Arts in Nature Festival - Artists
HEADLINERS
MUSIC: REV. PAT WRIGHT
AND THE TOTAL EXPERIENCE GOSPEL CHOIR
The award winning and world renown Total Experience Gospel Choir bursts with love, joy and enthusiasm - humanity! It is hailed as one of the Pacific Northwest's finest soulful ensembles. Pastor Patrinell Staten Wright started the group as a gospel music class at Seattle's Franklin High School in 1973. Since then the choir has grown to become a nationally and internationally known gospel singing group.
POETRY: NIKKITA OLIVER
Nikkita Oliver is a Seattle-based creative, teaching artist, attorney, and anti-racist organizer. Her writing has appeared in the South Seattle Emerald, Crosscut, and the Stranger. She holds a J.D. and Masters of Education from the University of Washington. She has been a writer-in-residence with the Writers in the Schools program at Washington Middle School, leading writing workshops with Arts Corp at Garfield High School, and a mentor artist and case manager with Creative Justice, with the program since it’s launch. Nikkita is the 2015 recipient of the Seattle Office of Civil Rights Artist Human Rights Leader Award, the 2014 Seattle Poetry Slam (SPS) Grand Slam Champion, the 2013, 2014, and 2016 SPS Womxn of the World Poetry Slam representative, a three-time SPS national team member, and two-time coach of the SPS national slam team. She has opened for Cornel West and Chuck D of Public Enemy and performed on The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert. In 2017 many hoped she would be come Seattle’s mayor.
ALL PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Holly & Oy
Ladan Yalzadeh and Ryan Mielcarek
About Ladan Yalzadeh
For the last 20 years, Ladan Yalzadeh has worked across disciplines including film, theater, live art and writing.
Through a highly personal and autobiographical approach, Yalzadeh explores themes surrounding immigration, exile, loss, memory, love and longing in her own work.
As organizer and collaborator, Yalzadeh's interest revolves around creating opportunities and engaging with creatives and projects that transgress the norms both in form and content.
" In my work, I am always looking for what connects things to each other. So the questioning of a Self that most of us believe in, seems to be one way to investigate the idea of connection. I think about this a lot these days. Once we really start to look at who/what we are, we start to see that this Self we are so convinced of, is perhaps not as solid as we first thought. That who we are and how we feel from minute to minute, is totally dependent on other causes and conditions. With this discovery, comes a genuine experience of interconnectedness. And with this understanding, we start to see ourselves as part of a whole. So here we are as individuals but also a collective (and not just of humans.)
I have the same approach to how I make art. I try to set up situations where connections can happen. I work in theater and film as a director because so many people with individual talents and expertise come to together to create one thing. In fact, if we didn’t have a playbill or film credits, we wouldn’t know where exactly one person’s work ends and another’s begins. Same thing is true with curating and arranging."
Ladan’s the recipient of several honors including 2009 Noor Film Festival’s Best Short Film Award for The Florist, the AFI Directing Workshop for Women Scholarship in 2004, which she was the first Iranian-American to receive, the Nell Shipment Film Award and the Eastern Washington University Artist Award.
Yalzadeh has sat on various selection committees including REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney at CalArts Theatre), On The Boards, AFI (American Film Institute) and Seattle Center Public Programs.
Ladan’s work has been presented in Iran, Germany, Chile, UK, Spain and the United States.
She is also a teacher and a facilitator of the Contemplative Creative Lab and is the co-founder of Authentic Presence. Authentic Action.
Ladan received her BA in Mediaworks from the Evergreen State College and her MFA in Creative Practice from Transart Institute, Plymouth University.
About Ryan Mielcarek
Ryan is a humble humanitarian, talentless creative, and social alchemist that plants seeds for unexpected friends to discover and enjoy each other's heart space. He is an advocate and practitioner of holistic healing, whether that be storytelling, theatre, or nature-based ceremonies of return for military veterans. His greatest role has been an as an ensemble member of a grassroots collective leading veteran transformation in the wilderness, which is showing unprecedented promise for veterans to move beyond uncertainty towards reclaiming their true selves in loving community. You may catch a glimpse of Ryan in an upcoming film of that journey by esteemed documentarian Frederick Marx or on stage in a Seattle Rep Public Works production. He is an unworthy battlecat to a persian goddess that inspires him to live in beauty.
About Ladan and Ryan's work at the Festival
All are invited to bring a poem along and read it out loud among the trees. Love poems of any length are encouraged.
