Fringe Artist Bios

J. Aaron Alderman "It is the human condition that intrigues me the most. The ineffable quality of human emotion. To express what can not be found in words but only through the language of art. Use of paint gives rise to peripheral sight of mind and steel to mirror our own mortality. The velvety oxidation for want of skin but to the touch brings visceral reality. Finding strength and energy in life and nature at its purest form. Spending quiet times amongst the rock, dirt and leaves so that I may translate those vignettes to paint and steel in hope the the mind shall be silent and all is almost quiet enough to hear a whisper."

Stina Andersen, visionary artist, creates sculptural installations, within these spaces she curates & performs ritual, dance, and storytelling shows that involve collaborations with the audience. She seeks through a variety of mediums to reenchant our experience with art making. She intends for this series of performances with the neo-mythological creature known as WSSW (White Sheep Spirit Woman) to restore a sense of aliveness, possibilty, and magic to our culture.

Currently, Stina is designing clothes and costumes for her label ARTeries. Her designs are sold locally at the Honeypot & The Habdashery ( behind BoBo's). She can be commissioned for clothing, theater sets and costumes, and original works of art. She can be contacted at her Studio in the Phil Mechanic Building in the River Arts District. (828)337-1236; stinandersen@yahoo.com; philmechanicstudios.com

Katie Kyle Baker graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2000 with a bachelor of fine arts in dance performance and choreography. She has performed with modern dance companies including the Immediate Theatre Collective, Postcards Dance Project, John Gamble Dance Theater and the Jan Van Dyke Dance Group, touring in Portugal with the International Dance Platform in Lisbon. She has worked with regional choreographers such as Carol Kyles Finley, Joan Nicholas Walker and Katherine Ferrier, and has performed in festivals including the American Dance Festival, the North Carolina Dance Alliance Annual Event, and has been a local and touring artist with the North Carolina Dance Festival. As well as performing and choreographing, Kate has worked with dance photographer Steve Clarke, who included her photos in the recently published book, Seeing While Being Seen, commissioned by the National Dance Association. She has also done photography and film work with artist, Stephen Aubuchon. Kate is part of a collaborative group of local artists, making work in dance, photography, film, poetry and sound composition. She is proud to have collaborated with three of those artists: David Colagiovanni, Benajmin Dauer and Michelle Magdalen, to create a piece for the 2008 Asheville Fringe Festival.

Claire Barratt has a Dance and Musical Theater background, with training received in her native country of Britain at the London Studio Center of Performing Arts and the Laban Center for Movement and Dance. She spent ten years in the southern states of Tennessee and North Carolina, where she held the position of Co –Director for “Circle Modern Dance” as well as choreographing for Opera, Musical Theater, Music Video, Commercials and collaborating with Multi-Media, Film, Visual, Music and Literary Artists. Based in New York, she founded “Cilla_Vee – Life Arts”, a multi-disciplinary performing arts organization, and has performed in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan. She served a one year apprenticeship with Lori Belilove & Company of the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation and is performance curator for Haven Gallery and an adjunct faculty member of DanceSpace 637 in Ottawa, Ontario.Claire has been featured in Art Basel Miami, the Washington DC International Improv Festival, the Transmodern Age and High Zero Festivals in Baltimore, MD and the Dans/CE Kapital Festival in Ottawa.Much of her work focuses on collaboration with live music in an improvizational context. She also specializes in “Installation”.

Julie Becton Gillum--as founder of three modern dance companies and finally Legacy Butoh, Gillum has been creating, performing and teaching dance in the US, France, Cuba and Mexico for over 40 years. She currently teaches modern dance, musical theatre, performance art and butoh at Warren Wilson College, but her primary form of artistic expression has become butoh. Gillum has been practicing, performing and teaching butoh since 1998, creating and presenting major pieces in the genre, at a variety of venues in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Mexico.

Originating in post WWII Japan, Butoh dance is a postmodern movement in which formal dance technique is eschewed in favor of primal and idiosyncratic styles that transform the human body and allow raw mental energies to come into being.

Mondy Carter was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 27, 1910. At the age of twelve, He felt strongly the call of God: He he had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ. At the age of eighteen he joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. It was then he discovered he was accidently leading Mother Teresa's life. Embarrassed and ashamed he turned in his habit and was ceremoniously thrown off the roof of the convent. From there he made his way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and transformed his emotional pain into theater. He worked with every professional theater group in Milwaukee. Also he began and performed with the influential comedy group: The Dead Alewives. Now it seems his purgatorial existence has ended. Last year he moved to Black Mountain and it's lovely pastorial vistas have dissolved the pain of his former abodes. In this quaint town Mondy shares his life with his talented and amusing wife Karen and his unreasonably amusing daughter, Grace. If you want to learn more about Mondy visit your local library or go to mondycarter.googlepages.com
(p.s: leave out the www or it will say, "404 not found" even though you weren't even looking for 404) .

