In the spring of 2011, the R2AC was pleased to provide opportunities to nine area teens seeking to pursue experiences with professional artists as a result of the Artist Mentor Grant Program. In 2010, five area teens received Artist Mentor Grants.
This program is for 8th – 12th grade students residing in the counties of Region 2 (Beltrami, Clearwater, Hubbard, Lake of the Woods, and Mahnomen) who wish to broaden their knowledge in regard to an art form they have been studying.
The purpose of the grant is to encourage students to have an experience beyond their current classes. Requests for funding to continue lessons with a current instructor will not be considered.
Below is a roster of professionals who are either currently mentoring or who have mentored young Region 2 Artists as well as those who have shown interest in mentoring. If you are seeking an individual not on this list or if you do not see someone you are interested in working with, simply call the R2AC office. This list is continually growing and we will gladly assist you in locating a professional artist who matches your search criteria.
2011-2012 ARTIST MENTOR ROSTER
Malisa VanMaasdam: Visual Arts
Jake Baggenstoss: Visual Arts
Lou Samsa: Performing Arts (Guitar)
Nicholas Jackson: Visual Arts
Kristin Gustafson: Visual Arts
Russ Peterson: Performing Arts (Saxophone)
Al Belleveau: Visual Arts (Sculpture/Metal work)
2010-2011 ARTIST MENTOR ROSTER
Paula Jensen: Visual Arts (Sculpture/Metal work)
Nina Lubarski: Visual Arts
Dr. Steven Konecne: Performing Arts (Saxophone)
Jeff Burger: Luthier
2011-2012 POTENTIAL VISUAL ARTIST MENTORS
Paula Swensen
Terry Honstead
Kathy Gustafson
Paula Jensen
Terry Kemper
Mary Therese Peterson
2011-2012 POTENTIAL PERFORMING ARTIST MENTORS
Jacque Tinsley
Shannon Murray
2011-2012 POTENTIAL LITERARY ARTIST MENTORS
Cynthia Ekren
2010-2011 POTENTIAL LITERARY ARTIST MENTORS
Lou Ann Muhm
Writing
LouAnn Shepard Muhm is a poet and teacher living and working in Park Rapids, MN. Her poems have appeared in Dust & Fire, The Talking Stick, North Coast Review, Alba, Red River Review, Eclectica, Poems Niederngasse, and CALYX, and she was a finalist for the Creekwalker Poetry Prize (2007) and the Late Blooms Postcard Series (2007). Muhm was a recipient of a 2006 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in Poetry, and has been featured twice in the “What Light” poetry series on mnartists.org, sponsored by the McKnight Foundation and the Walker Art Museum. She currently serves as Poetry Editor at WomenWriters.net. Her chapbook, Dear Immovable, was published in 2006 by Pudding House Press, and her full-length poetry collection Breaking the Glass (2008, Loonfeather Press) was a finalist for the Midwest Book Award. Visit her website http://www.louannmuhm.com .
Cynthia Ekren
Creative Writing
Cynthia graduated from the University of Minnesota Moorhead with a BA in English and a Creative Writing emphasis. She spent a semester studying poetry and Greek Mythology on the island of Paros, Greece through Schiller International University. She is currently finishing a graduate degree in Transformative Theories and Practices through Atlantic University.
Cynthia has had work published in The Talking Stick, Lake Country Journal, Art Word Quarterly, Poetry Motel, The Resorter, Dust and Fire, Red Weather, and Winter: A Season of Writing on the Prairie. She’s written two novels (three if you count the one she wrote in the 8th grade), and now is at work on an historical novel set in Russia.
Sean Hill
Poetry
Sean Hill lives in Bemidji, MN. He has an MFA from the University of Houston. He has taught at the University of Georgia, the University of Houston, and the University of Wisconsin. Hill has received fellowships and grants from Cave Canem, the Bush Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the University of Wisconsin, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Jerome Foundation, the Region 2 Arts Council, and Stanford University.
