Staff

MARGARET COLEMAN earned her BFA from the University of Minnesota in 2005 and her MFA from Pratt Institute in 2009. She likes doing fun things, like making art in a small fishing village in Skagastrond, Iceland for three months in 2010 (Nes Artist Residency and Fellowship) or going on a six week art tour like a DIY band in 2011 (NonSolo Collective). She has also lived in reclusion in a foreclosed building and hopped a boxcar. The former was art, the latter was just pure fun. One time she loaded forty people onto a bus and took them to secret places, (Flux Factory, Demonstrations of Aptitude, 2009) and another summer was spent hanging out with senior citizens doing paper making (St. Louis Park Arts and Culture Grant 2009). She has lived in barns and farm towns while making stuff. She has cast iron and made paper in the ocean.

LIZ ENSZ was born in Minnesota to a resourceful family of penny-savers, metal scrappers, and curators of cast-offs. She received her BFA (2005) in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and her MFA (2013) in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is currently teaches. Ensz is a hard-core maker in a range of processes from foundry and metal-working to printed, sewn, and woven textiles. At the heart of her practice lies a determined material engagement, scavenger impulse, and a sincere hope for the rethinking of disposability and permanence in regards to the valuation of resources, the environment, and living things. Last summer she lived outdoors for 6 weeks.  

http://www.lizensz.com/ 

AMY JOY HOSTERMAN is a ceramic sculptor from Minnesota. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, and received her BFA from the University of Minnesota. Fascinated by cycles and processes, she investigates and analyzes, and her work exhibits these interests in meticulous detail. Her miniatures and dioramas act as allegorical narratives, using humor and irony to examine absurdities in the relationships between humans and the environments that they attempt to control. She is continually experimenting with raku and alternative firing methods, as well as building and firing various types of kilns. Hosterman has received public art grants in St. Paul, MN, and has taught ceramics at Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN, and at Bloomington Theatre and Art Center in Bloomington, MN. Amy Joy has developed the clay programming at The Visitor Center, including hand-processing the local clay. www.amyjoy.carbonmade.com

JOSHUA HOSTERMAN earned his BFA in sculpture and has spent several additional semesters in the social sciences. He comes from a family of technical types and has been making things by hand and machine his whole life. For the past eight years, Mr. Hosterman's practice has teetered between visual art and community work. He mostly enjoys drawing portraits, digital photography, and assisting others as they create objects and situations. For the last five years he has managed a non-profit teaching wood shop. He is an accomplished sophist and an enthusiastic proponent of spreadsheets and wicked precision in creative endeavors. He can see the future and sometimes fly. 

JAMES LENTZ is indefatigable in his pursuit of art as a viable life course option. He received his BFA in Sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and is currently working on his MFA from the University of the Autodidact with a concentration on All Media and Everything Else. In addition to his role at The Visitor Center, Lentz is the Foundry Coordinator and Casting Instructor at the Steel Yard, Providence, R.I., Foundry Coordinator for the traveling aluminum foundry for Art Shape Mammoth, and on the steering committee for the 2015 National Conference of Cast Iron Art held at Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, AL. James creates new sculpture and installations in any material for shows around the nation. He spends his "off-time" as an amateur graphic designer, designing and building furniture, screen-printing fabric, drinking coffee, and otherwise living.

www.jameslentzstudio.com

MELISSA SCLAFANI grew up on Long Island (pronounced Lawn-Guyland), New York and received her BFA in sculpture from SUNY New Paltz in 2009. She grew up dancing in an Italian American family where each Sunday dinner was at 3 pm with just her immediate family - 30 some-odd-people. Her large loud family has triggered her desire to work with communities and her dancing background made her very aware of the human body and its limits. Melissa can be found teaching herself new computer programs, tap dancing in her studio and running around Brooklyn with her pup, Rufus Baby Girl. During this symposium, Melissa will be coordinating the Sustainable Infrastructure Projects.
www.melissasclafani.com

MEL SEEGER has worked in the logging industry and run sawmills his entire life in Northern Minnesota and the UP. He builds barns, saunas, yurts and boats of his own designs; the Visitor Center's studio barn is one of his. He also makes various types of heaters, furnaces, ovens, and stoves and has been experimenting with creating insulating bricks from local clay and sawdust from his mill. He's a master of hand craft and is also tech savvy, using CAD and CNC to create utilitarian designs and visual art. He also farms and plays traditional Norwegian music with his wife.

 
MARY CAROL AND CAMERON COLEMAN bought 120 acres of primarily forested land in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 2005 after living in an RV for five years while volunteering for the Forest Service and National Park Service. The north end of the property borders Ottawa National Forest along a scenic river corridor.

The Colemans have been working to restore the land as much as possible. With the help of grants from the Deptartment of Agriculture, they have planted thousands of native trees. They have cut some areas of aspen in the woods to allow for different age classes, built a pond, put up bat houses and bird houses, made habitat for snowshoe hare, and built an extensive trail system. "We won't live to see much of the results of all this, but we have the satisfaction of knowing that we have tried to be stewards and to help restore the land's natural beauty."