attended the Open Wabi artist residency in Fredericktown Ohio. Since then, she has been volunteering on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Lindsey plans to pursue her career as an artist and earn her MFA degree. Andrew Norris Andrew Norris' creative practice contains image manipulation and old master techniques in oil painting. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from East Tennessee State University and is currently a graduate student in the MFA program at the University of Florida. As the recipient of the Graduate School Fellowship Award for the duration of his graduate study, Andrew also serves as the Coordinator for the 2020 FACC Student Juried Exhibition and the elected representative of Studio Art and Art Education. Andrew’s recent work is based in subjects of Queer Theory and Queering Art History, to further this research he is currently earning a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies through the Center for Gender, Sexualities and Women’s Studies Research at the University of Florida. Mel Peter I’ve been a portrait and figure painter for more than 45 years. I work in oil, pastel and a mixed technique using tempera grassa with oils. For 15 years I’ve been looking for a way to make oil paint refract light like pastel. I’ve exhibited at Boca Raton Museum of Art, Appleton Museum of Art, Pastel Society of America in New York My paintings were included in North Light Books Pure Color, The Best of Pastel and in several issues of Pastel Journal Magazine. I attended residencies at Atlantic Center for the Arts with painters Jack Beal, Pat Steir and Eve Aschheim, with poets Audre Lorde, William Stafford, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. My poems were published in Florida Revue and A Fine Madness. Miya Sukune A graduate of Gage Academy’s Georgetown Atelier, Miya Sukune intensively studied classical oil painting and drawing techniques with Tenaya Sims. A year as the studio assistant and student of the Trowbridge Atelier followed, focusing on figurative studies and color theory. She has enjoyed working at several art residencies, including the Vermont Studio Center, Studio Kura (Japan) and the Serlachius Residency at the Serlachius Museums (Finland.) Solo shows include Fireplace Gallery at Mt. Hood Community College (Gresham, OR), Zeitgeist Coffee and Gallery (Seattle, WA) and Cone-Hastings Gallery (Vashon, WA.) A finalist of Phinney Center Gallery's Best of the Northwest, she is frequently included in group shows. She created public art for Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture - Art Interruptions 2018. A goal of her recent paintings is to pull towards solidity while maintaining ephemeral existence. Annette Tojar Annette Tojar is a Miami native who currently resides in Orlando, Florida. She pursued a pastry chef career in 2010 and trained at Johnson & Wales University in North Miami and Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Pâtisserie in France. Tojar earned her BFA in 2018 and is pursuing her MFA at the University of Central Florida. Her previous career strongly influences her paintings. The need to combine a multitude of textures in a single dessert for mouthfeel has transformed into an obsession to replicate textures and colors on a two-dimensional surface for visual indulgence; for the desire to touch, taste, and satiate. The work offers opportunities to relate intimately to the painted images of food while evoking personal memories and emotions. Interested in the physical qualities of paint while preserving the painter’s hand, Tojar is seeking to create a personal and meaningful approach to depicting images from observation. Christine Vanderkaap I am an Austin based Australian artist with a passion for conservation, a fact that is reflected not only in my dedication to continuing classical artistic traditions, but also in my focus on featuring people, animals and insects in all their majesty. I’ve developed my technique through intensive drawing training with an emphasis on capturing contour and realistic details. I often work in pen and ink, one stroke at a time, but also enjoy the fluidity of charcoal, oil paint and watercolour. Most of my finished pieces are black and white with the occasional colour embellishment. I focus more on the shapes and shadows in an effort to produce photorealistic illustrations of my subject matter. One illustration may take 100 hours or more. Associate Artists working with Jennifer Higdon Tai-Kuang Chao New generation composer, Tai-Kuang Chao, sees himself as a musical storyteller and sonic painter. His muses and inspirations can be traced habitually to a diverse scope, includes aboriginal / folk tunes from native Taiwanese, literature, paintings, and installations. Chao endeavors to pictorialize the abstract spheres via personal music language to demonstrate his illusionistic emotions and stylistically diversities. With infatuation of working interdisciplinarily, Chao’s music collaborates recurrently with the other areas of the fine arts, including choreography, improvisation, theatrical performance, lighting and costume design, which creates a visually stunning performance, thus commanding attention and musical involvement from the audience. Chao received his D.M.A. in composition-theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). JunYi Chow Malaysia-born New York-based Composer, Multi-instrumentalist and Improviser. Chow's music has been lauded by Financial Times for its "skilful contrasts in both volume and texture". He explores the indefinite possibilities of tone colour and sound in his music. Chow’s thorough knowledge of skills and characteristics of both Chinese and Western instruments has made him a leading figure in merging music of East and West. May 2019, his work ‘To The Night’ is commissioned and premiered by Albany Symphony at American Music Festival. March 2017, he received the Grand Prize of Best Orchestra Work by Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra International Composition Competition. As an active researcher in the music for Chinese Orchestra, Chow’s The TENG Guide to the Chinese Orchestra (co-author with Samuel Wong and Chenwei Wang) serves as a one-stop guide for composers, scholars and enthusiasts alike. Chow is currently the Composer-In-Residence of The TENG Company (Singapore) and Vivo Experimental Orchestra (Malaysia). Douglas Fisk Douglas Fisk is active as a composer, pianist, and teacher. His music has been performed by members of the New York New Music Ensemble, percussionist Gwendolyn Dease (Burgett), baritone Malcolm Merriweather, Sospiro Winds, and Washington Square Winds. He has studied composition with Paul Barsom, Bruce Trinkley, Ezra Laderman, and Martin Bresnick. He received his MM and MMA degrees from the Yale School of Music. His Impromptu for solo marimba appears on the Gwendolyn Dease (Burgett) recording: Boomslang: New Music for Marimba. Recent recognitions include selection into the Chicago Ensemble’s Discover America IX concert series, selection and performance by the One Ounce Opera Fresh Squeezed Ounce of Art Song concert, and inclusion in the NewMusicShelf anthology for new art song (mezzo-soprano). He has received grants from Michigan State University, the Urbana, Illinois Public Arts Commission, and the Queens (NY) Council on the Arts. douglasfiskmusic.com Daniel Gilliam Daniel Gilliam (b. 1978) is a composer from & living in Louisville, Kentucky. He was a resident at Copland House in 2017. Gilliam has been commissioned by & collaborated with Olmsted Parks Conservancy, Kentucky Shakespeare, Louisville Ballet, Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, pianist Lara Downes, violinist Rob Simonds, LONGLEASH (a piano trio), Steven Paul Spears, Youth Performing Arts School Chamber Choir (Louisville), Kentucky Center Chamber Players, & Jason Weinberger/Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony.