MindSpace Podcast: Recent Episodes
Morgan Satya Kulas
Morgan Kulas is a multiform artist and educator working in the mediums of performance, painting, and digital arts. Her work explores deep, spiritual, and social ecological questions about the nature of consciousness, relationship, and trauma. Her creative-research process is improvisational and draws on wisdom from the natural world to awaken spontaneous somatic responses that are intentioned to restore bonds and foster healing.
Informed by a lifetime of training in classical and contemporary dance as well as considerable research in movement meditations across cultures; Morgan continues to focus on the embodied, ecological, and mystical dimensions of life through art. She is an experienced contemporary dance teacher and choreographer, as well as a yoga therapist.
Morgan received a BFA in Acting & Dance performance from Chicago College of Performing Arts and is currently enrolled in the Interdisciplinary Art and Regenerative Culture MFA program at Hartford Art School.
King Lexie is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher/educator whose work delves into the embodied politics of voice, listening, and emergence. Rooted in somatic practices, critical theory, and self-inquiry, her practice weaves together explorations of intimacy, power, and the poetics of the body.Emerging from an experimental and contemplative performance background, alongside eight years as a professional mentor and coach, King's practice engages with themes of connection, paradox, and liberation. Spanning performances, writings, immersive installations, experience design, and participatory frameworks such as one-to-one and intimate performance, her recent projects explore the relational dynamics of sound through interrogating feedback and structured improvisation—proposing sonic, somatic dialogues as transformative sites of embodied inquiry.Would you experience this work for yourself? Try a 2min interactive version at www.analoganarchy.com/birds.
Victoria Gray [1982] is an artist and practice-led researcher, and has presented work nationally and internationally throughout the UK, Europe, USA and Canada. With an initial conservatoire training in dance and somatic practice (1998 - 2004), her primary medium and material is the body. Her work includes actions, interventions, time-based sculpture and video, being presented in museums, galleries and festivals in performance art, fine art and choreographic contexts.Her current artistic research is orientated within the field of autistic perception and sensory differences, drawing on lived experience, creative practice and philosophy. In particular, she is currently immersed in understanding sensory trauma and CPTSD within the autistic community and autistic sensory life-writing.As well as fielding this enquiry through her artistic practice, she is a qualified neurodiversity specialist and consultant, working in the Education and Health and Social Care Sectors. In the wider community, as part of York Mental Health Partnership, she is founder of the Neurodivergence and Mental Health Working Group, an advocacy group focussed on improving access to and quality of services for autistic adults.https://www.victoriagray.co.uk
Roberta Trentin is a multidisciplinary eco-artist who works in collaboration with the materials and the unknown outcomes. Her work explores overlooked stories of fungi, microorganisms, and plants in the more-than-human world. A background in science and a love of the earth result in an interweaving of macro/micro observations and deeply personal stories in her work. Roberta splits her time between the forests of the Hudson Valley and Brooklyn where she lives with her two sons.https://www.robertatrentin.com
Julie Chen is an interdisciplinary artist and designer whose art examines the remnants of beings and place. She has an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, a BFA in Multimedia and Performing Arts from the Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and certification in End-of-Life care (death doula). Alongside being an artist, Julie is also a designer and educator in art, architecture, and design.https://artistjuliechen.myportfolio.com
Join Morgan and Hudson for a casual conversation series on healing with the five elements of Chinese medicine.
Join Morgan and Hudson for a casual conversation series on healing with the five elements of Chinese medicine.
The music shared in this track is by Lotus. Licensed under a Creative Commons agreement
Join Morgan and Hudson for a casual series on healing with the five elements of Chinese medicine.