Susan Collard has been dancing all her life. Her first love was classical ballet, but she discovered, through a graduate student at Temple University, that modern dance was better suited to her body type and her desire to improvise. Susan has been a choreographer since the age of twenty five, and most recently choreographed for the Asheville Art Museum, the Thomas Wolfe Society, Co Danza of Cuba, and for her own company, Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre. She also choreographed movement for Jodie Foster in the film Nell. Susan has been creating festivals in Asheville and abroad - Asheville Fringe Arts Festival, the White Dog ProjectX, to name a few, and has continued her international collaborations in Mexico, France and Cuba.

Giles Collard is co-director of Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre. He has lived abroad in France and Israel, and has performed internationally. Giles currently teaches modern and boy’s dance at the New Studio of Dance in Asheville. In addition to dance, Giles is a fencer and instructs students in foil and saber technique. He has performed with ACDT since 1986, and most recently premiered his work at the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival and Men Dancing IV.

Greg Congleton (Cilla Vee-life Arts) is a member of Knoxville’s award winning Actors Co-op and has acted in many of their productions over the last 10 years such as: LYSISTRATA, CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS, TRANSLATIONS and THE WEIR. Before settling in Knoxville he worked with the Kaleidoscope Players in Alabama, the Asolo Theater Festival in Sarasota, Florida, The Nomad Playhouse in Boulder, Colorado and the Santa Fe Trail theater in New Mexico. He did national tours with the National Humanities Series and in ANDROCLES AND THE LION with the Kaleidoscope Players.
Greg has appeared in a few independent films and commercials. He has acted with The Tennessee Stage Company, Shakespeare on the Square (and in the Park), Theater Knoxville, Carpetbag Theater, the Clarence Brown Company and the University Company. Also a poet and playwright Greg has participated in many Knoxville “pub-crawl readings” such as the Agee Amble and the Suttree Stagger. He is the instigator of the jazz jam session readings of Kerouac’s MEXICO CITY BLUES.
His influences include Lama Tzong Khapa, Snuffy Smith, John Fahey and Horton the Elephant.

John Crutchfield is a playwright, poet, and performer based in Asheville, NC. He is also Artistic Director of Corpus Theatre Collective, which will premier his new play Ivory this coming June at the BeBe theatre. He teaches part-time at Warren-Wilson College. www.johncrutchfield.com

Liz Diaz is a puppeteer/performer exploring political and social themes.

Elisa Faires an musical improviser as well as a composer of modern classical, electronic music, experimental cabaret, querky pop music, 12 tone composition and avante garde art songs. She was classically trained in music as well as opera and studied gamelan in Bali. Some of her projects in Asheville over the past 14 years have been Paw of Zing, Exquisite Corpse, Rubbermaiden, Pounder Quartet, PawPaw Fuc, Mocktobre and Lucky 13 Cabarets, Imaginary Numbers, Pokey Little
Puppy, and Squeegy G. She is a musician and dancer for Legacy Butoh and is the musician for Claire Barratt in the Cilla Vee Life Arts Project. Claire and her have just been awarded a grant entitled "Meet the
Composer" by Met Life and will be teaching a workshop on creative movement and sound at UNCA on Feb 2. She has been working with video for the past 5 years and has made several experimental films with musical scores. Some of her films have stop animation and mixed media. Liz Lang of Rubber Maiden composes music with exotic voice, cello and electronics. She recently directed sound and composed music for Moon Europa a local Sci Fi film. She can be reached at annadyne@yahoo.com
Elisa's contact info is Laomeow@yahoo.com her sites are myspace.com/elisafaires444 myspace.com/pawofzing.

Founded in 2003, The Feral Chihuahuas sketch comedy troupe has performed over 100 shows in the Asheville area. They’ve attracted enthusiastic crowds at Fred’s Speakeasy, NC Stage, 35 Below, The Joli Rouge, The Grey Eagle, Asheville Brewing Company, The UNCA Quad, The Orange Peel, Hairspray, and The Future of Tradition. They’ve also been featured in Asheville’s own Fringe Festival and NCTC’s Stone Leaf Festival. However, their most committed following erupted humbly in a two-car garage in Woodfin, which is just north of Asheville, North Carolina.

The Feral Chihuahuas formed through a common love of comedy and especially the form of sketch comedy. Drawing from several different styles, the Chihuahuas love to create comedy with social and political commentary, absurdism, satire and even existentialism.

2007 saw an upswing of promise for the Chihuahuas as they gained mobility and notoriety. The year began with the Chihuahuas being featured in three different shows at Asheville’s own Fringe Festival. It was their 3rd appearance in th Festival and they are very excited to be asked to return again this year. They were also honored to be asked to perform with The Rebelles Burlesque, an Asheville performing icon.

It was also a year for the Chihuahuas to upgrade their performance space and production value. They were asked to perform 10 shows for the Asheville Community Theater’s Summer Comedy Series in the 35 Below Theater. At last the Chihuahuas had a proper theater to perform in. Not daunted by this challenge the Chihuahuas sold out all ten shows and had to add second "late" shows on nine occasions to accommodate the demand. All told it was a great year for the Chihuahuas and 2008 holds even more promise as they prepare for their fourth appearance in the Asheville Fringe Festival and their second season in the Summer Comedy Series.

