Creation

JoLynn Garnes is a film and video editor based in Minneapolis, MN. She is known for her work in documentary filmmaking, music videos, commercials, and live video content. From Beyoncé to Vera Wang, she has collaborated with a range of artists and creative teams to craft visually engaging, rhythm-driven projects that blend storytelling with distinctive visual style. 

Alicia Allen is an animation artist and director based in Minnesota and a partner at the motion design studio Modular. Her work blends digital collage, compositing, and design-driven animation to create immersive visual worlds rooted in color and texture. With a personal love of plants and gardening, her animations dive into themes of growth, cycles and renewal, often using the natural world as a lens for storytelling.

Lindsey Stupica is an animator working in traditional 2D animation and After Effects, with a practice rooted in rhythm, gesture and expressive movement. Deeply connected to music in her own creative life, she is drawn to projects where image and sound intertwine. Her work brings a tactile, hand-crafted sensibility to digital space, with an emphasis on timing, emotion and flow.

Gretchen Ernster Henderson is a poet, intermedia writer, educator, and gardener who cross-pollinates creative and critical practices rooted in environmental arts, cultural histories, and integrative sciences. The author of five books across genres, along with a repertoire crossing media arts and field practices, Gretchen is the Spence L. Wilson Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. Her works have been supported by the Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and artist residencies including the Lucas Artist Program at Montalvo Arts Center, Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing & Literature in Switzerland, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Originally trained as a musician, Gretchen loves composing language to be embodied as song. Some of her previous opera libretti were supported by Opera America and MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology. Her collaborations with composer Jocelyn Hagen include Medusa, What the Soul Already Knows, and Creation. Her fifth book, Life in the Tar Seeps: A Spiraling Ecology from a Dying Sea (Trinity University Press 2023), is seeping across exhibitions and performances into Dear Body of Water: a poetic water-harvesting project (in collaboration with the University of Arizona Poetry Center) to grow a chorus of care for watersheds. Gretchen’s writing has been called “illuminating” and “artful” (The New Yorker), “fascinating … absorbing … generous” (The Guardian), and “often profound,” “Henderson’s libretto itself … already offers a multi-media experience” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). In 2025-2026, Gretchen is the Woodberry Poetry Room Creative Fellow at Harvard University, with a solo exhibition at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University. Born and raised in San Francisco near the Pacific Ocean, she shares her time between the Mississippi River Watershed and the Sonoran Desert, attuning to water as home. More at gretchenhenderson.com.

Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American teacher, speaker, and writer. Her work crosses audiences and genres. She is the award-winning author of the memoirs, The Latehomecomer, The Song Poet, Somewhere in the Unknown World, and Where Rivers Part. Yang co-edited the groundbreaking book, What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color. She is a librettist for The Song Poet Opera (commissioned by Minnesota Opera). Her children’s books, A Map into the World, The Most Beautiful Thing, The Shared Room, Yang Warriors, From the Tops of the Trees, The Rock in My Throat, and Caged center Hmong children and families who live in our world, who dream, hurt, and hope in it. Yang’s middle grade debut fiction, The Diamond Explorer, contends with the narratives we are given and the ones we give. Yang’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA literary awards, the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize, as Notable Books by the American Library Association, Kirkus Best Books of the Year, Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, the Heartland Bookseller’s Award, the Carter G. Woodson Award, and garnered seven Minnesota Book Awards. She’s Star Tribune’s 2024 Artist of the Year. Yang holds an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Carleton College. She is a McKnight, Soros, and Guggenheim fellow.

Laura Sukowatey is an artist, dancer, and multi-studio owner based in Minneapolis, bridging performance art and production for over a decade. With an education in print + broadcast journalism, photography, and design, she began her career in the tech industry at a Minneapolis startup, where she built and led a video marketing department from the ground up. After freelancing in production alongside the corporate marketing career for 11 years, she founded STUDIO AURA, offering photo and film services full time. A professional dancer and choreographer, Laura is also passionate about making dance accessible. In 2021, she co-founded Hothouse, a dance art space designed for both working artists and newcomers to pursue their dance aspirations. Laura performs professionally in Minneapolis and beyond, currently with local companies Black Label Movement, Crash Dance Productions, and Ruby Josephine Dance Theater. Known for her distinctive artistic voice and compelling storytelling, Laura’s creativity, work ethic, and vision make her a driving force in every project she takes on.

Isaac Gale is a filmmaker and musician from Minneapolis. He has directed numerous music videos and short films. His award-winning documentary short, “Sweet Crude Man Camp”, screened at film festivals worldwide. “Eternal September”, a collaboration with composer William Brittelle, premiered in May 2021.

