Ecological City – Procession for Climate Solutions 2022

Site Performance Video Clips

Date: Saturday, May 14 (Rain Date May 15)

Time: 11am – 5pm – See Route and Schedule below

Start: 11am at Sixth Street Community Center

638 E. 6th Street (btw. Aves B & C) Lower East Side, NYC

Ecological City – Art & Climate Solutions Workshops – Videos

Ecological City Workshops 2022

Earth Celebrations’ ECOLOGICAL CITY 2022 PROMO VIDEO

11:50 PM – ECOLOGICAL CITY – OPENING CEREMONY

Earth Celebrations – 638 E. 6th St. btw. Aves B & C

GINGA PURA BAND (11AM-3PM)

Ginga Pura Director Glenn Healy is a versatile and experienced percussionist, drum set player, educator and bateria director. In addition to drumming in dozens of Rio de Janeiro carnival parades with top-tier samba school baterias, he has toured performing in 15 countries on four continents, and taught on three continents. Recordings include Romero Lubambo‘s award-winning Rio de Janeiro Underground album. Also long-time drummer of NYC’s Tom Clark & the High-Action Boys, and music consultant SideTime.com’s featured expert on Brazilian Percussion and Rhythms.

11:50 PM – 11th STREET EAST SIDE OUTSIDE GARDEN

11th St btw.1st Ave A.

“Party in The Compost” -FARM ARTS COLLECTIVE

CLIMATE SOLUTION: COMPOST

Farm Arts Collective performance ensemble is composed of performers, stilt walkers, farmers, playwrights, musicians, scientists, designers, and community members. The ensemble is deeply invested in performer training and collective performance creation centering on social and earth justice issues. In response to the 10-year window suggested by scientists for global climate change mitigation, the Farm Arts Collective ensemble will create a decalogue of climate crisis-themed performances in the years 2020-2030 entitled Dream on the Farm. Led by artistic director Tannis Kowalchuk, a theatre artist trained in the physical ensemble traditions of Barba (Odin Teatret) and Grotowski, Kowalchuk leads the collective’s play-making process while maintaining a weekly performer training research open to those interested in the practice of innovative performance creation.

12:00 PM – EL SOL BRILLANTE GARDEN

12th btw. Aves A & B.

“2022 Spring Trash Collection” -DANCE TO THE PEOPLE

CLIMATE SOLUTION: RECYCLING & UPCYCLING

Dance To The People (DTTP) directed by Mexican artist and activist Maira Duarte, is an evolving collective that champions non-hierarchical artistic exchange since 2015. DTTP makes art without waste that promotes the valuing of life and demands justice for Indigenous peoples, people of color, and the poor and working classes of the world, as for the stopping of the annihilation of natural systems. DTTP has created choreographed pieces and organized community forums, workshops, public practices, environmental movement research, and performance parties, all donation-based and open to the public. Most recent DTTP work has involved the development of public and participatory practices, called Trash Outings, as well as multiple choreographed street performances around trash and discarded materials. DTTP is currently working on Apocalitzin, a piece supported by the Queens Council on the Arts, to be premiered on May 28, 2022.

12:10PM – CHILDREN’S WORKSHOP SCHOOL

610 E. 12th St. btw. Aves B & C

“Climate Solutions” – NATE & HILA

CLIMATE SOLUTION: ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Nate & Hila (Hila the Killa and Nathan Dufour) are an artistic duo creating music videos and live shows about environmental philosophy and social justice. They’re based in NYC, and are closely associated with Brooklyn’s House of Yes, where they produced their live musical Naughty for Nature in 2020, which received write-ups in Billboard and Sierra Club Magazine. They’re currently collaborating on an eco-entertainment series called The Earth Show. Follow Nate and Hila at @nateandhila, and find their solo work at @nathanology_ and @hilathekilla.

12:20PM – CAMPOS GARDEN

12th St btw. Aves B & C

“Sustainable” – MINDY LEVOKOVE

In loving memory of STEVE DALACHINSKY (1946-2019)

CLIMATE SOLUTION: SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Steve Dalachinsky was a Poet & Collagist. He wrote poetry, haiku, music criticism, CD liner notes, travelogues & had a long running column: Outtakes in The Brooklyn Rail. His publications include The Final Nite: A Complete Notes from a Charles Gayle Notebook 1987-2006 (Ugly Duckling Presse); Superintendent’s Eyes (Autonomedia); Reaching Into The Unknown (RogueArt); Flying Home (Paris-Lit-Up); Fool’s Gold (Feral Press); Black Magic (New Feral Press); Where Night and Day become One (great weather for MEDIA) & others along w/ many collaboration CDs w/ musicians such as Matthew Shipp, Joëlle Léandres & The Snobs. He received the PEN Oakland National Book Award; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres; Acker Award; Kafka Award & Benjamin Franklin Award.