Ashley Howe and Brian Howe are neither married nor siblings (as far as they know). It's just a freaky coincidence. They've been expressing their creativity together for over a year, and they like to make merry with the Lucifer Poetics Group. Brian Howe is a freelance arts journalist and poet whose poems and audio have appeared in numerous publications. Ashley Howe's art is too top-secret to perceive with the naked eye. The Howes are currently at work on a series of videos - the fruits of their labors are available at http://glossolalia-blacksail.blogspot.com/.

Adam Jones is currently writing/performing in sketch comedy, short films, one act plays and ridiculous
music with Starship Coyote. Numerous clips, skits and more are available at myspace.com/ahpplebaum.

Jim Julien has doing performance-based artwork since 1972 while he was attending Carnegie-Mellon University. He has been part of the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival since its inception. He has used movement, puppetry, multimedia and lots of pudding in his work. He also has played a zombie in last year's Lexfest.

Wayne Kirby has been working as a musician and artist since 1959. His compositions for large and small ensembles and his multimedia artworks have been performed and exhibited in New York at Symphony Space, Carnegie Recital Hall, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, and 80 Washington Square East Galleries. His work has also been exhibited and performed at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Walker Art Gallery in Kansas City, several International Electronic Music Plus Festivals, Asheville's River Sculpture Festivals, and numerous other venues. He received his training in music and art from Juilliard, Yale, and New York University. He currently serves on the music faculty of the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Kathy Meyers has been dancing, teaching and choreographing over the past 25 years. Currently she is director of The Asheville School’s Dance Program and adjunct instructor in the dance program at UNCA. She is a member of Moving Women Dance Performance Ensemble (www.movingwomen.org), which will perform, “Thin Wall: a private glimpse of the tangled and peculiar,” as part of NC Stage Company’s Catalyst series March 13th-22nd. Kathy has performed each year in the Fringe Festival and continues to be inspired by a collaborative work environment.

Lindsey Morrow of Johnson City TN, is a senior at E.T.S.U. and will graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts with a concentration in Painting this spring (08). She danced with Studio Dance, Director Joanne Hodge, for nine years. In 2006 she apprenticed and performed with FireFly Aerial Dance in Brooklyn New York. Lindsey has been with E.T.S.U.'s dance ensemble "Mountain Movers" since 2007 and performs aerial silk and contortion solos for special events in Tennessee and North Carolina.

Denise Lee Ostler is a non-toxic housepainter who fell in love with an antique ukulele at a Grey Eagle show two years ago. Ukulele is a Hawaiian word which means "impossible to keep in tune". Since Denise's first instrument was a cigar box strung with rubber bands, this was a perfect match. She and the uke live in west Asheville.

Jenni Oldham received her M.A. in Dance and Woman’s Studies from the University of North Carolina Greensboro in 2002. She has been a member of ACDT since 2003 and is also co-creator of the group butohmoshpit.

Last Dinner with Friends' director Holly M. Paar lives in West Asheville. Also a musician, artist, and writer, Holly has recently expanded her creative ventures into the worlds of photography and film. This is her second film, her first being the silent poemfilm Winter Ennui that debuted at the 2006 Asheville Fringe Festival. For more information about the ongoing Last Dinner with Friends project and how you can get involved, please visit www.dinnerwithfriends.org or email info@dinnerwithfriends.org .

Jocelyn Reese
Jocelyn is an educator/artist/performer, originally from Chicago where she attended Columbia College.

John L. Robinson
Reverend Johhny Lemuria is just your average absurdist radical in Western North Carolina
Visit http://pleasuresaucer.blogspot.com/ to find out more.

Wicked Geisha was formed in the year 2003 in San Francisco, CA. by Maya Fitzdare (Kishijoten). Since that time there has been 13 performances including this one, each unique in itself, varying in flavor, mystery, “wickedness” and ceremony. Ironically, not many photographs had been taken or filming done until recently, which is common of the traditional Geisha houses of the past. Our influences include Shinto-ism, Do-ism, Fetish, Traditional Geisha & Kabuki Style Theatre, Japanese Animation, Ancient Mythology, Butoh, Exotic Dance Styles and Akira Kurosawa Films to name a few. There has been over 50 Geisha Sisters & Kabuki Brothers over time with Kishijoten being the veteran of the collective. We are ever-grateful to the recently added players who share the love of the Ritual Theatre and to our new found friends in Asheville of the Lex-Fest & Fringe Arts Festival, who have made our last two performances possible.

Our Motto is thus;

Ai Jiyu Gei Makoto Bi Kizuna…
LOVE, FREEDOM, ART, TRUTH, BEAUTY, UNITY BETWEEN PEOPLE.

To Read Further About our Philosophy, See Photographs of Past Performances, Find Booking Information, to Sign our Guestbook or Receive the Newsletter… VISIT our Official Website: www.wickedgeisha.com
Contact: kishijoten@wickedgeisha.com