Artist Bios – Aug.10

Amelia Carroll has lived throughout Maryland and in Chicago. She received an undergraduate degree in art from Goucher College and recently graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an extension to that degree. She moved back to Maryland in order to facilitate a collaborative process that involved meeting with a scientist at Fort Detrick [Frederick, MD] and learning about brain cancer. Since then, she has been keeping herself busy — seeking new venues for showing her art, working on her craft, and finding random sources of employment. Currently, her work is on display at The Ragged Edge [second floor] and The Lion Potter, both of which are located in Gettysburg, PA. She mostly resides in Baltimore and hopes to sell some handiwork at the Women’s Industrial Exchange [on Charles Street in Baltimore] this coming fall.

Christophe Casamassima is a founder of Towson ARTS Collective and The Institute for the Emerging Text, where he is the Director of Literary & Performative Arts and editor of Furniture Press. He also teaches in the Film department at Towson University. He has recently completed the Proteus Cycle, which includes The Proteus (Moria Books, 2008), Joys: A Catalogue of Disappointments (BlazeVOX, 2008), and Ore (twentythreebooks, 2009). His new books, UNTILTED and Being/Time, will be published by Moria Books and Xerolage in late 2010 and 2011, respectively. In his spare time he repurposes unwanted books and promotes creative literacy through poetry writing and bookmaking workshops. He lives and works in Baltimore, MD.

Michael Forss was born in a post-industrial, mill town in New England. He has always worked at whatever jobs were available; transportation, education, sales and service, banking and food service. His most interesting job involved working at the rural extension of a state university.  His job was to take groups of economically and socially disadvantaged students out of the city and teach them about nature and that survival was predicated on working together. He is a widower, single, and not…repeat…not looking.  He has spent a lot of his life traveling around. For many  years all he needed to live was his motorcycle, his backpack and his wide ranging connections. Currently,  he is making his way as a non-traditional student. He prepares and serves breakfast to  around one hundred and fifty people every morning…He has outlived a good wife, bad trouble and stinking inevitability… He is by nature an encourager… He is a practitioner of affirmative social accommodation…He is looking for something good to do, somewhere good to do it and some interesting, intelligent, non-dramatic, adults to do it with.

Theron Melchior is a songwriter living in Maryland.

Heather Moss is a poet & library technician who lives in Baltimore. She’s an MFA candidate in University of Baltimore’s Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program.

Lynne Parks collects found objects from Baltimore alleys, salvage yards and flea market bins–she captures found abstracts with her camera and bags treasures to make assemblages with.  With her husband Chris, she gardens, birds, watches old movies, and makes quirky improvisational music on a variety of battered instruments.  Lynne also volunteers for Lights Out Baltimore and is an advocate for people with facial differences.  She graduated from Hollins University with an independent major in creative writing, theater and film.

Meredith Purvis, mild-mannered communications editor by day, kicks up her heels and dances down the night. She received her MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore. Her poetry has been published in Journey Student Literary Magazine, Welter and the Little Patuxent Review. Visit her blog at meredithpurvis.com.

Sweeney is a life-artist. A wanderer, a poet, a monster, a creator and a creation.

Chris Toll lives and makes art in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2011, his new book will come out. It will be called I Danced My Life Away.