Mindy Levokove is an old friend of Steve and Yuko’s and honored to be reading Steve’s poem today. A multi-media performance poet, this year, Mindy has been awarded a Creative Engagement Grant in music from LMCC, for EXPANDING TABLE – A POP – (APART) – OPERA! A member of writing groups Brevitas and HERStories, Mindy also teaches qigong, Tai Chi, Writing and Math. For more than 20 years, Mindy’s been a member of the 6th Street and Avenue B Community Garden, where she often curates Poetry and Prose.

12:30PM – 9TH STREET COMMUNITY GARDEN

9th St NE cor. Ave C

Dance for Solar – Brian Moore

CLIMATE SOLUTION: SOLAR MICRO GRID

12:40PM – LA PLAZA CULTURAL DE ARMANDO PEREZ GARDEN

9th St & Ave. C SW cor.

“Birth of Climate Solutions” – ARMAND RUHLMAN, Orator

“Climate/Carbon Methane Blues” -FARM ARTS COLLECTIVE

“Story of Water” -GLOBAL WATER DANCES

CLIMATE SOLUTION: SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY CULTURE

Armand Ruhlman is the Director/Editor/Writer of short films including Downtown Shadows and The Dog and the Mistress, a documentary on Manda Dijon’s career with the Folies Bergere in Paris, and Une femme a Paris, both filmed on location. He is the Playwright of Downtown Theater Projects in NYC, Off-Off-Broadway plays, staged readings, and Downtown productions at various spaces including La Mama’s Galleria Space. He is a Writer of Fiction/Memoir and Performer in Spoken Word events and Art Installations. He is also a Narration/Voice-Over/Announcer artist behind various video projects and audio podcasts.

Farm Arts Collective (see bio above)

Dr. Martha Eddy, CMA, RSMT is a co-founder of Global Water Dances, which uses body consciousness to enhance our capacity to protect water and the planet. This organization sponsors a biennial worldwide environmental dance event that brings together over 180 sites on 6 continents. Martha also created Moving For Life Dance-Exercise for Health, first in NYC, which offers free movement and wellness classes in libraries, centers and hospitals in all five boroughs and throughout the world. Currently online, MFL seminars and classes attract older adults, and people of all ages in treatment or recovery from cancer. It is open to others dealing with chronic pain or illnesses. Martha leads movement choirs for conferences and brings Global Water Dances to environmental justice actions that focus on local or global issues. She is the author of Mindful Movement and Dynamic Embodiment of the Sun Salutation.

1:10PM – DE COLORES COMMUNITY YARD & GARDEN

8th St btw. Aves B & C

“A Song To Water” – ELIZABETH RUF MALDONADO

CLIMATE SOLUTION: BIOSWALE

Elizabeth Ruf Maldonado is a director, actor, writer, educator, and maker of socially engaged performances across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. With Karl Bateman she is a co-founder of the rock band The Head Peddlers. Their first album, BIG MOHAIR SWEATER, will be released in a few weeks. Elizabeth’s theater work has most recently been seen at Theater for the New City (TNC), at the Lee Strasberg Institute, and in NYC Community Gardens. She will direct and act in ROOM WITH STARS, a new play by Nina Howes that will open at TNC in June. She acted as music director and choreographer of “Live Free or Die” from Michael Shenker’s masterwork, A SQUATTER’S OPERA, performed at TNC. She is a professor at Boricua College and holds a Ph.D. in Theater from Columbia University. Her dissertation centers on the theater of Cuba, where she lived for a year. A member of the former ABC Garden and Co-Founder of De Colores Community Yard on East 8th Street, she has been collaborating with Earth Celebrations as the Community Spirit, Iris the Rainbow, and other roles since the early 1990s and is the mother of one of the Butterfly Children.

1:20PM – CARMEN PABON’S GARDEN

Ave C btw. 8th & 7th St. “Garden Ceremony” – CAROLYN RATCLIFFE, Gardener

CLIMATE SOLUTION: PERMEABLE PATHS

Carmen Pabon Del Amencer garden was named after Carmen Pabon who was known as the Little Mother Theresa of the Lower East Side for feeding the homeless. Her daughter Ines Pabon is President of the garden and Carolyn Ratcliffe is the treasurer.

1:30PM – GREEN OASIS GARDEN

8th Street btw. Aves C & D

“Monarch” – ART OF MOTION DANCE THEATRE

CLIMATE SOLUTION: POLLINATOR GARDEN

Lynn Needle/RYT 500 Founder/Artistic Director of Art of Motion, Inc. a non-profit conservatory and home to the Art of Motion Dance Theatre, toured to 6 out of 7 continents and more than 40 United States as a soloist with the Nikolais Dance Theatre. Needle is the recipient of numerous grants including: A Coastal Art Project grant; The Poseidon Project, funded by NOAA. DEP & NJCSA, an international Andrew W. Mellon Cultural Exchange Fund grant for a teaching residency in Mexico, the ACDFA National Dance Magazine Award for Choreography, The Harkness Foundation, Bergen County Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs, and the Northern New Jersey Community Foundation. Her work has been featured at the global TEDMED Conference at the Kennedy Center, Jacob’s Pillow, Art Festivals, Galas, Smithsonian Museums, Consulates, Zoos and sand dunes. Recognized by foundations, universities and press including Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Women’s Wear Daily, Washington Post, WSJ, Daily News, Dance Magazine and the Village Voice, Lynn is a recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Ridgewood Arts Foundation, Dance in the Desert Festival and has been featured on PBS, podcasts, and VR film.

