EARTH CELEBRATIONS HUDSON RIVER PAGEANT
Felicia Young: Founder and Executive Director, conceives, designs, directs, and produces the Hudson River Pageant Project and oversees implementation, of this new project she founded and directed in 2009. In addition to founding Earth Celebrations in 1991, Felicia as a Theatrical Pageant Director and Community Cultural Development Artist, has produced large-scale environmental and cultural pageants, parades, workshops, and events for the past 20 years for numerous venues including: The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Lincoln Center For The Performing Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, World Trade Center, World Financial Center, Port Authority of NY/NJ, New York University, Abrons Arts Center, Earth Day New York, Alternative Museum, The Open Center, and Cathedral of St. John the Divine.. She has also worked as a Pageant Director, for artist, Phyllis Yampolsky’s Festivals to Save McCaren Pool, 1990-1993, Williamsburg/Greenpoint, Brooklyn; a Production Coordinator, for artist Miralda’s Honeymoon Project, World Financial Center, 1992; and a Pageant Director for composer/artist Charlie Morrow’s The Urban Harvest Parade, Union Square to Soho, September 1991, Solstice Parade, in Battery Park, 1989. She created the Recycle the Trash Monster, Exhibit and Ritual Performance for Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, at the World Trade Center 1991 & 1992, and for the Earth Day Parade, Times Square, New York City, April 1990 and Earth Day-Parade for the Planet, Sixth Avenue, in 1995. She is the Founder of the first Ecofest, for The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, September 1989 and Day of the Dead Candlelight Procession, Alternative Museum, NYC, November 1988 & 1990. She directed the One World Parade, Yomoma Arts Festival, Cathedral of St. John The Divine, NYC, September 1988. Felicia has a BA in Art History from Skidmore College, and a MA degree in Performance Studies from New York University.
Lucrecia Novoa: Artist-in-Residence/Puppet Workshop-Hudson River Estuary, Oyster, Fish, Blue Crab, Sea Horse: Lucrecia Novoa conducts the puppet workshops for teen and adults, March – May. She is an experienced mask-maker, puppet builder, performer, and arts instructor, who has featured received numerous awards and residencies in New York City and Chile. She as an MA from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, 1983-1988, and a BA in Fine Arts from University of Chile, Santiago, Chile. She conducts mask-/puppet workshops through Studio in a School, New York City; Edison School, Portchester, NY; Carver Center, RAIN and SEBCO Senior Centers . Exhibitions include: Latin Views Exhibit, Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art, University of Ct (2008), and Material Culture Exhibit, Longwood Art Gallery, Hostos College, Bronx, NY (2007). http://www.lucrecianovoa.spaces.live.com
Irina Kruzhilina: Irina Kruzhilina is a New York-based internationally acclaimed designer, artist, and educator. Her work has been shown all over the world, from BAM to the Russian Drama Theatre in Baku, Azerbaijan, and from Fischer Center for the Performing Arts to the National Theatre in Prague and a floating barge on the east river in NewYork City. Irina has designed for theatre, dance, opera, and puppetry, with notable collaborators including David Chambers, Doug Fitch, Ruth Margraff, DNA works, and Mabou Mines. Irina is the recipient of the 2007 NEA/TCG Career Development Program For Theatre Designers and a Chashama resident. www.irinakruzhilina.com
Michele Brody: Costumes-River Grass Skirts, Elemental Energies, Oyster, Oyster Toadfish, Diamond Back Terrapin, American Eel, Blue Crab, and the Seahorse: Michele Brody, will work with our participants to create a series of river grasses skirts, and living/growing costumes. Her work includes public art, ephemeral installations, and living sculptures, with glass, concrete, steel, copper pipe, fabric, hand-made paper, light, water, and growing plants. Michele has had one-person shows in Germany, Costa Rica, France and New York City. She received grants from the Pollack Krasner Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts. In the Spring of 2006 she completed 2 permanent public installations in the Bronx, for the MTA Arts for Transit Program and through the Public Arts for Public Schools Program. She has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College 1989 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. http://www.michelebrody.com
Chris Rumery: Artist In-Residence/ Costume Workshop: Costumes-Recyclers & Trash Tricksters: Chris Rumery is a New York based costume designer for stage and film. She graduated with her MFA for costume design form NYU Tisch. In the spring of 2008, she spent 4 months traveling around Taiwan working in various cities and remote villages on parades, and loved the experience.
Janet Morgan: Artist-in-Residence/ Stewards of the River Robes: Janet Morgan has been artist-in-residence in Death Valley National Park, Weir Farm National History Site in Connecticut, and the Omega Institute in New York. She worked for 18 years as an Expressive Arts Therapist at Sloan Kettering with adult cancer patients, and is now a full time artist. She has exhibited at the Kyrgyzstan National Museum of Art in Central Asia, the Microcosm Gallery in New York City, the Tabla Rasa Gallery and the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center in Brooklyn. Her art has been on stage at Omega’s Women and Power Conference and in the Kostume Kult Theme Camp at the Burning Man Festival. She has just completed a children’s book called Welcome to Death Valley http://www.janetmorgan.net
Katherine Freygang: Artist-in-Residence /Banners: Katherine Freygang studies and celebrates ecological relationships in art, events, exhibition design, architecture, and poetry. She works as an activist/educator in Connecticut and an artist/designer in New York; and is currently developing projects with Connecticut Innovations, Clean Water Action, Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, Connecticut’s UCC Congregational Environmental Ministry Team, Cornwall Energy Task Force, and Earth Celebrations.
Becky Hubbert: Artist-in-Residence/Recycled River Maiden Costumes: Becky Hubbert is a professional costume designer and stylist for theatre, film and television who lives and works in New York City. She is a member of the Francis Ethel Gumm Memorial Player
Spica Wobbe (Shu-yun Cheng): Artist-in-Residence / Puppet Workshop-Jelly Fish Puppet & Hudson River Water Nymph Costume: Spica Wobbe (Shu-yun Cheng) is an independent puppetry artist from Taiwan. She worked with Shiny Shoes Children’s Theater in Taiwan since 1991 as a producer, writer, designer and puppeteer. Her work has been seen in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Germany, and Holland. Now based in NYC, she is also a teaching artist for New Victory Theatre. She has worked and studied with master puppeteers Damiet van Dalsum (Holland), Albrecht Roser (Germany), Peter Schumann and Ralph Lee (U.S.) http://www.spicawobe.com
Scott Partlow: Frozen Sculpture of the Glaciers- the sculpture representing the melting glaciers is sculpted from a solid block of ice and fused with frozen river water forms that are colored with natural pigments extracted from fruits, vegetable, and plants. It rides on a cart throughout the parade, and drips its pigments from the earth, onto a canvas covering, and melts back into the river for the closing ceremony. Scott is a sculptor specializing in abstract shapes, organic and sensual forms found in nature, as well as realism and the human figure. He works in wood, stone and metal. Partlow’s abstract sculptures have a primal presence evoking universal shapes and forms, that create their own symbolic language. His interest and exploration in archeology and the cultures of pre-columbian Mexico and Native American Indians, as well as his collection of stones, arrowheads, skulls, and bones, continue to inform his sculpture. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and has been included in shows at Cooper Classics in New York City, Guild Hall in East Hampton, and the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York. Collections include: Leo Castelli, Mary Boone, Steven Tyler, Dave Mathews, Warren Zevon and Betty Johnson. His wearable ebony sculptures are represented through Donna Karan/Urban Zen. http://www.scottparlow.com
Mark Skelly: as “Horus The Falcon” is a Costume Designer performance artist and photographer who has contributed costume characters for The NYC Village Halloween Parade, Sinterklaas in Rhinebeck, The Coney Island Mermaid Parade and The Hudson River Pageant. His most recent photographs have been exhibited in the Hell’s Kitchen Artists Festival and are currently inaugurating Showtime Network’s new corporate photo gallery. Contact: markskellyonline@verizon.net.