His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Ploughshares, Pleiades, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, The Oxford American, Tin House and other literary journals, and in the anthologies Blues Poems, Gathering Ground, The Ringing Ear, and Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. His first book, Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2008.More information, as well as poems, can be found at his website: www.seanhill.org.
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2010-2011 POTENTIAL PERFORMING ARTIST MENTORS
Lance Kingbird
Native American Drum and Dance
Lance Kingbird plays both the hand drum and the big drum. He was the Cass Lake Bena Schools drum and dance instructor in the early 2000s. He grew the program from 8 students to a troupe of 120 students strong. His students ranged in age from kindergarten to 12th grade. He finds great satisfaction in teaching children the native heritage through song and dance.
Ron Brown
Brass instruments/Trumpet
Ron is a graduate of the U.S. Armed Forces School of Music, Little Creek in Norfolk, Virginia. He currently teaches private and group lessons in his studio. He has taught band at Schoolcraft Learning Community and Headwaters School for Music and the Arts. He has a passion for improvisation and performance either as a soloist or in a combo setting.
Aaron Tank
Guitar
Song Writing
Technical Skills and Performance Strategies
Aaron has been studying and performing music for about 18 years. He has been teaching guitar for 10 years. Aaron teaches and performs most styles of music including Jazz, Blues, Folk, Classical and Rock. Besides working as a professional solo artist, he plays in two local bands, Pelican Railroad and Rockhouse.
Aaron’s main priority is song writing and performing original material as a solo artist. He has played venues from coast to coast and also has recorded one CD of original material with another to come in the near future.
Beverly Everett
Conducting
Organ
Collaborative Piano (Accompanying)
Beverly Everett has been Music Director of the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra for the past 6 years. For the past two years, she has also worked as the Music Director of the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony.
She holds degrees in organ and conducting from Baylor University. She obtained her Doctorate of Musical Arts in 2001 from the University of Iowa.
Everett helped create and conducted the Bemidji Youth Symphony in 2005 and helped institute the Bemidji Summer Opera Festival in 2008.
Eric Sundeen
Percussion Instruments
Eric Sundeen is a graduate of St. Cloud State University with a BM in percussion performance. He currently is the adjunct professor of percussion at Bemidji State University and is also the percussion coordinator at both Grand Rapids and Bemidji High Schools.
Eric has performed internationally in Mexico, England, Scotland, Whales, Ireland, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Russia. He has been a member of the Minneapolis based percussion ensemble CRASH since 1997. Eric was a member of the internationally acclaimed Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps, and has performed and instructed Minnesota Brass Drum and Bugle Corps.
Eric lives in Bemidji, Minnesota, with his wife and son and along with his teaching duties he runs drum circle clinics, teaches a preschool music class, maintains a private studio, plays in the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra, Pelican Railroad, Rock Bottom and is also active as a freelance musician.
Shannon Murray
Guitar
Song Writing
Folk
Shannon Murray is a folk/punk singer-songwriter and activist originally from northern Minnesota. Her style and sound merge the folk sensibilities of Dar Williams, the energy and spunk of Cyndi Lauper, and the story-telling of Utah Phillips.
She has six self-released albums under her belt and is determined to stay independent. Her self-titled debut album “Shannon Murray” was released in 2002. She followed that up with “you and a six string” in 2003, “Scream” in 2004, “Hallelujah! I’m a Bum” in 2005, “Love and Fear” in 2006, and “Elated” in 2007. The albums are labors of love, and Shannon is proud to proclaim that they were made by local businesses and artists, “My music is an extension of my personal beliefs, to separate the two is to live two lives, and I am not willing to do that.”
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2010-2011 POTENTIAL SCULPTURE ARTIST MENTORS
Albert Belleveau
Sculptor
Rock Iron Art, is the syntheses of a life long love affair that sculptor Albert Belleveau has had with two of northern Minnesota’s most plentiful resources. . . Rocks and Iron. He uses rocks and metal in sculptural form to depict humorous life forms, unique functional furniture and decorating accouterments.
He was a COMPAS Artist working in Schools from 1997 to 2000.
Al looks at his world realizing that things are never what they seem on the surface.
“We make art to see better.” – Al Belleveau