1:50PM – EL JARDIN DEL PARAISO

4th St btw. Aves C & D

GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE

“Blubbering Belugas” – MARTA VI

“Song Seeds” – KATIE DOWN

CLIMATE SOLUTION: HEALING & WELLNESS

Grace Exhibition Space in the East Village is devoted exclusively to Performance Art. We offer an opportunity to experience visceral and challenging works by the current generation of international performance artists whether emerging, mid-career or established. Our events are presented on the floor, not on a stage, dissolving the boundary between artist and viewer. This is how performance art is meant to be experienced and our mission is the glorification of performance art.

Marta Vi is a self taught multi-media artist, choreographer, improvisational singer, and professional art therapist serving people with disabilities at AHRC. Working with recycled and natural materials in an effort to help solve the waste problem, she has collaborated with Earth Celebrations since its inception in 1991. Her worldwide group show “Organism” (1991) took place at the Mustard Factory in Williamsburg. She has worked on visual and performing arts projects with The Living Theater, Gargoyle Mechanic, and Knitting Factory. Most recently, her mask “The Kissing Bug” (2020) was shown at the Museum of New York City. She is also a leading creator of Loisada’s Garbagia Project, a multidisciplinary theater festival using waste/recycled materials.

Katie Down is a performer, composer, sound artist/designer and multi-instrumentalist. Originally a classically-trained flutist, Katie’s abiding interests are in the realms of sound art and Deep Listening as a way into musicking and artistic inquiry. Additional instruments include piano, ukulele, glass instruments, steel cello, various types of percussion including frame drums, doumbek, djembe, and other hand drums and voice. Katie’s sound designs have garnered her Drama Desk nominations and the award for best sound design from The Connecticut Critic’s Circle. Katie is the recipient of several grants, residencies, and commissions including the Mid-Atlantic fund, The Jerome Foundation, BAM, Watermill Artist Residencies, Chashama, Music Omi, and Meet the Composer, and performs with NewBorn Trio, Sofie Salonika, and The Ukuladies! Katie is an associate professor of Music Therapy at SUNY, New Paltz, and encourages her students to be agents for positive change by connecting to each other through music and sound.

2:00PM – PARQUE DE TRANQUILIDAD

4th St btw. Aves C & D

“Inhale” – WILLOW GATEWOOD

CLIMATE SOLUTION: CARBON SEQUESTRATION

Danville, VA-born Willow Grace is joined by sister Skye in making music about growth, grief, and exploration. Citing influences like Aurora, Cleo Sol, Florence + the Machine, and Woodkid, their style fuses delicate folk and nature-inspired sounds with electronic beats. They are pursuing a degree in Environment and Sustainability, and are always searching for new ways to use art and science to explore places, foster ecological consciousness, and deconstruct anthropocentric ways of understanding the world. Willow is currently working on their first official EP, ‘Evolve’, as well as projects like the biosonification of mushrooms and houseplants and place-based electronic instruments.

2:10PM – SAGE’S GARDEN

4th St btw Aves B & C

“Cycles” – ARTICHOKE DANCE COMPANY

“Speak Tree” – MARCIA NEWFIELD

CLIMATE SOLUTION: AIR FILTRATION

Marcia Newfield is a NYC writer, teacher, and activist. She is honored to write a poem for Earth Celebrations.

2:30PM – 6 & B COMMUNITY GARDEN

6th Street & Ave. B (SW corner)

“Cycles” – ARTICHOKE DANCE COMPANY

“Ngah izitchigay nibi ohnjay/I Will Do It For The Water” (Anishinabe)

“Bio-Remediation Song” – MINDY LEVOKOVE

CLIMATE SOLUTION: RAINWATER HARVESTING

Lee Taylor is a singer/songwriter based in New York City. Writing and performing in a wholly unique style, Lee dazzles audiences with her blues, jazz, pop and gospel. Her voice has been described as “distinctive” by legendary bassist Darryl Jones (The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis), “uncommon” by The Memphis Commercial Appeal, and as “a voice to cut diamonds” by The Canberra Times. Visit nibiwalk.org Lee Taylor is currently acting in Amerinda’s “The Trojan Women” through May 15th. She is performing at Brooklyn’s Barbes on June 2nd, The Atlantic on June 18th and The Django on June 23rd. Her single, “Wild Womxn Pussy Power” is available on Righteous Babe Records and her live album, “Wild Woman” is out on all streaming platforms.

