LABA BAY AREA FELLOWS 2024
“NIGHT”
-
HILLARY GOIDELL
Hillary Goidell is a photo-based artist whose work considers process, movement and ways of witnessing. She collaborates with choreographers to document their dance-making, and extends her practice to explorations of illness and end of life, calling on images to imprint embodied states. Her co-created interactive installations have been featured in Europe at the Centre Georges Pompidou, ZKM Institute, Muffathalle and Admont Abbey. She has shown photography in Paris at the Mois de la Photo off and, since moving to the Bay Area in 2013, at ODC Theater, The Laundry SF, Delancey Street Theater and 836M.
-
YAEL GOLDSTEIN-LOVE
Yael Goldstein-Love is the author of the novels The Possibilities (Random House) and The Passion of Tasha Darsky (Doubleday). Also a practicing psychotherapist, she has started describing her genre-bending style as Psychoanalytic Speculative. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, and Slate, among other places. A graduate of Harvard University and The Wright Institute, she lives with her son in Berkeley, CA.
-
JULIA GOODMAN
Julia Goodman works at the intersection of papermaking, textiles, sculpture, and painting. She transforms bedsheets and t-shirts - fabrics that lie close to bodies day and night - to forefront invisible layers of support, and she looks to the night sky in search of more generous increments of time. Her recent exhibitions include National Museum of Women in the Arts, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, DePaul Art Museum, Poetry Foundation, Berkeley Art Center, and Euqinom Gallery. Her work is included in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and DePaul Art Museum.
-
NINA OTIS HAFT
Nina Otis Haft (she/her) is Artistic Director of Nina Haft & Company, a Bay Area-based contemporary dance ensemble exploring the nature of space and place. Her work comments on gender, culture, landscapes and natural disasters, and is also known for site-specific performances in dockyards, synagogues, bars, parking lots, regional parks, cemeteries and other liminal spaces. Nina's choreography has been presented in Boston, Los Angeles, NYC, Portland, San Diego, Novosibirsk, Amman, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah. She is a professor at Cal State University, East Bay.
-
TALIA KIRSH
Talia Kirsh is an artist and body-based energy practitioner working in printmaking, painting, textiles, ceramics, video and installation. She utilizes abstraction to transmit patterns and forces that arise through embodied practices and creates visual lexicons of energy systems. Much of the work takes the form of abstracted landscapes or symbols that signify changing states as an ode to the seasons of existence and healing. Kirsh is a 2024 MFA candidate at CCA and currently lives and works in the Bay Area as a Qigong teacher and an aquatic energy work and Aquatherics practitioner.
-
OLALLIE LACKLER
Olallie Lackler is a queer, non-binary experimental dancer, creator, and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their work explores the universes between contact improvisation and contemporary/experimental dance. Frequent themes of exploration include relationships, queerness, the realms of the inner cosmos, and power.
-
RIVKAH BETH MEDOW
Rivkah Beth Medow makes lush films that deepen connections and build community. She's known for Holding Moses, Ahead of the Curve, and Sons of a Gun. Rivkah is a Sundance x WIF and Film Independent fellow who co-founded Frankly Speaking Films to tell mesmerizing stories about strong queer women and non-binary people.
-
BONNY NAHMIAS
Bonny Nahmias is an interdisciplinary artist, who comes from a matrilineality of Sephardic Jewish Brushas (“witches” in Ladino). Her work is an expression of the spell they casted on her. She was born and raised in Israel and moved to the United States in 2006. Nahmias first lived in Brooklyn, NY, where she explored performance art, and later moved to San Francisco, where she received a BFA from California College of the Arts. She now lives among the owls in the woods with her husband and daughter.
-
JESSE NATHAN
Jesse Nathan's first book of poems, Eggtooth, was published in September, and has just been named a finalist for the Golden Poppy Award. His poems appear in the New York Review of Books and the Paris Review, and his prose in the Threepenny Review and the New York Times. He's been a recipient of fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ashbery Home School, the Arts Research Center, and the Kansas Arts Commission. Nathan teaches literature at UC Berkeley, and lives in Oakland.
-
AMY TOBIN
Amy Tobin created the cabaret opera “The Esther Show” and has released two albums: “A Little Friction: When Sparks Fly” and “4 Choices.” She coaches spiritual and communal leaders and has served as CEO at the JCC East Bay, founding Executive Director at the David Brower Center, and founding Artistic Director of The Hub at the JCCSF.
