Conversations from the Barn

Con Davison is a songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist living in St Paul, MN, and is a member of the band Bad Bad Hats. Originally from Austin, Texas, Davison moved to Minnesota hoping to get away from an orchestral music degree and put the drums away for a while, an escape that only lasted as long as the 17 hour drive up I-35. Surrounded and supported by an amazing community of artists and musicians, Con has found a place for himself in the Twin Cities music scene as a jack of all trades with a sound that is all his own. He loves tacos, sleeping outside and playing with his two dogs.

Allegra was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, raised in Lexington, KY, and currently lives and works in Minneapolis, MN as a freelance illustrator, designer, and muralist. She received her BFA from MCAD in Fine Arts Studio in 2010, and since then has worked with both commercial and nonprofit clients. Recent clients include: Starbucks, Mondelez International, Google, Target, Penguin Random House, Buzzfeed, Eater, The Verge, The Globe and Mail Canada, AARP, and The Walker Art Center. Outside of her client-focused practice she maintains a fine arts painting practice.

Kate creates visual artwork that is grounded in the processing of experiences. Nature, wilderness, and organic materials are sources of inspiration as well as mediums for creation. Her work results in three-dimensional, complex, layered, and visceral forms. Her work often draws upon the totality of experiences found in the connection of mind, body, and spirit.

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.

Our first 2020 recipient of the Aspiring Artists Fund is Olivia Willett. Olivia is the Choir Director at Osceola Middle and High School and her application sought to expand the depth of her choral library with sheet music from composers diverse in race, gender and age. She explained, "because music is the expression of the human experience through sound, everyone who is touched by music should be able to see a representation of themselves in the music and find ways to connect to it."

Kate is a Creative Director and Designer specializing in environmental, exhibit, and stage design for both live events and permanent installations. At the time of this conversation, she is finishing a week in the Artist Retreat with long-time collaborator and director Peter Rothstein. We talk about what it feels like to create in the barn, as well as her connection to nature and beauty. 

Peter works extensively as a director of theater, musical theater, opera and new work development. He is the Founding Artistic Director of Theater Latté Da, a Twin Cities-based company dedicated to adventurous music-theater. We've had the good fortune of producing two Latté Da shows at Everwood, "All Is Calm - The Christmas Truce of 1914" and "Underneath the Lintel" with the amazing Sally Wingert. Recorded at the end of his time on the farm, listen in on our conversation about the new work he and collaborator Kate Sutton-Johnson have been working on, the good and hard challenges of these days, and the power of nature.

In 2019, we met Christopher Thomson when he performed with S. Carey during Everwood's summer Artist Series. We were delighted that he applied for an Artist Retreat in 2020. For seven days, all of us on the farm have enjoyed the beautiful saxophones floating from the barn. He's been combining digital music with his acoustic instruments to beautiful effect. S. Carey even popped in from Eau Claire to create with him for a day. 

Recorded at the end of his time on the farm, listen in our our conversation about his journey back to woodwind instruments after a bicycle accident, and the realities of social-distancing as an artist in these challenging times.