Mindy Levokove (see bio above)

2:40PM – EARTH SCHOOL PS 364

6th Street btw. Aves B & C SE cor.

“Compost” – NATE & HILA KALUNGA NEG MAWON BAND (2:40PM-5PM)

CLIMATE SOLUTION: GREEN ROOF

In 1992, teachers in Manhattan’s East Village founded the Earth School on a dream: to create a peaceful, nurturing place to stimulate learning in all realms of child development, intellectual, social, emotional and physical. Visit the Earth School today and see how that dream has flourished. Today it is a thriving community of over 300 children in pre-kindergarten through grade 5 with a teaching staff dedicated to the founding values of hands-on exploration, an arts-rich curriculum, responsible stewardship of the Earth’s resources, harmonious resolution of conflict, and parent-teacher partnership.

Nate & Hila (see bio above)

Kalunga Neg Mawon is a musical ensemble whose mission is to preserve the African tradition and identity existing in Kisqueya Ayiti, known today as the Dominican Republic and the Republic of Haiti. We use the name, Kalunga, to highlight the Congolese cultural aspects retained in Dominican/Haitian culture and throughout the African diaspora in the Western Hemisphere. Kalunga is a goddess of the Congolese nation known also as the Muntu-Bantu or Bakongo. She is the universal cosmos, the “Big Bang” from which all life comes from, including the depths of the seas and oceans.

2:50PM – 6BC BOTANICAL GARDEN

6th. St btw. Aves B & C

“In the Garden of Diversity” – WILLOW GATEWOOD

CLIMATE SOLUTION: BIODIVERSITY

3:00PM – SIXTH STREET COMMUNITY CENTER

638 E. Street btw. Aves. B & C

“Pirates of the Plastic Sea” – Sixth Street Youth Program’s After School Kids.

CLIMATE SOLUTION: FOOD JUSTICE & ROOFTOP BEE FARM

Founded in 1978, Sixth Street Community Center (SSCC) is a community-based not-for-profit organization based in the heart of the Lower East Side. Having formed out of the historical sweat equity and homesteading movement, SSCC empowers the local community through grassroots organizing and power building. SSCC is committed to advancing social, environmental, housing, economic and racial justice– offering a number of community-based programs: a youth program, teen climate justice program, community-supported agriculture (CSA) program, emergency food distribution program, and a mutual aid kitchen project. Our students enrolled in the Sixth Street Youth Program will perform a play centering topics such as ocean pollution, corporations and their role in climate change, community building, and how to be caring stewards of our planet. Get ready to witness pirates working together with penguins and merpeople to clean our oceans!

3:45PM – EAST RIVER PARK WATERFRONT SITE 1

Site 1 near 12th Street

“Cycles” – ARTICHOKE DANCE COMPANY

“—how do you mourn a murdered tree?” – MARCIA NEWFIELD

EAST RIVER PARK HOMAGE

Steward of the River: East River Park Action

Artichoke Dance Company, directed by Lynn Neuman, works at the intersections of performance innovation, environmental activism, education, community building and civic engagement. The company is known for location-specific performances and hands-on upcycling workshops, particularly trashion, fashion made from trash. Artichoke Dance was featured in the Waterfront Alliance’s 2021 Art at the Blueline Festival and in the Cooper Hewitt Museum’s Design Triennial. For the last decade, their local work has centered on the Gowanus Canal with performances and interactive festivals. (Next up, a performance tour on June 25 and 26, 2022). This year the company began Artichoke Ambassadors, an education program mentoring the next generation of eco-artists. Ms. Neuman is a Marion International Fellow and an Association of Performing Arts Professionals Leadership Fellow and was recently featured in the podcast Climate Check. IG @ArtichokeDance

Marcia Newfield (see bio above)

Several Lower East Side residents started East River Park Action in June 2019 to demand a revised flood control plan that will not deprive our neighborhood of our glorious park for years. We were some of the founding members of East River Alliance in early 2019, an organization that decided to advocate responsible stewardship and accountability working with the new East Side Coastal Resiliency project. East River Park Action formed to express vocal opposition to the project when less destructive plans are possible.

4:00PM – EAST RIVER PARK WATERFRONT SITE 2

Site 2 BBQ area near 12th St

“The Opening” – OCTAVIA CUP DANCE THEATRE

COASTAL RESILIENCE

Steward of the River: East River Park Coalition Laura Victoria Ward, BA, CMA, RSME, is an award-winning choreographer, Laban Movement Analyst, teacher, and artist. She is the artistic director of Octavia Cup Dance Theatre (founded in 1998) and the Glam Rock Cabaret (2018). She is also a member of the punk rock band the Dick Pinchers.

East River Park Coalition is a dynamic group of local artists, organizations and community members who realize the immense value of East River Park to New York City. Together, East River Park Coalition is working to raise awareness of the park as a vital link to the East River waterfront and a free multi-use public space for the densely populated Lower East Side. Working in and beyond the park, we are reaching out to local youth, the creative community and citizens groups to design enlightening activities and share knowledge about this park’s unique history and potential.

