Current Alternate Currents Cohorts
2024-25 Alternate Currents Cohort:
Justin Alexander
Justin Alexander is a multidisciplinary artist, living in Omaha, NE. He is a citizen of the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska. As an avid cyclist, he is a supporter of transportation equity efforts in Nebraska. Justin is a past recipient of a Micro Grant from Amplify Arts. Currently, he works in operations at the Kiewit Luminarium as an exhibit technician. Justin’s creativity and interest in S.T.E.A.M, make him an excellent collaborator, on projects of all types.
Yuanjun Chen
Yuanjun Chen was raised by two artists in Guangdong, China. Growing up surrounded by fabrics, typefaces, drawings, etc., Yuanjun developed an interest in photography as a teenager. Soon it became his everyday hobby and the primary lens through which he explores forms of communication, relationships, and social issues. Yuanjun received an associate degree in graphic design from Private HuaLian College in 2018 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in printmaking from the University of Nebraska-Omaha in 2023.
Keegan Dunn
Keegan Dunn is a field researcher and photographer currently residing in Omaha, Nebraska. Keegan has spent 2023 performing a comprehensive independent study on the ecology and history of the Missouri watershed within the state. Their current body of work “Cottonwood Study” has received funding from Amplify Arts which allows them to continue learning building dialogue within the region.
Jessie Fisher
Jessie makes art in multiple mediums, but for the last 5 years has primarily been a printmaker. He works in letterpress, woodcut/linocut, monotype, and cyanotype. Whether it’s experiments with processes, or more direct socio-political propaganda, the work encourages questioning what's possible. Jessie grew up on a farm in rural Nebraska, but has called Omaha home for the past 20 years. In that time he's worked in construction, art education and for the past 6 years has been a home inspector. Jessie helped create, an art/community space called “Media Corp.” It provided meeting space for a variety of advocacy groups and also functioned as a food pantry for a time.
Natalie Hanson/Facade Queen
Natalie Hanson/Facade Queen is a multidisciplinary music, theater and movement artist from Tacoma, Washington residing in Omaha. She came to Omaha in 2014 to study Musical Theatre and Dance and is also a self taught musician and producer. In Omaha, Natalie has performed with the Bluebarn Theatre and The Rose Children’s Theatre, where she recently served as a full time company member and Associate Director of Early Childhood Education. Her solo project “Facade Queen” was nominated for Outstanding New Artist and Outstanding Pop from the OEAA awards and her duo project “Twin Pages” was recently nominated for Outstanding Alt/Indie. Natalie has performed professionally in Chicago, Illinois with Comedy Dance Chicago and Teatro Vista Theatre. Natalie has also collaborated with her sister, Emilie and local artists on their experimental music duo “Court The Muse” and has been a past recipient of Amplify Arts Generator Grant Series. Natalie is interested in exploring many topics in her work including mixed race identity, art for the very young, food, dance accessibility and connecting the community.
Cassy Jensen
Cassy Jensen, a writer hailing from Omaha, NE, employs a creative process that commences with attentive listening, keen observation, and a deep connection to emotions. Articulating her responses through various mediums, including poetry, fiction, stand-up, screenwriting, public speaking, and performance, she showcases a diverse range of expressive talents. Bridging the realms of humor and poignancy, her poems evoke laughter, while her comedy explores themes of sadness. As a conscientious storyteller, Cassy recognizes the profound influence that medium and context wield over the reception and real-world consequences of a message for its audience. Pursuing truth and delving into the complexities of ethics, morality, power dynamics, epistemology, oppression, and trauma, she navigates the ambiguities and paradoxes of these subjects. Her ultimate goal is to emerge from each endeavor with newfound wisdom and a touch more confusion, to walk away with something new to chew on.
John Paul
John Paul is a “mark-maker” whose art blurs the line between printmaking, drawing, and painting. He is also a community-arts organizer who works with neighbors, creatives, and cultural institutions to plan and implement events that shine a spotlight on arts, community-building and creative place-making.