Dance artist and educator Penelope Freeh questions how aesthetics shape meaning, revealing deeply personal content. Having spent the bulk of her career in Minneapolis/St. Paul, she is a two-time McKnight Fellow for Choreographers and Sage awardee for Outstanding Performer. Inextricably linked collaborations include several works with composer Jocelyn Hagen. Their dance opera Test Pilot premiered and won a Sage Award for Outstanding Design in 2014 and toured Minnesota in 2016. Freeh served as choreographer on the design team for Minnesota Opera’s The Song Poet, the first ever Hmong/English opera, composed by Hagen, which premiered in 2023. And choral ballet Unfashioned Creature, created with composer Timothy C. Takach, in partnership with James Sewell Ballet (JSB) and MPLS (imPulse) choral ensemble, was named a Top Ten Most Memorable Dance Event of 2023 by the Minneapolis StarTribune and toured Arizona in November 2024. Freeh danced with JSB for seventeen years, serving as Artistic Associate from 2007-11. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA and Assistant Director of MFA Dance. She herself holds a master’s from Hollins where she met colleagues with whom she co-founded the long-distance performance collective TINATA. White Zinnia, Freeh’s ongoing dance/theater solo, explores her mother’s iconography and characteristics: dyslexia, left-handedness, non-linearity, Alzheimer’s, and features an abundance of blue shirts. It premiered at Minneapolis’ Candybox Dance Festival in 2024, performed at Kalamazoo’s RAD Fest February 2025, and expanded for the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University in October 2025. Her mother’s artworks occupied the large gallery, framing the dance, which was performed five times over the course of the 18-day exhibition. 

Attabeira German de Turowski is an accomplished one-line artist known for her unique and captivating continuous line drawings. Over the years, she has refined her craft, sharing her expertise through various platforms, including online courses, books, and collaborations with well-known brands like Montblanc, Adobe, and Skillshare. Her passion for one-line art, which involves creating images with a single, uninterrupted line, has garnered her a substantial following and the opportunity to teach over 10,000 students worldwide.

Eve Schulte is a dance artist, educator, and administrator based in Minneapolis/St Paul, MN. She is currently Interim Managing Director with Ananya Dance Theatre, as well as a freelance choreographer and dancer for irregular, inspired projects. She found her professional home of 16 years at James Sewell Ballet, where she contributed as dancer, artistic associate, and executive director. She was previously a member of Live Action Set and Minnesota Dance Theatre, and was recently an Artist-in-Residence at Westminster Presbyterian Church. Eve has performed or taught internationally in five countries, nationally in 17 states, and locally in 30+ Minnesota communities. Her choreography has been featured alongside the National Lutheran Choir, Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus, Minnesota Opera, and Minnesota Orchestra. Eve holds a B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota, where she also leads the advanced ballet course in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance.

Non Edwards is a dancer, choreographer, and GYROKINESIS® Method trainer based in MN since 2009. A McKnight Dancer Fellow, Non performs modern, postmodern, improvisation, and performance art. As a choreographer, Non creates situations for performers to exercise agency and audience to connect to their own bodies, often working outside of theaters and at the intersection of dance with other forms. Headshot: Joshua Filmater for Doma Dance Theater; Movement: Kameron Herndon courtesy Walker Art Center

For 25 years, Laura Selle Virtucio has maintained a vibrant performance career in the Twin Cities and toured nationally with numerous artists and companies. Laura is the recipient of a 2007 McKnight Fellowship for Dancers and a Minnesota Sage Award for Best Performer. She is a senior teaching specialist in dance at the University of Minnesota as well as the Director of University Dance Theatre.

Zadirah Moon Gallas, age 8, has received training through Children’s Theater Company, Park Square Theater and Young Dance where she is a member of their performing company. Zadirah enjoys reading, writing stories, playing with her dog and spending time with her family and friends.

Gemma Isaacson is a Minneapolis-based dance artist who began her professional career at the age of 15 with Minnesota Ballet before attending the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (BFA Dance, summa cum laude). Throughout the course of her freelance career, Gemma has originated roles in works by notable local, national and international stage directors/ choreographers across genres, most recently including Daniel Ellis (Minnesota Opera and Utah Opera), Eric Sean Fogel (Minnesota Opera and Portland Opera), Nic Lincoln, Hannah MacKenzie-Margulies and Kerry Parker. (gemmaisaacson.com)

Erin Thompson has been a dance artist for over 50 years, receiving awards and fellowships in performance, teaching and choreography. Still active in dance at age 70, she also volunteers for the homeless as well as with the immigrant-led organization UNIDOS on climate equity. Erin thanks Penny and Eve for including her in this extraordinary cast of dancers for “Creation”.

Elinor Kleber Diggs is an interdisciplinary artist based in Harlem, New York. They are originally from Saint Paul Minnesota where they grew up training in dance at the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and TU Dance Center.

Anat Shinar is a Minneapolis-based dancer, choreographer, visual artist, educator, curator, and Artistic Director of Young Dance. She holds a Master’s in Arts and Cultural Leadership from the University of Minnesota and a BFA in Dance and BA in Visual Arts. Her work has been presented nationally. She has served on the MN Department of Education’s Culturally Responsive Arts Education Advisory Committee, was a Naked Stages Fellow, and is a certified Hennepin County Master Gardener.

Olive Keefe is in seventh grade at Great River School and dances with the Young Dance Performing Company. In her spare time, she walks on a wire at Circus Juventas, plays the piano, takes dance classes, and goes on walks with her dog, Hazel. 

Anne Lentz is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and a lifelong dancer who has been lucky enough to work and perform in NYC, Europe and Asia for the last 25 years.  She received a Bessie Award in 2010 for Pam Tanowitz’s Be in the Gray With Me.