4:00PM – EAST RIVER PARK WATERFRONT SITE 3

Site 2 BBQ area near 12th St

“The Opening” – OCTAVIA CUP DANCE THEATRE

COASTAL RESILIENCE

Steward of the River: East River Park Coalition

Laura Victoria Ward, BA, CMA, RSME, is an award-winning choreographer, Laban Movement Analyst, teacher, and artist. She is the artistic director of Octavia Cup Dance Theatre (founded in 1998) and the Glam Rock Cabaret (2018). She is also a member of the punk rock band the Dick Pinchers.

4:30PM – EAST RIVER PARK WATERFRONT SITE 4

Site 4 near 8th St btw. ball field & track

“Oblivion- Astor Piazzolla” Violin- RAINA ARNETT & ELAINE HE

GLOBAL WATER DANCES

WETLANDS BUFFERING SEA RISE

Stewards of the River: Lower East Side Ecology Center & Waterfront Alliance

Violinist Raina Arnett is a masters student at the Juilliard School, where she studies with Lewis Kaplan as his teaching assistant. Passionate about contemporary music, Raina has collaborated with composers such as Kaija Saariaho, Charles Wuorinen, and George Lewis and has performed chamber music with members of Ensemble Modern, Bang on a Can All-Stars, and Eighth Blackbird. She is also a founding member of the Glass Clouds Ensemble. This group formed out of a mutual desire to connect meaningfully with local environmental issues through contemporary music and improvisation, with a mission to amplify the message of New York Area climate leaders through the commission, performance, and promotion of new music for chamber ensemble. Recently, Raina performed with Ensemble Signal at Carnegie Hall and looks forward to performing with the Grafenegg Academy Orchestra in Austria this summer, as well as at the Bach Virtuosi Festival in Maine. Raina will be moving to London in the fall to join the Southbank Sinfonia as a recipient of one of their violin fellowships.

Violinist Elaine He is a graduate student at the Juilliard School, under the tutelage of Catherine Cho and Lewis Kaplan. As a prizewinning violinist, He has been invited to perform in the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, the Perlman Music Program, IMS Prussia Cove in England, United Nations Chamber Music Concerts, and so on. He is a co-founder of NEOM, which is a project that collaborates with artists in different fields to present multidisciplinary performances on the topic of environmental damages caused by the fast fashion industry. Elaine will be starting her doctoral studies at Manhattan School of Music this coming fall. www.Instagram.com/project.neom

Global Water Dances (see bio above)

The LES Ecology Center has pioneered community-based models in urban sustainability since 1987. We provide unique e-waste and composting services, environmental stewardship opportunities, and educational programming to all New Yorkers who want to learn about environmental issues and take responsibility for creating solutions through action.

The Waterfront Alliance began as a project of The Municipal Art Society of New York. It became an independent organization in 2007 when a group of leading activists, businesses, foundations, and civic organizations came together with the goal of making the New York and New Jersey harbor a shared, resilient, and accessible resource for all. Since then, the Waterfront Alliance has grown into a coalition of more than 1,100 organizations working together to bring about real change to our region’s waterways and 700 miles of shoreline.

4:45PM – EAST RIVER PARK WATERFRONT SITE 5

Site 5 near 6th St rocky shoreline

“Shakti” – ART OF MOTION DANCE THEATRE- LYN NEEDLE

OYSTERS & RIVER CLEANSING

Bio-Remediation Sculpture Offering by Dee Maucher – MOS Collective

DEE DEE MAUCHER – MoS COLLECTIVE DEE DEE is an investigator solutionist at the Masters of Succession Collective (MoS), where we invent lifestyles that leave a better trace and a spiral of serendipities — instead of degradation. As a multidisciplinary artist, last year she exhibited MoS Collective’s regenerative pathfinding work as a pedagogy called “Microbes to Metropolis”. It is a 6-step experiential process with art, performative expression, imaginative activities & hands on maker space for bioremediation. Also, MoS is home of the EM-1 beneficial mud balls. (EM-1 is an effective microorganism inoculant that cleans water) with science consultant, Shig Matsukawa. Dee Dee has introduced the mudballs at a TedX talk, taught mycoremediation at NYU Gallatin, Parsons/New School, LES grade schools and 7 Figments with the collective. As a Creative Director for corporate clients, Dee Dee has designed ecological lifestyle systems complete with branding: such as a living tree house at Sony music, a revitalization plan for Lake Anne Village, “restorative eco systems” for merchants & 6th St Community Center. She “accumulates” to grow and to make sculptures & costumes restorative. As a performance maker, she embodies movement stories through Butoh, with Maureen Fleming she studied. She is passionate about helping people manifest their creative regenerative projects. In succession we become in relationship as symbiotic networks that lengthen healthy supply chains and resource flows so we can be a better circular spiraling co-creation w the forces of nature not against them. She has a PDC from the Center for Bioregional Living, BFA Syracuse Ad Design & Media arts. Currently, MoS Collective needs your help to activate YOUR diverse lifestyle offering that will set in motion an abundance cascade for our outside and virtual plazas. She is partnering with Earth Celebrations’ Ecological City to accumulate, make, grow and install this bioremediating floating sculpture (BFS), consultation by Paul Mankiewicz, Ph.D., a restorative culture activity. A lifestyle design that creates the by-product of the beneficial succession of air, water, soil and selves. Moscollective.net @mos_collective

