Trillium Arts Celebrates Our Alumni Artists
& Their Creative Work!
Check out their inspiring updates below...
In a world where artists need to be heard, valued and supported more than ever, Trillium provides an environment and resources for creativity to flourish at the confluence of art, community and ecology.
As the fifth year of artist residencies at Trillium Arts draws to a close, (Woo! Hoo!) it is an apt time to hear from a few of Trillium's artist alumni about the outcomes of their work while in residence. The range of work accomplished is truly remarkable. High Fives to all the artists!
In the spirit of generosity this season, we hope you will consider a year-end contribution, so Trillium can continue to support amazing artists into Year Six and beyond. We look forward to what the future holds and are beyond grateful for the way these artists, and many more, have touched our lives and the world around us.
With gratitude,
Phil Reynolds and Heather Hartley
ARTIST NEWS:
Orlando Corona
Greenville, SC
Individual Artist-in-Residence, December 2024
Web: orfamivisualart.com / IG: @orfamivisualart
I was recently recruited to create the poster for a new, unreleased musical titled “La Zafra”. It is a moving, provocative and beautiful story about a young man from Mexico who moves to South Carolina for work, where he falls in love with a local woman and faces fears and prejudice from the locals. It was written by a Mexican playwright based in Seneca, SC who I immediately connected with and the project became a personal favorite. We worked with him and the creative director of a local theatre, who he has worked with for several years, to get the musical finished and produced.
Kimberly Crutcher
Chicago, IL
“Miss Sarah” Fellowship for Black Women Writers, July 2024
I have been continuing to write my novel Buffaloed. Buffaloed is a walk through America, the history, the future and this long lingering moment where we all long for modes of safe, transformative, healing touch that is not salacious, and for empowering images of communal grieving. In the past year I have focused on the musical aspects as well as re-writing the text. I'm looking at pathways for publishing as I re-write. I'm considering serial audio/podcast publishing in addition to traditional print formats.
I have visited Montgomery AL twice since my time at Trillium. I took space at the Legacy Museum to write passages about the relationship between grief and resistance to violence. I am especially moved to continue exploring concepts and imagery of the captive maternal engaged in a long journey that blends grieving and escape/freedom motifs . Here’s a picture of me at the National Memorial for Peace. I am standing under the marker that commemorates victims of lynching in the county where my Great Grandfather lived. He was not a victim of lynching but there are dates on the marker that correspond to dates when he was living there and raising his family.
Melissa Fraterrigo
West Lafayette, IN
melissafraterrigo.com / @melissafraterrigo / https://www.facebook.com/melissa.fraterrigo
Individual Artist-in-Residence, June 2023
My memoir, The Perils of Girlhood was published by the University of Nebraska Press on 9/1/2025 and received a STARRED review from Booklist, calling it "intimate, raw, relatable." These were the essays I drafted during my time at Trillium Arts!!
Kristi Vincent Johnson
Durham, NC
IG: @profkvj
North Carolina Choreographic Fellowship, September 2024
Over the past year since completing our Trillium Arts Fellowship, we have continued developing Black Being, a short film inspired by North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green’s powerful poem of the same name. The film offers a vivid visual interpretation of Green’s meditation on the perseverance, resilience, and generational journey of the Black woman in America. Through movement, imagery, and layered storytelling, the film seeks to honor her strength and illuminate the histories, dreams, and embodied memories carried forward through her.
Watch a preview of Black Being HERE
Photo of Kristi Vincent Johnson by Rick Crank Photography; Poster Photo by Laura Casteel.
Ayako Kato
Chicago, IL
Web: ayakokatodance.com / IG: @furyuayajp
ACE (Appalachia/Chicago Exchange) Fellowship in Dance, September 2021
Trillium supported "ETHOS II: Inception" (2021), and the ETHOS Project has been evolving along with Ayako’s mission of embodying Fūryū, wind flow in Japanese, or the beauty of being as it is.
