Alternate Currents holds space for critical discourse around national and international issues in the arts across multiple platforms. Together, the Alternate Currents Blog, Discussion Series, and Working Group incubate artist-led responses to the systemic challenges we face by centering creative research, collaboration, and critical dialogue.
Throughout 2022, Alternate Currents worked to address issues surrounding the economic, social, and environmental dimensions that shape our understanding of what it means to be in, of, or from a place. The Alternate Currents Working Group, a cohort of arts workers and cultural practitioners, moved those conversations forward, meeting monthly to consider how different aspects of place are held and cared for when approaching site-informed work.
The question that surfaced again and again during group discussions was a complex and open-ended one: How can a creative practice oriented toward understanding place expand notions of what it means to belong? This Place: An Alternate Currents Working Group Reader collects Alternate Currents Working Group members’ projects crafted in response.
To celebrate its publication and launch, Alternate Currents Working Group members will be in conversation with one another at the Ashton at Millwork Commons on Wednesday, January 25th at 7pm. They’ll talk more about their experiences working collaboratively over the course of the year and the potential creative practice holds to examine belonging at the boundaries of geography, language, and discipline.
Free and open to all. Alternate Currents programming is presented with the support of the Sherwood Foundation, the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment, and in partnership with Millwork Commons.
Please register through Eventbrite to join us for this in-person event. Please be aware that there is ongoing construction at Millwork Commons. We encourage you to arrive a few minutes early if traveling by car to find parking which is available on Nicholas between N 11th and N 14th Streets or behind the Hello Apartments off N 12th Street. Please reference this map for directions. Guests are invited to sit on risers or chairs during the program. Risers are uniform and each riser is approximately 20 inches tall. Entrances and exits at the Ashton are wheelchair accessible. Face masks are welcome and encouraged.
This Place: An Alternate Currents Working Group Reader will be available after the event through Amplify’s website and at stockists in Omaha, New York, and Los Angeles. Email peter@amplifyarts.org to reserve your copy.
2022 Alternate Currents Working Group:
Katie Bettin is an urban grower among other working titles. She received her formal education at Colorado State University and has spent the last 2 years in Omaha involved in urban agriculture projects. She has worked predominantly on the nonprofit side of food access and food production. Currently, she is working to navigate away from nonprofit food production efforts to explore alternative modes for establishing an equitable, dependable, and interdependent shift in the growing and distribution of local food.
Caitlin Cass makes comics and installations about failing systems and irrational hope. Her recent installation at the Burchfield Penney Art Center examined radical imagination in U.S. suffrage history. Since 2009, Caitlin has published a bi-monthly comic periodical called the Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent. Her comics and cartoons have also appeared in The New Yorker, The Lily and The Nib. Caitlin was a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction. She earned her MFA from the University at Buffalo, SUNY and recently relocated from Buffalo to Omaha to teach as Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Illustration and Time-Based Media at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
Daniel Castañeda (Sedra D’) is a Universal Observer, Pachamama warrior, and Indigenous kid. His work draws on his Aztec-Mexica and Mexican roots and the traditions of his ancestors to connect past, present and future.
Shannon Elder was born and raised in Omaha, NE. She is a self-taught writer of poetry. Through writing she uses language and form to interpret the meaning of experience, emotions, and connection. With this intention, she incorporates other disciplines into her work such as illustration and collage. She is a past participant of the Omaha Zine Fest. Her inspirations include Eileen Myles, Shira Erlichman, Adrienne Rich, and her grandmother’s stories. Currently attending UNO, she is studying for an MBA in Sustainability in hopes to better improve the way we think about our options and impact in the spaces we exist.
Alex Jacobsen is an artist based in Omaha, NE, whose work focuses on the plasticity of sound and aims to provide audiences with a deeper understanding of their spatial-temporal environments. He received his Bachelors of Music from the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 2017. His work has been shown and performed across the Midwest and Europe, including Radiophrenia Art Festival, ESS’s Quarantine Concert Series, and Omaha Under the Radar.
Holly Lukasiewicz explores prairie-inspired botanical design through an impact-conscious lens of sustainability as District 2 Floral Studio, valuing land ecosystem health over trending aesthetics. Holly’s background is in K-12 arts education, and she continues to guide creative-making experiences with community groups as a teaching artist with nonprofits, seeing these connections as a way for participants to grow compassion toward self and others. Holly supports the role of creative practices as an approach to activism, weaving awareness and action around environmental, social and economic concerns.
David Muñoz is an up and coming artist whose main focus is acting. He's studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Upstanding Citizens Brigade in New York City for four years. He's worked with sketch teams and improve shows while working with an acting coach to better hone his craft. At the beginning of the pandemic, he was working with Hunter College and an indie theatre company to help develop a new show. Slated to assist the director with their planned tour. Unfortunately once the pandemic reached the city everything had shut down and he had to move back home to Omaha, to help support his mother. He's been trying to upstart his career in a new location since August of last year. He has plans to work with an indie theatre company here in Omaha with hopes to perform, produce, direct and write his own productions in the upcoming future.
Nathaniel Ruleaux (he/him) is an award-winning artist and culture worker currently located on unceded land of the Umónhon & Očhéthi Šakówiŋ in Nebraska. A partner, father, and member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, his work combines modern art with traditional indigenous imagery. He is a founding member of Unceded Artist Collective, and sits on the board of the Omaha Area Youth Orchestras. Recently, he created work for the national Indigenous Futures Survey 2.0 campaign. In addition to creating visual art, he is a classically-trained actor and educator. He received his MFA in Theatre from the University of Houston’s School of Theatre and Dance after receiving a BA in Theatre Performance at the Johnny Carson School of Theatre & Film at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Lee Running makes sculptures and drawings using roadkill animal bones, glass, paper, fabric, fur, raw pigments, and gold. Her training as a traditional papermaker allows her to manipulate materials and process as well as maintain the discipline of a fine craft. Her sculptures, installation and performance work are deeply connected to place. Her work has been exhibited internationally, at the National Taiwan University of the Arts, Taipei, Taiwan, The Morris Graves Museum, Eureka, CA, The Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA, Western Carolina University Fine Art Museum, Cullowhee, North Carolina, the Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA, and The Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City, KS.
Joelle Wellansa Sandfort is an interdisciplinary artist living in Omaha, NE. She makes drawings, textiles and installations using mostly second hand materials. She is the current Facilitator of Fleabane Gallery and a 2022 member of the Amplify Arts Alternate Currents Working group. Her work has been exhibited at Elder Gallery (Lincoln), Eisentrager-Howard Gallery (Lincoln), Tugboat Gallery (Lincoln), Confluence (Lincoln), San Paro (Lincoln) and Sanctuarium (Omaha). Joelle earned her BA in Art from Nebraska Wesleyan in 2018.