STEWARDS OF THE EAST RIVER PARK – Gaia Institute- Paul Mankeiwicz & Friends of Corlears Hook Park – Donald Harley

THE GAIA INSTITUTE is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation. Our work couples ecological engineering and restoration with the integration of human communities in natural systems. While much environmental engineering has the worthy aim of minimizing harm, the Gaia Institute explores, through research and development, design and construction, how human activities and waste products can be treated to increase ecological productivity, biodiversity, environmental quality, and economic well-being. The purpose of The Gaia Institute is to test through demonstration the means by which the ecological components of backyards, communities, towns and cities, as well as watersheds and estuaries, can be enhanced through integrated wastes-into-resources technologies. Thegaiainstitute.org

Visual Artist Bios 2022

ECOLOGICAL CITY: Art & Climate Solutions Action Project is a collaborative art & environmental action project directed by Felicia Young, Founder/Director of Earth Celebrations, in collaboration with over 50 community partners, gardeners, artists, residents and youth.

EARTH CELEBRATIONS is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 on the Lower East Side of New York City to mobilize environmental action through the arts. Earth Celebrations has pioneered effective cultural strategies to build community, collaboration and action for ecological, policy and social change. https://www.earthcelebrations.com

FELICIA YOUNG, DIRECTORfounded Earth Celebrations, as a non-profit organization on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1991 to engage communities to generate ecological and social change through the arts. She has developed cultural strategies to build community, collaboration and action on environmental issues: climate change, garden preservation, river restoration, water quality, and the preservation of parks, gardens and a healthy urban environment. Projects include: Save Our Gardens (1991-2005) which built a local Lower East Side and then citywide grassroots coalition effort and led to the preservation of hundreds of community gardens in New York City. The Hudson River Pageant (2009-2012) was a collaborative art project to engage the community in the restoration efforts of the Hudson River estuary and revitalization of the waterfront in downtown Manhattan. The Vaigai River Restoration Project (2014-2016) applied this model to build an international collaborative effort in the city of Madurai, South India to restore the sacred Vaigai River, which is in a severe crisis due to pollution and the drying effects of climate change. Ecological City – Cultural & Climate Solutions Action Project was launched as an ongoing program from 2018 – Present. Felicia has produced projects for Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts, Arts>World Financial Center, The Alternative Museum, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and The Hudson River Park Trust and engaged numerous organizations, schools and community service centers to collaborate on these efforts. These projects have received awards and grants including: LMCC-Fund for Creative Community / Manhattan Community Art Fund, DCA-Public Service Award, Threshold Foundation- Arts & Social Change, Puffin Foundation, Hudson River Foundation and International Women’s Caucus on the Arts to the UN-Artistic Activism Award 2017. She has also developed a course, Art, Ecology and Community for Princeton University. Felicia has a BA in Art History from Skidmore College and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University. http://earthcelebrations.com/about-felicia-young/earthcelebrations.com

LUCRECIA NOVOA, PUPPET DESIGN & WORKSHOP INSTRUCTOR
Lucrecia Novoa is a visual artist and Cultural Educator. Founder and Director of Mascara Viva. She uses a combination of masks, costumes, storytelling and dance to interpret the folk traditions of many cultures. She is interested in bringing mythical and legendary beings to life. She studied sculpture and textiles at the University of Chile (1981- 1988) and sculpture and ceramics at Massachusetts College of Art (1990-1991). She later completed an apprenticeship in puppets and masks at Behind the Mask Studio in Cambridge, MA (1997-2000). She visits schools and senior centers, performing her giant puppets at the Bronx Botanical Garden, exhibiting in galleries, participating in collaborative projects and taking commissions. She is a Board Advisor for Expressiones Cultural Center Inc, New London, CT and participated as a Curator and Juror at XVIII Bienal Sculpture and Ceramic (2019). She has been the puppet director for Ecological City since 2004, using visual arts to educate around environmental problems and the need to collaborate as a community to take action for ecological and social change.

SOULE GOLDEN, COSTUME DESIGN & WORKSHOP INSTRUCTOR
Soule Golden is a costume designer & collaborative, multi-media artist interested in sustainability and anti-racism, new voices, re-imagined classics, and family drama. She holds an M.F.A. in design from Yale School of Drama and a Bachelor’s degree in Textiles and Apparel Design from Cornell University. She has worked with the Joffrey Ballet, Santa Fe Opera, & Yale Repertory Theater, as well as a fabric painter and dyer on Broadway and Film. Upcoming projects are Epic Theater Ensemble’s 2022 Remix of Measure for Measure & King John for Shakespeare on the Sound.