Sener
Sener, originally from Mexico and based in Gretna, NE, founder of soundarte.net and the label EAC Records Mx. Since 2013 he has produced contemporary art events in the United States and Mexico, highlighting Noisefest 2023 and Festival ExNihilo 2023. His approach encompasses sound, the exploration of consciousness through art and musical immersion, investigating post-digital art, and the intersection of ancient traditions with the use of audiovisual technology. As a creator and curator, his mission is to promote cultural exchange and foster artistic innovation through unique sound and visual experiences.
Viy
Viy, pronounced /v/, is a non-binary, multi-media artist. Their practice focuses on the materiality and history of objects, breaking them down to better understand them so they can be reconfigured and re-contextualized as art objects. Interested in refuse and refusal, their work comes from their own trash and items discarded by others, refusing the notion that these objects are worthless and instead seeing them as full of artistic potential. Most recently their practice has been focused in handmade papermaking, fiber based media, and relational aesthetics.
Carlie Waganer
Carlie Waganer is a collector, weaver, and perpetual novice. She received her BFA in Fiber arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and her work has been shown at Distillery Gallery, Gallery@ArtBlock, Women’s Studio Workshop, Store_Space Gallery, and the Nichols House Museum. Waganer has worked as an administrator at residency centers in Tennessee, New York, and now Nebraska. In her professional life, she considers herself an “artistic administrator,” where the support of artists and the realization of their goals are integral to her own artistic fulfillment. Her material practice includes marbling, fabric manipulation, collage, categorizing, coding, weaving, drawing, baking, journaling, and list-making. She is mostly interested in interconnectedness and impermanence, especially between what we consider the physical and digital worlds.
2023-24 Alternate Currents Cohort:
Joy Cotton
Joy Cotton is a mixed media artist living in Omaha. Joy uses a combination of pencil, acrylic, oil to create paintings and murals. She creates pieces that hold a great significance to personal emotions, like happiness, sadness, anger, and depression. The characters she makes depict different forms of fantasy and realistic figure drawings. These works contain multiple layers of textures and different types of painting applications. A graduate of University of Nebraska at Omaha Joy often works with other artists and organizations within the Omaha arts community. For the past two years she has worked on projects with Omaha Summer Arts Festival (OSAF), Benson First Fridays (BFF), and Midtown Crossing Sunny Chair project. Interacting, building relationships and collaborating with innovative individuals has shown her the interconnectedness of the art community. Through these interactions, observations, and personal projects she has continued to define and develop her artistry.
Amanda Huckins
Amanda Huckins is a Nebraskan poet whose work has been published in booklet form as "Trying to End the War" (merrily merrily merrily merrily, 2017) and featured in A Dozen Nothing (adozennothing.com), among other places on paper and online. In her weekday hours, Amanda is an Early Head Start educator and participates in building the brain architecture for social emotional and cognitive development in infants and toddlers. In addition to her paid work, Amanda is a grassroots organizer who works alongside fellow community members to build self-determination, forge non-transactional relationships, and create radical free spaces (such as past DIY spaces The Commons in Lincoln, NE and Media Corp. in Omaha). She is also a letterpress printer who produces posters and other ephemera in her garage print studio, where she teaches typesetting to anyone who wants to learn.
Alex Jacobsen
Alex Jacobsen explores the interconnectedness of space, memory, and body primarily through psychoacoustics and somatic vibrations. Visually, they often use found electronics, liquids, and naked loudspeakers to create ceaselessly changing environments. In live performances, Alex often incorporates feedback, processed recordings, and amplified objects, creating a collectively remembered soundscape. In recent years, Alex has contributed music for a number of film and dance projects, and their work has been featured across the United States, Mexico, and Europe, including Radiophrenia Art Festival, ESS’s Quarantine Concert Series, and Konvent Puntzero.
Aspen Monet Laboy
Aspen M. Laboy (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist from Omaha, Nebraska working in poetry, glass sculpting, installation, and film photography. Exploring concepts of environmentalism, internal identity, and cultural heritage, they are influenced by nature, science, and philosophy. Aspen has three published books; “Spirit” (2017), “The Quiet Lion” (2018), and “I MATTER” (2022). They co-hosted the poetry workshop “Corner’s Space” at KANEKO and have performed poetry in various galleries. In 2023, several of their selected poems were aired on “Friday Live'' with Nebraska Public Media through NPR. Their work has been exhibited at MoonRise Gallery, Fleabane Gallery, Goldsmith Silversmith, LUX Center for the Arts, Generator Space, Family of Things, and Union Street Gallery. Currently, Aspen is one of the selected artists for the Alternate Currents Cohort through Amplify Arts. In addition, they were awarded a scholarship for Penland School of Craft to attend in Summer of 2024.
