Karen Rauter (Co-director, Public Relations in Neversink and Rondout Watershed)
Karen Rauter is a conservation worker with 20 years’ experience working in Catskill Mountain communities on watershed protection programs in partnership with NYC water supply managers. She has a deep knowledge of stakeholders in agriculture, forestry and riverside communities, and the best management practices available to them to advance water quality protection goals. “I live in the world of public engagement and education/outreach in service to the rural environment and its people.”
Keiko Sono (Producer, Co-director )
Keiko Sono is a visual and social practice artist based in Beasrville. She uses art production in various media, including video, painting, and animation, as a tool to build connections and strengthen the community. She is a recipient of Individual Artist’s Grant from Arts Mid-Hudson (2015) and Pollock-Krasner Fellowship (2000), and served as Visiting Artist at Ulster County Community College (2013) and Master Artist at Byrdcliffe Artists’ Colony (2015).
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Mark Vian (Advisor)
Mark Vian is a restoration ecologist, community activist and composer. His work over the past 30 years in Latin America, Africa and the U.S. has focused on learning how rural communities around the world understand their relationship with their natural environments, and helping them reimagine those relationships in a way that integrates a deeper understanding and appreciation for their natural history, and for the underlying ecological processes that keep both the community and the environment healthy.
Brett Barry (Audio Specialist and Podcasts Director)
Brett Barry (http://www.brettsvoice.com) is an audio producer and voice-over artist with a studio (http://silverhollowaudio.com/) in Chichester, NY. He has narrated more than 100 books, including a series of nature classics for Silver Hollow Audio. In addition to audiobooks, Brett has voiced numerous commercials, promos, and documentaries, and he is the host of public radio’s Sound Beat. He has produced a series of driving tours of Route 28 (http://drive28.com/), including Catskills history, the arts, and outdoor recreation. He teaches classes in SUNY New Paltz’s department of Digital Media & Journalism.
Michael Asbill (Curator, Chrch Project Space)
Michael Asbill is an installation and public artist, independent curator, and arts advocate who lives and works in Accord, New York. Michael is a former co-director of KMOCA (Kingston Museum of Contemporary Art) a gallery dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary artworks produced in the Hudson Valley region of upstate New York. He served as art manager for the Hudson Valley Seed Library (HVSL) where he helped establish their art pack project. He is a co-director of Chrch Project Space, Cottekill, NY, where Catskill Waters’ first exhibition is scheduled to open in October, 2017.
Moira Williams (NYC Coordinator)
Moira Williams’ performance, public walks and sculpture use notions of call and response to bring people together and make explicit the complexity of their communities and their relationships with our environment. She invites people to reconfigure familiar objects and social events, to offer multiple opportunities for building our social imagination and questioning systems of power and influence. For Moira, participation is not about homogeneity, it is in service of human connections and our connections to our world: to participate is to generate empathy and vitality. Moira has spoken at Open Engagement Conference for Art and Social Practice, Articulating Space Research Centre Falmouth University, UK and interviewed by C Magazine. Her works have been supported by iLAND, Flux Factory, CHRCH Projects Space, ABC No Rio, Cornell University, The People’s Museum, Manchester, UK, Centennial National Park, Nashville, WALK 21, Munich, LIVE Art Development Agency, UK. She is a Laundromat Project Fellow, recently and Creative Capital selected Moira as an On Our Radar Artist.
Amy Dooley (Intern)
Amy Dooley is a photographer and graphic design student who moved from Long Island to the Hudson Valley about 15 years ago. Some of her first experiences in the Hudson Valley were spent appreciating the Ashokan Reservoir. She spent many years as a real estate agent learning about the importance of the watershed in the Catskills. Amy is very excited about the opportunity to work with Catskill Waters.