KATHERINE FREYGANG, MOBILE MURAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
Katherine Freygang celebrates ecological relationships with art, events, and environmental design. Formerly an educator/designer for Yale Peabody Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, New School and City College, she now focuses on Sustainability with Reed College, Hathaway Brown School and RISD. She is currently developing projects to promote sustainability and resilience with Sustainable CT, CT Dept. of Energy and Environmental Protection, Cornwall’s Conservation Commission and Trust, the Southern New England UCC Environmental Ministry Team, and Earth Celebrations.

KATHY CREUTZBURG, BIOARTS DESIGN & WORKSHOP INSTRUCTOR
Kathy Creutzburg is a public artist whose sculptures, mosaics, and paintings are inspired by landscapes. Between 2018- 2020, the collaborative team including Natalia Lesniak, Mirabai Kwan Yin, and Ms. Creutzburg won numerous grants and residencies for their sculptural installation, Whispers in the Grove, and Ballad of Cyclic Change. Exhibits include Figment NYC- “Dream Bigger” award, Governors Island; Phillips Manor Hall residency, Yonkers- NYS Council on the Arts; 6BC Botanical Garden and Lower East Side Ecology Center- Lower Manhattan Cultural Council- Creative Engagement award; and the Rye Art Center Public Art Program, Rye, NY. In 2018, Ms. Creutzburg was privately commissioned to create a glass mosaic on an East Village residential building. Mirabai Kwan Yin and Ms. Creutzburg collaborated on Triangula, a sculpture for the 2017 Chashama Gala. In 2016, Ms. Creutzburg’s steel sculpture work was commissioned for the UUA Peace Memorial Garden in Raleigh, North Carolina. She also designed and facilitated a PSUMC mural in Park Slope, Brooklyn. A NYC School Construction Authority grant made her sculptures, mosaics, and murals at Public School 61 in Manhattan permanent in 2014. She exhibited monumental sculptures in the “Figment Summer Long Sculpture Garden” on Soldier’s Field, Governors Island for three consecutive years, 2012-214, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been shown in solo exhibits at Michael Mut Gallery and at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and group shows at Station Independent Gallery and Central Booking in New York City.

DEE DEE MAUCHER, BIO-REMEDIATION ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
Lead Artist on the Ecological City Gaia Sculpture: DD makes a Floating Bioremediating Sculpture for Ecological City Pageant (5th yr). Through cultivating a lifestyle of Bioremediation & Symbiosis (LoBS) she collects by-products to create an ecosystem sculpture that also helps the water. She works in design, branding & regenerative planning for wellness. She brings us closer toward creating by-products of beneficial succession for better water, air, soil & selves. The MoS Collective was formed for this purpose in 2010. Since then this group of artists, scientists, regenerative planners have created experiential offerings in many places. DD has been artist in residence Grace Exhibition Space, Campos Community Garden, taught at NYU Gallatin, Parsons School of Design/New School’s Sustainable Systems classes, speaker TedX City 2.0 and Two Row Camp with Seedball US. With MoS cohorts we have engaged community at The Plaza of the MôS Plaza of the Wind at Grace Exhibition Space, East VIllage Wellness Circle, Martha Eddy’s Studio 55C, most often at El Jardin & Campos garden community gardens, New Museum Ideas City, Annual Figment Project, Mary Mattingly’s SWALE, Earth School, NYC watershed camps, Hell’s Kitchen Commons, with Waterfront Alliance City of Water Day, Annual LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival & Spring Awakening, Loisaida Center, Festival & many more events throughout New York City and beyond.

MICHELE BRODY, ECOLOGICAL CITY VISUAL ART & COSTUMES
Michele Brody has worked with Earth Celebrations on costumes and workshops since 2009 for the Hudson River Pageant projects, where she presented the growing of the river grass skirts for the pageant as part of an exhibition at Brookfield Properties/Arts< World Financial Center. She is a visual ecological artist creating public art, ephemeral installations and living sculptures, as well as participatory rituals and community-engaged performances. Her works are made from natural and organic materials including seed, grass, bamboo, hand-made paper, and fiber. Michele has had one-person shows at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Chashama 461 Gallery, Arts>World Financial Center-Winter Garden and internationally in Germany, Costa Rica and France. She received grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council-MCAF, Pollack Krasner Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Puffin Foundation, Bronx Council on the Arts, 2015 Community Arts and Arts Fund Grants, Bronx, NY. Her public art installations include Bamboo Teahouse for the Bronx, Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx and 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 Arts Institute of Chicago in 1994.

