The Golden Thread: womxn’s work
This show aired live on June 13, 2020.
:: ART AUCTION ::
Artist Nichole DeMent will be live painting throughout the show. The art will be available in a live auction during the show with bids closing at end of show. Place your bids in the comments below!
If you’d like to support these artists directly, check for their Venmo/Zelle in the program below!
show program
As arts venues are closed in light of public health concerns around COVID-19, Kymberlee is creating a space for community, dialogue, and fulfillment through the arts to persist and to allow our artists to thrive.
Whether you’ve been missing going out to see live music or theater or haven’t been out in years, please allow us to bring it to you during this LIVE online experience! Get dressed up or stay in your comfies. Either way, sit back, relax, and allow us to entertain you with live music, poetry, dance, theater, and art. There will be a talk back after the show. Please ask your questions in the comments at the bottom of this page.
10% of the profits of this show will be donated to the Women of Color Network.
schedule
7:00-7:10 Welcome!
Note: Our artist Nichole Dement will be live painting throughout the show.
7:10-7:25 Music with Michelle Dodson
7:30-7:50 Dance with Karin Stevens.
7:55-8:10 “Oneiric”, a one act play by Robin E. Brooks read by the playwright and Alexandra Varriano and with stage directions by Sebastian Varriano.
8:10-8:25 Poetry from Maiah A. Merino
8:30-8:45 Music with Michelle Dodson.
8:45-9:00 “Swan Song [Redux]”, a one act play by Robin E. Brooks read by the playwright and Alexandra Varriano and with stage directions by Sebastian Varriano.
9:00 Bows and thank yous.
9:00-9:30 Optional talk back with audience and artists.
artists
Robin Brooks is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. Her work has been recognized by the Seattle Playwrights Salon, the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Competition, the Austin Film Festival, and the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards, among others.
Robin is the artistic director of Starstrewn Productions, an entertainment company focused on creating new work and promoting female artists. She was the co-producer of the Seattle Womxn Playwrights Festival this fall. Robin is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Playwrights Center, and she works in marketing and communications at the University of Washington. You can learn more about her at screenplaywriteher.weebly.com.
Photo credit: Yolanda Suarez
Our show’s producer, Kymberlee della Luce (She/They) is an interdisciplinary artist, transformation teacher, and creative catalyst. Dwelling at the intersection of compassion and action, they have been creating, teaching or leading for over 25 years. Their art, like their life evolves but is always an exploration of the interstitial spaces, the bridge between the worlds and the fabric of the soul.
Kymberlee holds a Masters of Arts in Education and is a Certified Expressive Arts Practitioner. They are on a mission to create a more joyfully connected global community steeped in equity and authenticity. Kymberlee offers both an online course and transformation coaching to help folx find their voice and learn how to use it.
Pay Kymberlee on Venmo @Kymberlee-dellaLuce or on PayPal.
Photo credit: Sebastian Varriano
Nichole DeMent is an artist, independent cultural producer and creativity coach with a passion for bringing people together to help others live purposeful lives and create stronger communities. With over two decades as a professional artist, teacher and arts leader, she has supported hundreds of individuals’ imaginative and creative connections to self.
Nichole has studied art from prehistoric to contemporary since the mid 90’s, and diverse culture’s myths as they relate to the archetypes found in astrology. Studies of prehistoric caves and locations with rock art in Greece, Crete, Italy and France further spark her imagination and ongoing exploration of the creative impulse.
With almost two decades of arts experience in diverse non-profit arts positions including Executive & Artistic Director for Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) in Seattle from 2012 – 2020, she enjoys finding ways to empower artists and elevate creativity in society as a whole. Previously, she has taught at higher education institutions in the Pacific NW region including Pacific Lutheran University and Cornish, she was also the Program Manager of Professional Development for visual and literary artists at Artist Trust in Seattle.
Nichole received a BA in 2002 from The Evergreen State College with an emphasis in Fine Art Photography and Art History. Her fine art photographs and mixed media encaustic art has been published in “Miroir Magazine,” “Encaustic Art in the 21st Century,” and on book covers including Anca Sziliagyi’s “Daughters of the Air” alongside other publications and reviews.
Her personal artworks are included in many collections including the Swedish Medical Center Art Collection and private collections across the world. See her artwork in person in Seattle at SAM Gallery.
Pay her on Venmo @Nichole-DeMent.
