Artists & Projects Directory

• Africa Consortium
• Dan Hurlin
• David Zambrano
• Dean Moss
• Faustin Linyekula
• Ivana Müller
• Los Muñequitos
• Marc Bamuthi Joseph
• Nora Chipaumire
• Ralph Lemon
• Stories Left to Tell
• The America Project
• Voices of Strength
• Yasuko Yokoshi

Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project

Theaster Gates is a Chicago-based artist and community organizer whose practice covers performance and installation, Urban Planning and Design, and the traditional fine arts. His varied works in clay, performance, installation art and public intervention offer a platform that opens up challenging issues by presenting them, not as acute encounters, but as invitations to engage hard information creatively.  His exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Temple Exercises, built of wooden boards recycled from a factory in Chicago's post-industrial heart, encouraged people to see these discarded materials not only in the light of Modernist Art, but to reflect on cultural traditions that depend on scrap for survival.  The installation housed performances by the Black Monks of Mississippi, a music ensemble which Gates founded.  His other performances, installations, and ceramic exhibits include Black Monks & the Gospel of Black, (Van Abbemusuem, Netherlands); Black Monks of Mississippi-If You See Jesus Tell Him Where I Am (Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago); Branded Alongside the Cabinet of Curiosities (Milwaukee Art Museum); Tea Shacks, Collard Greens & the Preservation of Soul (Center for Proliferation of Afro-Asian Artifacts, Chicago); Plate Convergence (Yamaguchi Institute, Chicago); Mississippi Houses (Inax Ceramic Museum, Japan); andThe American Negro: Too good to be true (St. George Cathedral, South Africa). Gates received an interdisciplinary Master's in Urban Planning and Public Sculpture from Iowa State University in 2005. He is currently Arts Programming Coordinator for University of Chicago, Division of the Humanities, and an Adjunct Faculty member in the Dept of Visual Arts.

Tommy Shepherd, aka Soulati, is a father, husband, actor, playwright, b-boy, rapper, drummer, and beatboxer.Tommy is co-founder of hip hop band, Felonious: onelovehiphop (feloniouslive.com), a resident company at Intersection for Arts in San Francisco that plays live, records albums, and creates original, theatrical productions. Shepherd has been a long-time Hybrid Resident Artist at Intersection for the Arts, is a member of theatre company Campo Santo, and has performed with Erika Chong Shuch's ESP project. He began working with Marc Bamuthi Joseph on Scourge (2006) and continued the collaboration as musician/beatboxer on the break/s. Other credits include: creating the score for Donald Lacy's Color Struck, which was performed at the National Black Arts Festival and for the National Black Congress leading up to President Obama's election; co-creating and performing in Raw Dios for headrush crew, which toured in the U.S. and at the famed El Teatro Campesino in San Juan Bautista; and rewriting the unfinished Duke Ellington musical Queenie Pie, which premiered at the Oakland Opera in 2008. He is also one of three MC's in the live Funk-Hip Hop band Raw Deluxe, bombin' the Bay and world.  

Traci Tolmaire is an actor, dancer, singer from Chicago.  Her training in theatre arts and dance include a BA in Theatre from Spelman College, theatrical studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and dance training at Sammy Dyer School of the Theatre in Chicago, Joel Hall Dance Center, and classes with master teachers Katherine Dunham and Savion Glover. Her theatrical credits include new work Mirrors In Every Corner (directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph for Intersection for the Arts/Campo Santo), Susan Lori Parks 365 Days/365 Plays series (Hartford Stage Company), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Fulton Opera House), The Darker Face of the Earth (Take Wing and Soar Productions), Trouble in Mind (Actor's Express), and Breath, Boom (Synchronicity Theatre Group). Traci has appeared twice in the New York International Fringe Festival as a leading actress in original productions Fantasy, Girl (in which she was also choreographer) and Eggs and the Rebound Guy. Traci also worked as choreographer for Hartford Stage Company's production of Gee's Bend. She recently finished working as an understudy for Lisa Kron's new play In the Wake at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Traci currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.