In April 2025, Ayako toured Japan and Taiwan as Suzuribako music and dance ensemble supported by Swiss Performers’ Foundation, Pro Helvetia, and regional Swiss arts councils. In March 2025, she presented "ETHOS: Ways of the Wind" (work-in-progress) in collaboration with composer Yiheng Yvonne Wu, Southern Ute cultural representatives, members of Native American Students Alliance, flutist Élise Roy, and performers from Department of Visual and Performing Arts supported by the Fellowship Award by the Heller Center for Arts and Humanities at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. In December 2024, Ayako performed in the Black Air exhibition at the Casino Luxembourg Forum d'art contemporain and also published her 2nd artist book, “Art of Being through Emptiness” from Casino Display. In April, she premiered "ETHOS IV: Degrowth/Cycle/Rebirth" for Chicago Spotlight Festival at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago & Grant Park supported by Sybil Shearer Fellowship at Ragdale, a National Dance Project (NDP) Grant Finalist Award, A. Montgomery Ward Foundation, and the Chicago Park District.
Watch excerpts of “ETHOS IV” HERE
Photo by Ricardo Adame
Nina Kawar
Asheville, NC
Web: pure-ritual.com / IG: @pure_ritual
HEAR (Helene Emergency Artist Residencies), March 2025
Since Helene my creative projects consist of pivoting my business, Pure Ritual, and focusing solo on creating jewelry: while still rebuilding and navigating this great transition in my life. My goal is to sell more jewelry online, less craft shows, and more time to create efficiently for the sake of my health and wellbeing. I am working towards creating a space to work with clay again and potentially begin lapidary for my business and its evolution.
Photo by Nicole McConville
Khecari
Chicago, IL
Web: khecari.org / IG: @khecaridance
ACE (Appalachia/Chicago Exchange) Fellowship in Dance, August 2022
In 2025, Khecari's final iteration of "Tend" was installed in the galleries at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI, for a month as an exhibit open to the public daily and as a performance during the weekends. "Tend" was being developed conceptually and structurally while we were in residence at Trillium and was premiered shortly after returning to Chicago.
Watch Excerpts of “Tend” HERE
Photo of Julia Antonick and Jonathan Meyer by William Frederking; “Tend” photo courtesy of JMKAC
Donald Scott Ray
Boone, NC
Web: jollyquad.com / FB: @ Donald Scott Ray
Sponsored Artist Since 2022
Hi everyone! I’m grateful to be recovering from surgery and fortunate to spend more time in my wheelchair. While in the chair, I continue to paint by mouth both pottery and landscapes. I continue to enjoy finding new ways to create meaningful artworks with function and beauty. I stand on the shoulders of many people and I cannot do this without them.
My latest project, THERAPEOPLE, is my most meaningful yet. They are reusable ceramic figurines upon which people may draw faces with erasable markers. Aside from being just plain fun they facilitate communication with individuals who experience barriers to expression. They provide a nonverbal way to express emotions, explore self-perception, and engage creative parts of the brain that can aid in the therapeutic process. Drawing can release emotional tension, focus racing thoughts, and provide a tangible representation of internal experiences that the client and therapist may examine together. If you or your loved one cannot afford to purchase a figurine, simples send a message to me on Facebook with your story, and I will make arrangements to cover the cost.
Also, I invite you to check out my NEW website, JollyQuad.com. You can view and purchase a variety of items and, I have a special section devoted to my firsthand reviews of accessible outdoor adventure locations for people with mobility issues. Sincere thanks!
Katey Schultz
Burnsville, NC
Web: www.kateyschultz.com
HEAR (Helene Emergency Artist Residencies), March 2025
I have begun the second draft of my third book, a novel set in rural West Virginia during the early 2000's. During my Trillium Arts Residency in March 2025, I was able to reread my first draft of this novel, following my experience as a survivor of Hurricane Helene. At the time, I had concerns that the writing would seem insignificant in the face of growing climate disasters (and now, growing constitutional crises). The time afforded me at Trillium helped me find my way back into the draft, and affirmed that the story--which explores how to hold one foot in hope and one foot in despair, against the backdrop of mountaintop removal and family trauma--DOES resonate and SHOULD be completed.
Phillip Alan Solomonson, aka Philamonjaro
Valencia, Spain
Web: www.philamonjaro.com / IG: philamonjaro
FB: philamonjarostudio / Blog: tabula-rasa
Individual Artist-in-Residence, May 2021 (Trillium’s FIRST Individual Artist Residency)
My Trillium-Arts residency was timely as I explored new photography approaches. It was transitional being post lockdown and our move. The following January, we arrived in Valencia, Spain. Once settled, I built a new network of artists/musicians and rebooted my live stage photography.
