Kriss Zulkosky, CO-founder

SHe/Her

Kriss Zulkosky was born in Minnesota and currently resides in Saint Paul.  She has a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Minnesota and a Nursing degree from the College of Saint Catherine. Since 1999 she has worked as a Certified Registered Nurse in the Birth Center at Regions Hospital. Her experiences working with women, and in particular with exploited women, have led her to get involved with various women-focused organizations in the Twin Cities. She is a strong supporter of local artists and initiated the Second Shift Studio Space of Saint Paul to support and promote artists in her community.

Chris Larson, CO-founder

he/Him

Chris Larson is a multimedia artist who lives and works in Saint Paul, Minnesota and is represented by ENGAGE Projects in Chicago, IL. He earned his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Sculpture from Yale University in 1991 and is a Professor of Art at the University of Minnesota.

Over the course of his career, Larson has received numerous awards, including the New Work Project Grant from The Harpo Foundation, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, a Bush Artist Fellowship, a McKnight Artist Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, the Katonah Museum of Art, and The View Contemporary Art Space in Switzerland. His art has also been presented at major biennials, including the 2nd Biennial del Fin del Mundo in Ushuaia, Argentina; the 4th Bienal de Montevideo in Montevideo, Uruguay; the 2014 Whitney Biennial in New York City; and the 11th Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In 2018, he presented a comprehensive ten year survey exhibition, Chris Larson: Function is Redundant, at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati. His films, including Stillness of Labor, have screened internationally. In 2019, he co-founded and co-directs Second Shift Studio Space in St. Paul.

Board of Directors

Phong Bui

He/Him

Phong Bui is an artist, writer, independent curator and former curatorial advisor at MoMA PS1, 2007 to 2010. He is also the Co-Founder, Publisher, Artistic Director of the monthly journal The Brooklyn Rail, Rail Curatorial Projects, the publishing press Rail Editions. He is a board trustee of The Third Rail of the Twin Cities, The Miami Rail, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Sharpe–Walentas Studio Program, the International Association of Art Critics United States Section (AICA USA), Anthology Film Archives, Studio in a School, The Second Shift Studio Space of St. Paul, among others. He was a senior critic at Yale MFA, Columbia University MFA, and University of Pennsylvania MFA, 2012 to 2015, and has taught graduate seminars in MFA Writing and Criticism and MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts, 2012 to 2016.

Gretchen Gasterland-Gustafsson

She/her

Gretchen Gasterland-Gustafsson is an Associate Professor of Liberal Arts at MCAD. She received her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society from the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation was titled Design for Living: German and Swedish Design in the Early Twentieth Century. She has a Fil.Lic. in art history from Lunds University in Sweden, where she focused on contemporary art and social consciousness, specifically in the work of Adrian Piper, David Hammons, and Glenn Ligon.

Tina Tavera

she/her

Maria Cristina Tavera (“Tina”) is a Latinx artist, independent curator, and activist influenced by her transnational upbringing between Minnesota and Mexico. Tavera has a Masters in Public Affairs- Leadership in the Arts from the University of Minnesota Humphrey School and is the director of the McNair Scholars Program at Augsburg University. She has received fellowships and grants from the Archibald Bush Foundation, the Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies program, the Museum of Modern Art-New York, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC), Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME). Her work can be found at www.mariacristinatavera.com.

MONICA EDWARDS LARSON

She/Her

Monica Edwards Larson is the proprietress of Sister Black Press - a private Letterpress and Book Arts studio, established in 2000 in Minneapolis, MN. She received a Masters in Fine Art in printmaking from Arizona State University and has taught Printmaking, Graphic Design and Book Arts to students of all ages. She also operates Sister Black (Bike) Press – a mobile printing press that she pedals around the Twin Cities’ bike trails and streets, stopping to print at events in local parks, bike shops, bookstores and libraries.

Roshan Ganu

She/Her

Roshan Ganu is a multimedia artist originally from Goa, presently based in Minneapolis. She creates spaces that mesmerise, incite curiosity and welcome a sense of belonging within the viewer. Ganu is presently the Jerome Foundation Fellow 2022-23. Her multimedia work has been featured at the MDW Art Fair in Chicago, Franconia Sculpture Park, Twin Cities Fashion Week among others. She has been the recipient of grants and projects from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Minnesota Opera, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Springboard for the Arts to name a few. Her solo show is on view now at the Rochester Art Center through October 2023 and has concluded artist residencies at Soo Visual Arts Center and Second Shift Studio Space in Fall 2022. Ganu has been an educator in classrooms in India, France and now in the United States. She currently teaches in the Digital and Studio Arts Department at Hamline University and is a Foundation Studies professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Caroline Kent

She/Her

Caroline Kent (b.1975) is an artist born and raised in the Midwest. From rural life in Sterling, Illinois to currently based in Chicago, IL. Kent received her M.F.A. from The University of Minnesota (2008). Kent lived in Alba Iulia, Romania from 2000-2002 as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Kent explores the limits of language and the process of translation through an expanded painting practice. Developed through an on-going archive of improvisational works on paper, the paintings build out of this context to exists in the multiple forms of drawings, paintings, sculpture, and performance. Kent labors to expand the discourse of modernist abstraction to include alternative logics that move beyond surface and frame through each act of translation from one medium to the next. Kent creates large-scale, unstretched, canvases that hang on the wall. These large works are typified by their all-black ground that colorful geometries sit inside, moving from depth to surface. These paintings consider what it might mean for a coded language to take up residence within a context of blackness.

Kent has received grants from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, and The Jerome Foundation. In 2018, she was a Paint School fellow, a New York based program of Shandaken Projects. Kent was a 2020 Artadia Foundation Chicago Awardee and most recently a 2021 Joyce Alexander Wein prize recipient. Recent group and solo exhibitions include The Solomon R Guggenheim, The Museum of Modern Art New York, and The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Rico Gatson

He/Him

Rico Gatson (b. 1966) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York.  

Working across various media, Gatson’s practice engages history, identity, popular culture, and spirituality, with a particular focus on the political and cultural narratives embedded in the African American experience.

Over nearly two decades, Gatson has produced work that reflects on pivotal historical moments and figures. His practice is formal and rigorous, employing layered symbolism to create visually striking compositions that invite engagement and reflection. Gatson has exhibited his work internationally at institutions including the Essl Museum in Vienna, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In 2019, Gatson completed Beacons, a permanent public commission for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City. The project consists of eight large-scale mosaics honoring notable figures connected to the Bronx, installed at the 167th Street subway station along the Grand Concourse.

Gatson’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Denver Art Museum, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Museum, and the Weisman Museum of Art, University of Minnesota.

Gatson is a faculty member at New York University and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Staff

Emily Dzieweczynski, Studio Manager

She/they

Emily is a new media artist, science communicator, and writer. Their work questions the intersection of science, art, and technology—with particular interest in how those veins cross at the concept of empathy. Emily holds BA’s in Psychological Science and Studio Art from Gustavus Adolphus College and additionally studied Fine Arts Media at the Slade School of Fine Art. Emily’s work has been funded through the National Science Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, Springboard for the Arts, and Gustavus Adolphus College. Her work can be found at www.emilydz.com.