Columbia, MO
Deanna Dikeman is a photographer whose work focuses on her immediate surroundings and family. Working in series, she candidly documents her aging family in black-and-white in Relative Moments, the contents of a favorite thrift store in the colorful Wardrobe, and ballroom dancing in Ballroom, among other works. A sense of quiet longing and nostalgia infuses her work. Dikeman taught at the University of Missouri.
Talking to Carol, 3/06, from Relative Moments, 2006, silver gelatin print; photo courtesy Deanna Dikeman
New York, NY
Cary Joji Fukunaga directs realistic films that deal with social issues. His work is informed by his extensive travels throughout Southeast Asia, Europe, and Latin America, where he studied and photographed the aftermath of neocolonialism. His short film Victoria Para Chino, a powerful and haunting look at the dangerous journey of Central Americans who cross the Mexican border, won 23 international awards, including a Student Academy Award, and was short-listed for a 2006 Academy Award. His debut feature, Sin Nombre, to be released by Focus Features, reprises the theme of Victoria Para Chino, focusing on young men who cross the border by riding the tops of trains. He developed the script at the Sundance Director’s Lab and used nonprofessional actors from Central America.
Film still from Sin Nombre, 2009; photo courtesy Eniac Martinez and Focus Features
Barrington, RI
Forrest Gander has written numerous books of poetry, a novel, essays, and translations of Latin American poets, including an an-thology of poems by Mexican women. He is best known for his poems, which have been called “complex, elliptical, illusive.” They are lyrical, experimental works with intricate rhythms and structures that often deal with the natural world or the small details of domestic life. Because many of his works are set within the South, he has been referred to as a “poet of the South.” Gander edits Lost Roads Publishers with his wife, the poet C.D. Wright.
As a Friend, 2008; photo courtesy Raymond Meeks
Chicago, IL
Douglas Garofalo established his architectural practice in Chicago in 1988. He is known for experimenting with materials and technology and is a leading voice for digital pedagogy and practice in the field. Although his practice is small, he has been very prolific, completing a broad range of buildings and other projects. He held a professorship at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture and a leader in the academic and professional life of the city.
Residential Project, 2002, Green Bay, WI; photo courtesy Natahn Kirkman
Berkeley, CA
Joe Goode founded Joe Goode Performance Group in 1986. In his choreography for his group, Goode explores the “point of intersection between language and movement” and combines text, song, and multimedia. His work is personal and emotional. His most recent dance, Wonderboy, was created in collaboration with USA Ford Fellow and puppeteer Basil Twist. The Joe Goode Performance Group has toured internationally, and Goode has been honored with many significant awards.
Humansville, 2007, Joe Goode Performance Group with performers Felipe Barrueto-Cabello and Marit Brook-Kothlow; photo courtesy RJ Muna
Seattle, WA
Pat Graney has been creating movement-based work—including ballet, martial arts, and gymnastics—since 1979. In 1990 she founded the Seattle-based Pat Graney Dance Company, which has toured extensively in the United States and abroad. Since 1992 Graney and her company have hosted Keeping the Faith, a series of performances and workshops for incarcerated women. Her piece The Vivian Girls, based on the work of “outsider” artist Henry Darger, toured to six U.S. cities in 2004–6. Her 2008 project, House of Mind, is a large-scale installation/performance on the concept of memory.
The Vivian Girls, 2006, performers Saiko Kobayashi and Diana Cardiff; photo courtesy Pat Graney Company
New York, NY
William Greaves has worked as an independent filmmaker since 1964 and is considered the dean of African American filmmakers. He began his career as an actor in the late 1940s but, frustrated by the lack of substantive roles for black actors, decided to work behind the camera to change that. He has produced and directed four feature films and produced scores of documentary films and television programs. His films have won more than 70 international film festival awards, 4 Emmy nominations, and an Emmy. His experimental 1968 film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One won critical acclaim and is a film buff favorite. Greaves’s 2008 project uses rare archival footage to craft a comprehensive document of the unseen history of the art and artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
Black Power in America: Myth or Reality?, 1987; photo courtesy William Greaves
Oxford, MS
Barry Hannah is an acclaimed novelist and short-story writer. Working in the tradition of southern fiction, he creates quirky, humorous, and violent narratives. His first novel, Geronimo Rex (1972), was awarded the William Faulkner Award and was nominated for the National Book Award. Airships (1978) has been called one of the finest collections of short fiction from the contemporary South. Another of his novels, High Lonesome (1997), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1999 Hannah received the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award in Fiction. Hannah was a writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi beginning in 1982.
Yonder Stands Your Orphan, 2001; cover design by Charles Rue Woods; photograph by Maude Schuyler Clay
Honolulu, HI
Joy Harjo is a poet and musician. An enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Tribe, she writes poetry that speaks of the Southwestern landscape where she grew up, the balance between contemporary Native life and ancient tribal beliefs, memory, myth, and survival. She has published six major collections of works and edits several literary journals. She also has many screenwriting credits for teleplays, public service announcements, and educational television. Harjo performs her poetry and plays the saxophone in the band Poetic Justice.
Portrait photo courtesy Barry Hannah
New London, CT
Barkley Hendricks is best known for life-size paintings of African Americans depicted against flat backgrounds of silver or copper leaf. His subjects are usually ordinary people he encounters on the streets and then photographs. The results are empowering portrayals of individuals who seem at once vulnerable and confident. Working within a tradition of American realism, Hendricks imbues his portraits with the coolness of pop art and posters, and these works have influenced numerous younger painters who work within the tradition of black figuration. In addition, he paints landscapes—mostly of Jamaica, where he also lives—and produces photographs and drawings.
October’s Gone…Goodnight, 1973, oil, acrylic, and magna on linen canvas, 72″ x 72″; photo courtesy A. Vincent Scarano