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Marcus Young
Lead Artist
Born in Hong Kong, Marcus Young is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist living in Minneapolis. He received his BA in music from Carleton College and his MFA in theater from the University of Minnesota. Past works include Pacific Avenue, a lifelong slow-walking and smiling project; Break, a fortune cookie project for Chinese restaurants; Untitled Painting, a moving art object at the Walker Art Center; and And, a work of Zen-theater that explores the performer-audience relationship. Marcus is a recipient of awards from the Bush Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Drama League, and Franklin Furnace. His most recent works include From Here to There and Beyond, a drawn two-mile line from the gallery to the Mississippi River, and untitled works performed at live art festivals in Manchester, England, and Sete, France. He is currently Artist-in-Residence for the city of Saint Paul, a program of Public Art Saint Paul.

Vonda Vaden Bates
Ensemble Facilitator
Vonda Vaden is a twenty year veteran in audience engagement and achievement advisement. Utilizing her experience with adult learning, audience response technologies, live event/theater/television production, and several transformation facilitation models she designs and delivers pattern shifting conferences, meetings, events and products. V Creative, her business and community brand for over sixteen years existed to ignite excellence in people and organizations. Just recently, she turned her talents toward 10th Dot, where she is Chief Executive Officer. 10th Dot offers a lifetime of learning to organizations and individuals responding to internal and external wake up calls.

Kathleen Maloney
Field Manager
Kathleen Maloney is an arts producer, collaborator, writer and program administrator with deep experience in the Twin Cities’ arts and non-profit community. She started her career as the first manager in the formative years of Zenon Dance Company. She then went on to several management and multidisciplinary production positions, including six years at Intermedia Arts. She delved into public affairs and policy as director of the Minnesota Alliance for Arts in Education and as interim manager of the Percent for Art program at the Minnesota State Arts Board. Maloney produces, writes about and embraces art in the public realm that helps to restore civility, peace and a sense of abundance. She believes in art as the practice of community engagement and an opening up of civic space. She is a member of Marcus Young’s studio of behavioral art called Grace MN.

Shen Pei
Collaborating Artist
Born in Nanjing, Shen Pei is a dance artist who has received the high honor of National Choreographer of the First Rank (China). In the U.S., Shen is former Artistic Director of CAAM Chinese Dance Theater where she served for 11 years. In 2005, the Children’s Theater Company produced The Monkey King, her adaptation of the Chinese epic classical novel. She has received the St. Paul Companies Leadership Initiative in the Neighborhoods award and two McKnight Choreographers Fellowships.

Mary Ellen Childs
Composer
Mary Ellen Childs has been acclaimed for creating exuberant instrumental works and kinetic compositions that integrate music, dance and theater. She has created work in public spaces both for her ensemble CRASH and New York’s “Art for the People” at Kennedy Airport. Mary Ellen has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Kitchen, the Walker Art Center, and Rockefeller Multi-Arts Fund. She has received two Bush Artist Fellowships, as well as fellowships from the McKnight Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board, and grants from the NEA, and Meet The Composer.

Peter Kramer
Architect
Principal Architect with Roark Kramer Kosowski/DESIGN, Peter Kramer is involved primarily nonprofit and community-based projects including moderate-cost housing, childcare centers and charter schools. He is also artist/author/publisher of several coloring books promoting color therapy and President and designer for OUCH! a folding furniture company.

Cody Anderson
Sound Engineer/Designer
Cody Anderson has worked as a sound engineer, designer, and installer of sound systems for 30 years. In live performance he has worked for Prince and Maxwell, Marc Anderson and Steve Tibbetts, Mary Ellen Childs’ CRASH and countless others. He was the sound engineer for the TimeZones international music festival in Bari, Italy for five seasons, and there he worked with dozens of world-class musicians including Robert Fripp, David Byrne, and Nusrat Ali Khan.

Christopher Baker
Audio Software Engineer
Christopher is an artist whose work engages the rich collection of social, technological and ideological networks present in the urban landscape. Baker creates artifacts and situations that reveal and generate relationships within and between these networks. Baker’s award-winning work has been presented at the Kitchen Budapest, Huset i Magstræde in Copenhagen, Denmark, the Minnesota Museum of American Artists, the Southern Theatre, the Minneapolis Fringe Festival, the Kinetic Kitchen Dance series, the Fallout Urban Art Center and the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art.

Angie Vo
Designer
Born in Vietnam with deep roots in Minnesota since the age of 3. Angie Vo is a freelance costume designer. She has been designing and creating costumes for modern dance companies in the Twin Cities for over ten years. Her interest in visual art, sculpture, textile and technical construction has led her on many exciting explorations and journeys through structure and form.

Aki Shibata-Pliner
Artistic Assistant
Aki Shibata is a multimedia artist from Japan. She came to the United States to study art. Her interests include teaching art to youth, making books, investigating sleep, private space and the corporate idea of identity. She has exhibited her works at Disco Girl Gallery (Tokyo), Brandon Museum (Fort Dodge, IA), Soap Factory, IFP Gallery, Northrup King Gallery, College of Visual Arts Gallery, and the office of the Mayor of St. Paul.

Travis Spangler
Artistic Assistant
Travis is a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana and a recent graduate of the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota. As an artist he uses a variety of techniques and materials, including photography, video, installation, and web, to explore this interplay of space, time and human connection. His work has been shown at IFP, the Soap Factory, and the College of Visual Arts, as well as at Huntington College in Huntington, Indiana and Columbia University in New York City.