In 2023 I mounted “The Ephemeral Spirit of Dance,” a gallery exhibit of my dance photography paired with painted abstracts of each image collaborating with my new friend Sandi Goodwin. I had participated in many group shows and pop-ups before. But this was my first time at a fine art gallery. A new horizon.
As far as concerts, Valencia isn’t Chicago. Yet it offers different and rewarding environments. I’ve befriended many Berklee College of Music musicians from their satellite campus here. Fewer impersonal arena concert experiences give way to intimate theatres and cafes. I photograph less with greater reward: in recording studios, publishing in books or CD artwork. Writing all my concert reviews and getting stories and images in music books. I work on my archives planning to publish in zines and exhibiting. Most rewarding, my editing skills are much better. Finally, I am researching why music, dance and art are critical to our human experience. Something important during these uncertain times.
View video/artist interviews from “The Ephemeral Spirit of Dance”
Photo of Roderigo Villalobos by Philamonjaro.
Grace Spulak
Bosque Farms, NM
Web: gracespulak.com IG: @gspulak
Individual Artist-in-Residence, October 2023
My debut story collection, Magdalena Is Brighter Than You Think, winner of the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize, selected by K-Ming Chang, will be released April 21, 2026. This collection explores the complexities of gender, queerness, trauma, and resilience through characters who live in the margins and imagine new ways to survive there. K-Ming Chang says about the book, "With precise language and endings that open up, reverberate, and resound with complex and multifaceted song, these stories gaze clear-eyed at what life is for those who are marginalized, but also what life can be. With sentences that ricochet off the page, this book shows us how to sit with the wholeness of existence, the persistence of injustice, and the unresolved question of whether change is possible, both personal and collective.”
Backgrounded by the New Mexico landscape—a place of isolation, strange beauty, and potential transformation—these stories explore unexpected hope and connection. I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to work on these stories while at Trillium Arts. Trillium's generosity and space gave me a place to write and focus during a time when I desperately needed it.
Book Cover courtesy of Autumn House press; Cover art Magdalena Mountains (detail) by Joel Becktell; Cover design by Connie Amoroso; Photo of Grace Spulak by Vanessa Vassar.
Scot J. Wittman
Philadelphia, PA
Web: mapographer.com / IG: @twinhemisphere
Individual Artist-in-Residence, October 2023
I am enjoying MANY exhibitions, but will focus on one: my Solo Show titled "Iceblink Ballet" at the Hutchins Gallery in Princeton New Jersey at the Lawrenceville School. This show comprises sculpture, video, drawings, and most notable -- Photographs of Dancers [most taken in the blue ridge mountains while at Trillium!!!] We just had an Opening days ago; it was well attended, people have been emailing me for days about it, and I sold a work at the Opening. The link to the gallery, below, will show works that were created while I was at Trillium:
https://www.lawrenceville.org/life-at-lawrenceville/campus/hutchins-galleries
"Iceblink Ballet" is the 3rd iteration of a traveling show; the 2nd iteration was easier this 2025 calendar year and was titled "Fondu and Freeze." That iteration prominently showcased the work I created in collaboration with dancers as well - dancers that Trillium Arts graciously put me in touch with! How wonderful?! And the locations were largely found through conversations around dinner tables and with like-minded artists in the area. I created a video recap just over a minute of that solo show from earlier in the year; it is on my website & I have provided a link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Oz-wwfZ460
Video of Scot’s Solo Show in Boston
Photo of Scot J. Wittman by Terri Smith.
Lynda Wright
Raleigh, NC
Individual Artist-in-Residence, October 2023
The view from the patio as we arrived combined my wish to explore with the encouragement I felt from the first moments with Heather and Phil. I took scores of photographs, knowing that not only did I wish to share its beauty with others, but to take more of a “close-up” look at my own work as it progressed.
Upon arriving home, I discovered I had a plan for my next creations. I had been invited to hang a solo event at Sertoma Art Center in Raleigh in 2024, and ‘the Trillium experience” was the catalyst. The show became “Take a Closer Look”. We encouraged viewers to step closer, not “stay 6 feet away”. It was well-received, as well as others in Carrboro, Durham, and Cary later that year and this. I credit my time at Trillium as the beginning of a new confidence.
All my Trillium creations have been exhibited. “Longing” was completed (and sold) early in 2025, as part of an exhibit at The Mayton in Cary, NC.
Trillium, thank you for being there for artists of all genres.
Photo of “Longing” courtesy of the artist.
