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2005 Panelist Bios

CRAIG BALDWIN, an independent filmmaker, is interested in the recontextualization of “found” imagery, which led him to the theories of the Situationist International and to various practices of mail art, ‘zines, altered billboards, and other creative initiatives beyond the fringe of traditional fine-arts curriculum. His works have included Wild Gunman (1978), RocketKitKongoKit (1986), Tribulation 99 (1991), and ¡O No Coronado ! (1992), for which he received the 1992 Phelan Award in Film Arts from the San Francisco Foundation. Sonic Outlaws was an experimental documentary on the emerging “electronic folk culture,” exploring the legal, political, and artistic implications of the audio-collage work of culture-jamming collectives. Baldwin has recently completed Spectres of the Spectrum, a sci-fi spoof utilizing early educational kinescopes to criticize the corporate control of electronic technologies. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University.

GRETJEN CLAUSING is a Philadelphia-based programmer, filmmaker, and media activist. She is the program director at Scribe Video Center and producer of the 2005 National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) hronicles_ and has taught in University of Washington Extension, Clarion West, and workshops throughout the country. She has been a writer in residence at Seattle University and Richard Hugo House in Seattle, WA. A member of Los Norteños, a group of writers and performers, Kathleen co-wrote a play with Olga Sanchez based on her first novel, Spirits of the Ordinary. She was recently a visiting lecturer at the University of New Mexico. Her books are: Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist, Spirits of the Ordinary, The Flower in the Skull, and Treasures in Heaven.

GERALD EARLY, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the English department at Washington University in St. Louis, is the director of the Center for the Humanities of the College of Arts and Sciences. He also has an appointment in the African and Afro-American Studies Program. His publications include Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture, One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture, and The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism in 1994. Early has worked as a consultant with Ken Burns on several films, and in 1997 he was elected a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

VIJAY SESHADRI is the author of two books of poems, Wild Kingdom and The Long Meadow (winner of the 2004 James Laughlin Prize of the Academy of American Poets ). His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Poetry. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and has been awarded The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Conners Long Poem Prize and the MacDowell Colony’s Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement. He holds an A.B. degree from Oberlin College and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. He currently teaches poetry and nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

PAUL DE BARROS is the jazz columnist for The Seattle Times; a regular contributor to Down Beat magazine; founder of the Seattle jazz support organization, Earshot Jazz; author of the award-winning history, Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle; and a former National Arts Journalism Program fellow. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, de Barros has served as adjunct professor of music at Seattle Pacific University since 2000, where he teaches jazz history. In recognition of his contributions to local jazz, de Barros was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in January 2003.

CLAIRE HOPKINSON has been producer and general manager of Tapestry New Opera Works since 1990 and is considered to be a leader in the field of new opera and music theatre. In addition to producing award-winning world premieres of works by some of Canada’s finest artists, she has developed artistic collaborations with many theatre, music, and opera organizations across Canada and the USA, thus providing new works with a life beyond the premiere.

Ms. Hopkinson is currently founding president of Creative Trust, Toronto’s arts stabilization project for mid sized arts organizations, and vice-chair of OPERA America She serves as past chair of Opera.ca. She has also served as a theatre committee member for the Toronto Arts Council, and on the board of directors for Artscape, Toronto Theatre Alliance, and McGill Alumni Association of Toronto. Hopkinson received her honours degree in literature from McGill University in Montreal.

PAMELA Z is a composer/performer who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, sampled sounds, and The BodySynth™ gesture controller. She has also composed scores for dance, theatre, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Her multi-media performance works have been presented at Theater Artaud and ODC Theatre in San Francisco and at the Kitchen in New York. Her audio works have been presented in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Diözesanmuseum in Cologne, and the D’akart Biennale in Sénégal. She has toured throughout the US, Europe, and Japan in concerts and festivals including Bang on a Can, the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds and the Venice Biennale. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the CalArts Alpert Award, the ASCAP Award and the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship.

JAY CRAVEN is an award-winning director, writer, and producer whose feature films include Where the Rivers Flow North (1994), A Stranger in the Kingdom (1998), The Year That Trembled (2003), and Disappearances (2005). His films have played 345 U.S. cities; 52 countries; and more than 40 international film festivals, including Sundance. Craven also produced, directed, and co-wrote the New England Emmy-nominated comedy series, Windy Acres (2004). Craven founded and directs Kingdom County Productions (KCP) in Barnet, Vermont, where he develops new film projects and directs KCP’s Fledgling Films program for teen filmmakers. He also teaches film studies at Marlboro College. Craven’s awards include two National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Film Fellowships; two NEA Media Arts Film Production Grants; and the 1995 Producers’ Guild of America’s 1995 NOVA for Most Promising New Motion Picture Producer of the Year.

JIM GRIMSLEY is the author of Comfort & Joy, published in 1999; Winter Birds, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; Dream Boy, nominated for the Lambda Award for fiction and winner of the GLBTF Book Award for Fiction from the ALA; and My Drowning, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers Award winner. He is also a playwright and the author of Mr. Universe and Other Plays. He lives in Atlanta.

ROSALBA ROLÓN is co-founder and artistic director of Pregones Theater in New York. She is an actor, director, and writer. Ms. Rolón has adapted for the stage short stories, novels, and periodicals by Latino and Latin American writers, set to original musical scores. In the 2005-06 season, she will direct Pregones Theater’s new work The Red Rose, and will co-direct Betsy, a creative collaboration between Pregones and Roadside Theater (KY). She is currently leading a capital project that will culminate in the construction of a new theater for Pregones. Ms. Rolón works extensively on international projects in Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean. She is also the chair of the board of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) and a member of the board of Theater Communications Group (TCG).

W.S. DI PIERO is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent being Brother Fire (Knopf, 2004). He’s also a well-known essayist on art, literature, culture, and personal experience. He writes a regular column on the visual arts for the San Diego Reader and has been a frequent contributor to Poetry and Threepenny Review, and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, and other magazines. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Partisan Review, and many other journals. Di Piero has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, and the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin.

HERB E. SMITH continues to make films in Whitesburg, the small town in the southeastern Kentucky coalfields where he grew up. His films explore cultural, social, and economic issues of the Appalachian region. His latest film, The Ralph Stanley Story, is a portrait of the mountain musician who has been performing for over 55 years. Smith is currently making a film based on an essay by Kentucky writer Wendell Berry. Since 1969 when Smith was a high school student, he has played an active role in the creation of Appalshop, the renowned Appalachian cultural center. Smith’s films and videotapes have been shown throughout the country in venues from community centers and union halls to the Museum of Modern Art and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. International screenings include Paris, Berlin, Rome, Calcutta, Bombay and Chengdu.