Production Credits 2022

MANON MANAVIT, PRODUCTION COORDINATOR
Manon Manavit (BFA Université Concordia, MFA CalArts) is an interdisciplinary arts & culture producer based in NYC guided by the principles of environmental sustainability. She curates performance events that activate historic sites, engage urban oddities, and complement the outdoors. She is committed to a decalogue of plays about climate change from 2020-2030 with Farm Arts Collective, an agri-cultural hub whose outdoor performances take place on a “boundless stage lined with hydrangeas.” (NY TIMES) Her plays for specific sites have been performed at the Historic Cliveden Estate, German Society of Pennsylvania, and 1875 Old Arlington Hotel in Narrowsburg, NY. She has created performance installations for the Higher Ground Festival, Deep Water Literary Festival, Autry Museum of the American West, Little Berlin Gallery, ENGN Civic Creative Center, Slought Foundation, Philadelphia Freedom Festival, Chinua Achebe Center, and consulted for the North American Cultural Laboratory, LA Opera, Capitol Records, Rock Mafia Studios, and The Wooster Group. @manonmanavit_art

WORKSHOP LEADERS
Pedro Alomar, Jon Fields, Rosa Velez

EARTH CELEBRATIONS INTERN TEAM
Adrian Beyer, Lorenzo Brondi, Zoe Carr, Madeleine Cesaretti, Olivia Gilbert, Eva Lin, Elena Rubenstein, Anna Schaidler, Natalia Scheinfeld, Maggie Stutz, Jinghui Wang, Sophie Wilkes, Sarah Yang

COSTUME PERFORMERS
Pedro Alomar, Solal Azoulay, Dorothee Baumann, Ana Leon Bella, Isabella Beydoun, Kiki Black, Nancy Bommer, Christine Buffolino, Caroline Crawford, Kathy Creutzburg, Dawn DeLuca, Martha Eddy, Brett Edelstein, Bob Gilbert, Lizan Gilbert, Olivia Gilbert, Soule Golden, Vilma Gonzalez, Amanda Hamm, Melissa Hampton, Raya Harris, Theresa Herron, Luqi Jiang, Iva Kaufman, Hasan Khan, Lenny Klehr, Claudio Laniado, Kensey LaReau, Yishan Lee, Alex Megevand, Mathias Megevand, Nikki Morris, Lucrecia Novoa, Lucy Shulamit Passaro, Andi Pei, Maria Pulido-Velosa, Leslie Riddle, Jimena Salinas, Mariana Salinas, Leah Salmorin, Becky Shuman, Dafna Soltes Stein, Dorothy Stepnowska, Carol Sterling, Thomas Sullivan, Rosa Velez, Susana Velez, Patti Moss Vernam, Gaby Vivas, Marlene Wulf, Vicky Xu, Sarah Yang, Sanjana Yasna, Xi Zhu

PUPPET PERFORMERS
Rhiannon Adames, Nicolette Barsamiann, David Bell, Jacob Buckner, Angela Chack, Preston Coffin, Shadenia Davis, Afi French, Gita Ines, Gina Kropf, Hope Li, Phillipe Noel, Ruike Pan, Turner Roth, Dimitri Saari, Ben Shepard, Jude Washock

MARSHALS
Adrian Beyer, Lorenzo Brondi, Michele Brody, Zoe Carr, Madeleine Cesaretti, Todd Fernandez, Katie Freygang, Sue Guest, Louis Kleinman, Solene Luttway, Manon Manavit, Elaine Matthews, William Mikayelylan, David Nieves, Allie Ryan, Anna Schaidler, Maggie Stutz, Rick Vazquez, Jinghui Wang, Hannah Wargo, Sophie Wilkes, Mal Woolley, Felicia Young

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EARTH CELEBRATIONS COSTUMES
Michele Brody with Rosa & Pedro and Earth Celebrations’ volunteers, Soule Golden, Irina Kruzilina, Nikki Traino

EARTH CELEBRATIONS PUPPETS
Lucrecia Novoa, Dimitri Saari (Trash Trickster Puppet)

BIO-REMEDIATION GAIA SCULPTURE
Dee Dee Maucher/MOS Collective

BIOARTS
Kathy Creutzburg (Mycelium, Kombucha Leather)

EAST RIVER PARK MEMORY MURAL is a collaborative community painting project led by artist-in-residence Katherine Freygang in collaboration with partners Lower East Side Ecology Center, University Settlement After-School at East Side Community School, and Henry Street Settlement with Jacob Riis Cornerstone and Boys & Girls Republic. The murals are displayed on garden fences including La Plaza Cultural Garden (9th St. Ave C – SW cor.). Project assistants: Madeleine Cesaretti, Anna Schaidler, Zoe Carr.

SOUND
Jumping Entertainment (Paolo Lanna & Jon Fields)

PHOTOGRAPHERS
Rachel Elkind, John Eng, Mafe Alizo, Derek Berg

VIDEOGRAPHERS
Dave Fasano, Rose Knopper, Rey Then, Eva Lin

IN-KIND DONORS
Revolution Rickshaws, Trader Joe’s, Two Boots Pizza, 4th Street Food Co-Op, Materials for the Arts – NYC Department of Cultural Affairs & NYC Department of Sanitation