Photo Credit: Anna Hurwitz
Michelle Dodson is a vibrant young cellist whose broad range of repertoire styles spans hundreds of years, specializing in modern composition collaborations with composers but also highly trained in baroque and romantic music. A cellist of 14 years, she studied classical and jazz music performance at DePaul University in Chicago.
She performs music to share the sounds from humans, to humans, in the hopes of engaging the audience and opening their minds to new possibilities of musical interpretation. Coming from a lower-income background, Michelle is passionate about performing in venues specifically outside concert halls in order to make classical music accessible to a wider range of audiences.
Michelle released her first solo album entitled “Feeling Suite” on Spotify.
Pay her on Venmo @michelledodson19
Our poet is Maiah A. Merino, a Chicana Poet, mixed-genre writer, and Teaching Artist, recently published in No Tender Fences, an online Latinx anthology of Immigrant and First Generation Latinx Writers. Her work also appears in Yellow Medicine Review, and The Raven Chronicles.
A past Writer-in-Residence with Seattle Arts and Lectures, currently, Maiah teaches Poetry through Path with Art. She utilizes her training as a Narrative Therapist and Writer to help both herself and others navigate and re-imagine new stories. As a single mom, she enjoys discovering the world through her child’s feelings, imaginings, and senses.
Karin Stevens is a Seattle based choreographer and dance artist who believes in the power of movement to help us connect more deeply to ourselves, each other, and our natural and built environments. Born and raised in Seattle, Stevens envisions a city where there is a new space for the creation of interdisciplinary dance, live music and immersive audience experiences that dismantle complacent positions of privilege and power, open up new channels of engagement, and allow us to make new movements together. She creates imaginative, visionary, collaborative, immersive performer and audience experiences at the interchange of art, ecology and social issues. She believes we must commune, collaborate and converse through movement, sound and ideas for an equitable and sustainable future for all. Since 1999, she has created over 80 dance works. Her company, Karin Stevens Dance(2009-present), has produced fifteen evening-length concerts, including Record of the Anthropocene Movement (2017), named a ‘must see performance’ by City Arts Magazine. Since the inception of KSD she has been an advocate for live, local, new music. In 2019, Karin became an ambassador for National Water Dance. She has produced three large-scale community events for National Water Dance and Global Water Dances since 2018. Karin studied dance at the University of Washington and received her MFA from Mills College. She is a mother of three powerhouse daughters (10,12,19 yrs). In addition to her art creations, she is also a facilitator in The Art & Practice of Movement.
What is The Art & Practice of Movement?
Read Karin’s statement on White Supremacy
Music by Crystal Beth, “So Much Hurts,” from the album Push Thru
Photo credit: Michelle Smith-Lewis
Alexandra Varriano (She/Her) is as a Seattle based actor and artist. Since graduating from Cornish College of the Arts with her BFA in Theater Original Works, she has been seeking new outlets for her creative voice. A theater artist at heart, she has started branching into film, including making her directing debut with “Alex Was Here” for the 48 Hour Horror Film Project 2019. After performing her solo show, “A Pyrate’s Life: Anne Bonny”, in February 2019, she has embarked upon adapting it for the screen.
Alexandra’s vision is to bring women’s suppressed and untold stories to the surface of cultural consciousness. She strives to change perceptions of the female (and feminine) experience and help the next generations form new narratives. She seeks collaboration with passionate and intelligent artists that live their values and speak their truths.
Pay her on Venmo @Alexandra-Varriano
Photo credit: Mark Brennan
Master of Ceremonies Sebastian Varriano (He/Him) is a 17 year old artist, born in raised in Seattle. He has been doing theater for nearly a decade, getting the opportunity to learn from many great directors and perform a variety of amazing roles. In the past few years he has had the joy of playing Frederic in Pirates of Penzance, Romeo in Newsies, Harry Bright in Mamma Mia, and his dream role of Marius is Les Misérables. He recently got involved in film, having a lead role in an upcoming feature length independent film Boys Will Be, and participating in the 48 Hour Horror Film Project 2019.
Sebastian is very passionate about raising discussions about classism, particularly in the education system, and strives to create art that inspires social change. He believes that storytelling is one of the most powerful tools of expression and growth, and is currently working on a play that he hopes will bring some awareness to how it is to grow up surrounded by unacknowledged privilege.
You can find him on Instagram at @sebastianvarriano
Pay him on Zellepay at sebastian.varriano@gmail.com
Photo credit: Tammy Marx