Artur Melika
Artur Melika is an Omaha-based, queer, Ukrainian-American artist. Melika received his BFA from University of Nebraska Omaha in December of 2022. Art’s current work explores the vastness of the queer experience and how it manifests for individuals coming from different backgrounds. His primary focus is in 2D mediums including printmaking, drawing and painting. Melika is also exploring guerrilla style performance-based work, in public and gallery settings.
Lauren Simpson
Lauren Simpson is an Omaha-based choreographer and educator. She created Moving Truck, a mobile and socially-distanced show performed on front lawns at residences throughout Omaha in 2020. Recent projects include Smithereens, a site specific performance in Joslyn Art Museum with music by Omaha musician Miwi LaLupa, Celestial Real Estate, a collaborative performance at Generator Space gallery featuring local artists Nick Miller (painter), Celeste Butler (textile designer), and Dereck Higgins (musician), and Self-Leveling a performance at ODC Theater San Francisco in collaboration with dancer Galen Rogers and visual artist Emma Strebel. Collaboration across disciplines is at the heart of her art making.
Bilgesu Sisman
Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, Bilgesu is a writer, researcher, educator, and film programmer with a background in philosophy and a deep love for cinema. Bilgesu’s work as a creative writer and filmmaker focuses on female-driven narratives, often in the form of psychological and philosophical mysteries, thrillers and fantastical fiction that meditate on our encounters with the unknown - whether personal, existential, or socio-political. As a PhD candidate in Philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago, her thesis explores the political history of necroviolence (i.e. posthumous corporal violence) and argues for its formative role in state power. In addition to political philosophy, Bilgesu taught courses on subjectivity, psychoanalysis, affects, memory, trauma, and film theory. She currently works as the Interim Programming Director at Film Streams in Omaha, Nebraska.
Valerie St. Pierre Smith
Aniin. Valerie St. Pierre Smith (White Earth Ojibwe enrolled descendant) nindizhinikaaz. A mischief maker, scholar, author, healer, and multidisciplinary artisan, Valerie has an eclectic creative background including fiber arts, sewing, painting, and costume/fashion design. Her design work has been seen across the country with highlights that include The Kennedy Center, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Sea World: San Diego, the National Museum of the American Indian, and Pilobolus Dance Theatre. A bit of a unicorn, Valerie’s creative research and scholarly work focuses on appropriation, inspiration, representation, and decolonization in western design practices. She is currently working on a book focused on decolonizing contemporary design processes for Routledge Press. As a mixed blood Anishnaabe-kwe, healer, and artisan, her work explores and is influenced by her experiences at the confluence of healing, social justice, traditional Anishinaabe teachings, and the power of identity. St. Pierre Smith holds a B.F.A from Stephens College, and an M.F.A from San Diego State University.
Mi’oux Stabler
Mi'oux is a member of the Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation whose tribal lands are located in northeast Nebraska along the banks of the Missouri River. She is a proud mother, artist, land tender, and a dedicated cultural advocate. For the past decade, her endeavors have been geared towards the revitalization of traditional languages and land stewardship practices. She has traveled extensively, but currently focuses her work in the ancestral homelands of the Umoⁿhoⁿ people.
Casey Albert Welsch
Casey is a working class writer, cook, journalist, and organizer. Born and raised on a dryland Nebraska farm, he now lives and works in central Omaha. As a multimedia journalist in southeast Nebraska, Casey started a community news service at KZUM radio in Lincoln, was a founding member of the Dandelion Network mutual aid group, and was a regular contributor to Hear Nebraska and Perfect Pour magazine. These days he is focusing on his other life's work as a cook, working at Methodist Hospital, feeding the sick and those who care for them.