MAY @ MILLAY ARTS

FROM TOP, RIGHT TO LEFT:

Wally Gunn, Composing; Jackson Heights, NY — Making use of patterns and processes in his work, and sometimes utilizes speech, gesture, and movement to heighten the theatricality of musical performance, all with the aim of creating music that is expressive and affecting. The extramusical themes in his work look outward to explore the natural world, and inward to reflect queer identity and experience.  Hailing from a rural town in Australia’s southeast, Wally first began making music in his early teens. After high school, he moved to Melbourne to join rock bands, and spent several years writing songs, recording albums, and performing shows around the country. In 2002, Wally enrolled in the Victorian College of the Arts composition program, where he collaborated with students from the Film & Television, Art, and Dance Schools. Wally moved to New York in 2008 to begin a masters degree in composition at the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Julia Wolfe, and he began writing concert music for US ensembles such as Dither Guitar Quartet, Ensemble Mise-En, Escher String Quartet, futureCities, Mobius Percussion, Red Shift, Roomful of Teeth, and Sō Percussion. In 2011, Wally began pursuing a PhD in composition at Princeton University.  Wally has received commissions from Architek Percussion, Astra Chamber Music, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, percussionist Becca Doughty, Gemini Duo, The Letter String Quartet (AU), the New Works For Percussion Project, Roomful of Teeth, Rubiks Collective, percussionist Eric Shuster, guitarist Laura Snowden (UK), Steady State, Tala Rasa, Three (AU), and percussionist Jason Treuting. A collaboration in 2012 with vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth and Melbourne poet Maria Zajkowski yielded three songs entitled The Ascendant that the ensemble recorded and released on their album Render, for which they received a Grammy nomination in 2015. Wally’s 2019 work ‘Moonlite,’ is a 90-minute oratorio for voices, percussion, and viola, with libretto by longtime collaborator Maria Zajkowski. The work was premiered in Philadelphia, PA, New York, NY, and Princeton, NJ, in May 2019 by Variant 6, Mobius Percussion, and Veronica Jurkiewicz. In November 2019, Wally received the Albert H Maggs Composition Award for the work. Wally and Maria’s most recent collaboration, I heart Artemis, was commissioned by the Maggs Award, was partly composed during a Millay Arts residency in October / November 2020, and was completed in 2021. The piece premiered in Philadelphia, PA, in March 2022, and in Melbourne, Australia, in September 2022. Current projects include a commission for a concert-length song cycle for Melbourne chamber ensemble Rubiks Collective with acclaimed jazz vocalist Gian Slater, to be premiered in 2024, and a commission for an opera for La Monnaie / De Munt opera house in Brussels Belgium, to be premiered in 2025. Wally currently divides his time between USA and Australia.

Monet Hurst-Mendoza, Playwriting;  NYC — Raised in Los Angeles, Monet’s plays have been developed with Rising Circle Theater Collective, Astoria Performing Arts Center, American Academy of Dramatic Arts, |the claque|, Lookingglass Theatre, Amios, The Oneness Project, Magic Time @ Judson, Atlantic Acting School/NYU Tisch, The Kupferberg Center for the Arts, The Flea Theater, WP Theater, The Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Westport Country Playhouse, and Long Wharf Theatre, among others. Monet is an alum of the Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, R&D Group at The Civilians, Fresh Ground Pepper's Playground Playgroup, WP Theater Playwrights Lab, and the Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists. She has held residencies with The MITTEN Lab and SPACE on Ryder Farm. Her play Torera was featured on the 2019 Kilroys List, and 50 Playwrights Project’s 2019 Best Unproduced Latinx Plays and 2019 Latinx Plays for College Theatres lists. The play received its world premiere at The Alley Theatre in Houston, TX in 2023.  Monet served as a Core Member of Rising Circle Theater Collective for eight years where she helped develop INKtank/PlayRISE—a developmental writers lab and new works festival for emerging playwrights of color. She continues her advocacy work fighting for equal representation for women, trans, and non-binary writers in the American Theatre as a member of The Kilroys. Remezcla profiled her in July 2019 as one of the "8 Most Exciting Latino Playwrights Making Work Right Now."  Finalist: Playwright's Week and the New York Jerome Fellowship at The Lark, Old Vic New Voices US/UK Exchange, the Many Voices Fellowship at The Playwright's Center, the Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, Artemisia Fall Festival, The Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Forward Flux Three New American Plays Project, and the Leah Ryan FEWW Prize (Honorable Mention, 2017). Smith Prize for Political Theatre and Cherry Lane Mentor Project nominations. Broadway: Assistant to JT Rogers for OSLO at Lincoln Center Theater.  Monet served as a writer/producer for Law and Order: SVU from seasons 21 through 24 where episodes she co-wrote garnered five Imagen Award nominations and three wins, honoring positive portrayals of Latinos in the media. She is currently a member of Florida Studio Theatre’s Playwright Collective and has been commissioned by Westport Country Playhouse and The Kennedy Center. Proud member of The Dramatist Guild and WGAE. B.A. Marymount Manhattan College. 

