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 multi-media artist and fourth generation resident of East Saint Paul. He is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Minnesota and also the publisher of INREVIEW, a print publication presenting critical responses to art in the Twin Cities. Since receiving his MFA from Yale University in 1991, Larson has received numerous awards including a New Work Project Grant from The Harpo Foundation, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and most recently was awarded a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. Larson had had solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY and his work was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. In 2018, Larson’s work was included in the 11th Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil and a solo 10-year survey exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, OH.

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.

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.