ARTISTS

Click on the artists' names to go to their websites and follow their preparations for the event.

Lee Zimmerman is a silk painter who has exhibited his works in New Orleans, Minneapolis, Duluth and Santa Fe. He has performed large scale (8' by 4' minimum) live silk paintings numerous times, often as part of symphony orchestra concerts. Lee also did the magical paintings nightly during the Duluth Playhouse's presentation of "the Secret Garden". Lee's work made the garden come to life nightly by painting five large silk paintings throughout each performance. The effort made for the one of the most spectacular shows the Playhouse has ever done. On October 23rd, at BRAVE, the audience will witness Lee perform is largest work to date when he paints live on a 30 foot piece of silk suspended from the ceiling of the Clyde Ironworks great hall. Lee will be propelled up and down while painting to a backdrop of beautiful music.

Kathy McTavish is a composer/free-style cellist. She uses chance and generative/organic forms to create everything from sparse, minimalist spaces to dense, orchestral landscapes and performs in venues from streetscapes to concert halls. Kathy's performance will provide the backdrop to Lee's painting, and also to the poetry and speakers of the evening. Kathy and Lee performed together recently at the Playground to a standing room only house.

Karen McTavish is an award winning longarm quilter whose method of quilting is known nationwide as "mctavishing". Karen's has won over fifty national and internation awards for her heirloom quilts. Karen will be taking the final silk painting completed that night, and turning them into absolute masterpiece quilts to be auctioned off prior to and during the event.  

Sheila Packa is Duluth's Poet Laureate for 2010-2012. Her book of poems, The Mother Tongue, (Calyx Press, 2007) received recognition at the Northeast Minnesota Book Awards. Sheila does spoken word/poetry performances and has received two Loft McKnight Fellowships and two Arrowhead Regional Arts Council fellowships for her work.  
"Packa's work is as earthy and gritty as the North Country that informs it....She writes in the vein of Tillie Olson or Willa Cather, a poetic style into which she incorporates that strength of the immigrant woman....She uses the strength drawn from the natural world to express an intimate femininity." --Beth L. Virtanen, PhD

Linda LeGarde Grover is a member of the Bois Forte Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe in northern Minnesota. She is on the American Indian Studies faculty at the University of Minnesota Duluth, and has published poetry, prose, short stories, historical research, and co-authored A Childhood in Minnesota, a children’s family history guide. Her chapbook THE.INDIAN.AT.INDIAN.SCHOOL was the 2008 selection or the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Sequoyah Research Center Native Writers Series. Her book The Dance Boots was recently published by the University of Georgia Press, and has received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her research interests interest the 20th century American Indian experience as well as Indian education, particularly the boarding school experience and its effects of traditional education and Native families and communities. She is a traditional Ojibwe pow-wow dancer and storyteller, and seeks to both educate non-Indian people about Indian history and tradition as well as to encourage Indian people of all ages to learn about and continue the traditions that have been the foundation of our survival as a people.

Tera Freese lives in the woods of northeastern Minnesota with her husband, Paul, and two daughters, Maria and Scarlet. She is trying to teach herself and her children to live simply, mindfully and joyfully.