Carrie Hall, Non-Fiction; Brooklyn, NY — A professor of writing at the CUNY New York City College of Technology, Carrie lives and works in Brooklyn. She has recently published essays and short stories in New Letters, Pleiades and Barren Magazines and has been supported by a residency at UCross Foundation in Wyoming. She has an MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric from the University of Pittsburgh. Her academic work focuses on how trauma in early childhood affects literacy learning in adulthood.

Raychael Stine, Visual Arts; Albuquerque, NM — A painter living and working along with her two dogs in Albuquerque, NM, Raychael received her BFA at UT Dallas in 2003, and her MFA at UIC in Chicago in 2010. Raychael is currently Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of New Mexico, where she has taught since 2013. In addition to teaching all levels of painting and drawing, Raychael guides non-traditional plein air painting courses where students visit sites across the Southwest; such as Bandelier NM, Chaco Canyon NM, Big Bend NP, and others. She has taught workshops with East West Wilderness Project in Yosemite and Kings Canyon NP in California, and was an invited artist with the Guild of Adventure Painters.  Selected solo exhibitions include Emma Gray HQ, Five Car Garage (Los Angeles, CA), Eugene Binder (Marfa, TX), My Pet Ram, (Santa Barbara, CA), Richard Levy Gallery (Albuquerque, NM), Art Palace (Houston, TX), among others. Group exhibitions include L.A. Louver (Venice, CA) Rhona Hoffman (Chicago, IL), Smoke the Moon (Santa Fe, NM), The Valley (Taos, NM), 1969 Gallery (New York, NY), Barry Whistler Gallery (Dallas, TX), and others. Her work has been included in National shows such as NADA (NY), The Texas Biennial, NEXT at Art Chicago, and Art on Paper (NY).  Stine’s work has been featured in New American Paintings Issues #132, #120 and #78, along with reviews and features in publications such as Hyperallergic, New City Chicago, Bad At Sports, Arts + Culture Texas, Glasstire, NY Arts Magazine, Artlies, Southwest Contemporary, The Houston Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, The Albuquerque Journal, among others. Stine has received awards and residencies including 100 West Corsicana, Bemis, Jentel, and the Dallas Museum of Art Clare Hart DeGoyler Grant. Stine is a three time Joan Mitchell Foundation Award Nominee.

Erin Jin Mei O’Malley, Poetry; Brooklyn, NY — Erin is a queer Asian adoptee writer who is based in New York and Arizona. They have received nominations for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Nashville Review, the Paris-American, the Shade Journal, and others.

Kari Varner, Visual Arts; Johnson City, NY — Kari graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Electronic Media Arts Design from University of Denver (Magna Cum Laude) and a Master of Visual Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. As a graduate student she was the recipient of the Olin Fellowship for Women in Graduate Study through Washington University in St. Louis and the Monticello Foundation. She is currently a Lecturer in Photography at Binghamton University, State University of New York. She has previously taught at Florence Institute of Design International, accredited through the University of Chester, England, Santa Reparata International School of Art and the University of Denver.  In addition to teaching, she has conducted several workshops at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and the Studio Art College International. She has previously held positions as the Studio Coordinator of Photography & New Media at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and the Academic Coordinator at Caravaggio & Contemporary in Florence, Italy.  She has participated in residencies at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and Alfred University as well as being awarded a scholarship workshop to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. While an undergraduate student she was awarded six grants to complete independent research projects, attend an international new media conference and complete an internship with Anderson Ranch Arts Center. She has also been awarded a travel grant through Washington University in St Louis, a project grant through the Puffin Foundation and a campus development grant through Binghamton University. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions in the Museum Bourbon del Monte in Monte Santa Maria Tiberina, Italy along with San Marco Basilica and Female Arts in Florence in the city center of Florence.  Her work has been included in group exhibitions in locations including Kunst(seug)haus Rapperswil Museum and Kammgarn West Schaffhausen in Switzerland, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, the Anderson Ranch Arts Center Candela Gallery, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and Belmont University.