The music shared in this track includes:Nepente by Franz Gordon The Transience of Everything by Ave AirLicensed under a Creative Commons agreement
From the teachings of his Grandfather, Luke Spencer came to know the gifts of nature; its lessons, its care, and its warmth to heal. Watching him at a knee-height age in his worn Dickies safetyshoes tending and nurturing the tomatoes, runner beans, and peppers in his greenhouse and running down the garden path with them fresh in a brown paper bag to gift to Nanny for her casserole, Luke experienced the gift of reciprocity; that we can heal and nurture nature, as much as it heals and nurtures us.It's these affectionate memories Luke comes back to on longs walks along the South Coast of England, where he engages with the sensory experience of being within the world and wild, of being grounded within the present moment to experience thejoy of all beings micro and macro, and to embrace emotion with compassion and loving kindness. Through experiencing the difficulties that anxiety can bring within daily life, walking in nature provided a way of inviting these emotions in, to sit with them sheltered by the trees for a while, to respect and honour them, rather than to push them away. Acknowledging like the changing of the seasons their impermanence and embracing their toughness through tenderness.In his creative practice Luke centres these personal experiences of communing with nature. He looks to engage with our sensory relationship with nature through a curiosity of how mindfulnessapproaches, such as somatic dance, and regenerative methods can benefit our health and connection to the Earth. As well as providing a space for difficult emotions such as anxiety to be better understood and eased, and to be given a place for emotions to be heard and healed.It is this intertwining of science, spirit and story that is present throughout Luke's creativity. Through still and moving image, sound, and installation, he explores how being in nature in thewords of Robin Wall Kimmerer; "can be a medicine for our broken relationship with the Earth, a pharmacopeia of healing stories that allows us to imagine a relationship in which people and land are good medicine for each other."
John Friedrick is an artist, songwriter and pastor. He serves as the pastor of Oak Street Church in Silverton, OR. John graduated from Oregon State University in 2017 with a BS in Community Development. As an artist and pastor John seeks to cultivate a rich interior life while inviting his friends and neighbors to do the same. Emphasizing love as the central theme of life, while consciously dismantling harmful beliefs within his religious tradition and his own experience. John has helped organize community art events in Silverton since 2012 and currently volunteers as an artist in residence at the Borland gallery with the Silverton Art Association. He performs music as Friendmaker and is currently recording an EP of folk songs entitled, Balms. John’s art practice is primarily interested in inner and outer landscapes, contemplative spirituality, our relationship and responsibility to the earth, and the importance of accessibility in both spirituality and art. He relies on observation, reflection, and humor in exploring thesetopics through plein air paintings and drawings, journal comics, songs, and whatever other medium he happens to be exploring at the moment.
In this new conversation series, Tea Time, Hudson Gardner and Morgan Kulas organically explore what we are encountering, learning, and discovering in our lives. In this episode we ruminate on what healing means to us. From balance, to embodiment, to crossing barbed-wire fences—this is a natural dialogue between new found friends on why it matters to tune into the body's innate intelligence.
Natalie Stopka is a Yonkers, New York based artist and educator focused on the material history of color. She captures material and elemental interactions in her collaborative, experimental art practice. Natalie's meticulous, layered imagery incorporates botanical dyes that are ethically foraged or cultivated in her studio garden. The plants provide a seasonally evolving vocabulary of texture and color, rooting her artwork to place. Raised on the south coast of Massachusetts, she earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
Elie Porter Trubert is a New Jersey artist who works across a variety of media including sculpture, installation, audio, and photography. She is driven by a deep connection to nature, concern for the environment, and an interest in non-traditional art spaces. She has developed an ongoing contemplative walking practice that involves the creation of ephemeral, site specific sculptural works assembled from gathered natural materials. These pieces allude to impermanence, interconnectedness, and attunement. She creates “circle meditations” during her walks and leaves them for human and more-than-human others to find. Ultimately they will be washed or blown away, or changed by natural processes. She documents her ephemeral pieces using photography and video and has been exploring the role of those media in the work. In recognition of her positionality, Elie began a “re-gifting” practice of returning what she had previously taken in an attempt to undo the damage and potential violence of those actions. Going back in time in a sense, she creates work using materials sourced over many years. The resulting pieces are offered back in apology and in an expression of gratitude.Going forward, in terms of using materials sourced from nature in her work, Elie is developing and internalizing a process and approach for a walking-with practice with the goal of fostering a relationship with the more-than-human that is healing, consensual, and reciprocal.A long-time nonprofit arts leader, Elie led The Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster, New Jersey until last year. Her work has been exhibited widely, most recently at Sala752 in Zaczernie, Poland and ASC Gallery in London, England. She has a BA Studio Art from Kenyon College and is an MFA candidate at the University of New Mexico.
Rebecca Zablocki is a New York born; Connecticut based interdisciplinary artist. She received her BFA from the Hartford Art School in 2014, and is currently pursuing an MFA in the Confluence MFA program, a low-residency interdisciplinary program dedicated to regenerative culture based at the University of New Mexico. She creates work about chronic illness, using fibers and found objects.