-
FARYN BORELLA
SOCIAL PRACTICE FELLOW
Faryn Borella is a rabbi & activist who has dabbled in photography, performance art, dance, writing, curation and more. Her rabbinic ordination is through the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where her culminating Personal Theology focused on the experience of the Divine Encounter as an experience of yearning, and yearning as the essential both human and spiritual experience. She is now the rabbi at Or Shalom Jewish Community in San Francisco, where she sees building thriving spiritual communities as its own creative and artistic practice. She believes spiritual care is an art form. Activism is an art form. Community building is an art form.
-
CLIFF MAYOTTE
SOCIAL PRACTICE FELLOW
Cliff Mayotte is an award-winning educator, writer, and director. He is the lead teacher for The Nation Fund's Fellowship for the Future of Journalism. From 2010 to 2022, he served as the Education Program Director for the human rights nonprofit, Voice of Witness. Cliff is also a former Education Director for the Tony award-winning Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
LABA BAY AREA FELLOWS 2023
“TABOO”
-
MIA FEUER
Winnipeg-born Mia Feuer is a sculptor, associate professor of Sculpture at California College of the Arts, and mother to six year old Galileo. Her ancestors are Ashkenazi Jews who settled on the frozen Canadian Prairies of Saskatchewan five generations ago. She tends goal for the Northern California Women’s Hockey League as part of her sculptural and spiritual practice.
-
DANIELLE FREIMAN
Danielle Freiman is an interdisciplinary artist and designer based in San Francisco, CA. She received her B.F.A. from the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) at Massachusetts College of Art and Design with an emphasis in assemblage and installation. Her work is motivated by her personal experiences with mental health, chronic pain, queerness, and reproductive health, taking the form of zines (self-published books), printed materials, and workshops.
-
JENNIFER KAUFMAN
Jennifer H. Kaufman is an interdisciplinary artist based in San Francisco. She has exhibited work at White Columns in New York, d.e.n. Contemporary Art and Pharmaka Gallery in Los Angeles, the 808 Gallery at Boston University, and a number of Bay Area galleries. Rather than starting with an anticipated image, her work begins with a strong sense of sound and an internal cadence particular to the moment, an in-audible meeting that translates to motion and material: line as letter, tether to cord, tether to utter, cord to code.
-
JO KREITER
Jo Kreiter is a San Francisco-based choreographer and site artist with a background in political science. She makes large scale public art via apparatus-based dance. She engages physical innovation and the political conflicts we live within. Her work democratizes public space.
-
FOREST REID
Forest Reid is a Bay Area based sound designer, composer, and installation artist. His audio-visual work engages with Jewish mysticism, Yiddish culture, and repurposed archives. He has diverse experience with sound, including archival preservation, data sonification, and studio engineering. He has created installation work for the La Jolla Playhouse and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and has had his work featured in the Without Walls (WOW) festival in San Diego and Sukkahwood in New York.
-
LILA RIMALOVSKI
Lila Rimalovski is a multimodal creator facilitating connection between the more-than-human (ecologies, landscapes, spirit) and the human (body, mind, heart) through sacred place-making. Farmer and herbalist by training, artist by dream, and ritualist by new moon, Lila’s work attempts to stitch the body back to the land to affirm a sense of wonder, belonging, and deservedness of existence in this complicated place and time. Born on the west coast and raised by Northeastern maples, Lila currently makes home in queer Jewish community on Ohlone land in Oakland, CA.
-
LAUREN SCHILLER
Lauren Schiller is an award-winning audio producer, live event moderator, and author. She believes in the power of story and shared experience to create connection, open minds and catalyze change. She is a podcast pioneer who is recognized as one of the first to use the medium to amplify how women build power and lead change–and what happens when they do. Her shows are known for their honesty and intimacy.
-
PETER L. STEIN
Peter L. Stein is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning documentary maker and arts producer, creating nonfiction stories for television, theater, museums and online media. He served eight years as the Executive Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, and for the last nine years as Senior Programmer for Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival. He maintains an active career as an onstage interviewer, presenter and performer.
-
AMY TRACHTENBERG
Born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1955, Amy Trachtenberg’s work spans painting, sculpture and installation and includes design for theater, dance and public space. Her work has been shown and is held in the collections of The Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, The San Jose Museum of Art, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and The Haitian Embassy in Paris. She is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco.
-
LAURA TURBOW
Laura Turbow has been a professional photographer for more than 25 years. She started as a newspaper photojournalist, working for publications including the Oakland Tribune and the Des Moines Register. She has run her own studio, Laura Turbow Photography, for two decades. Through an offshoot of her studio, a business called Still Life Stories, she helps people share their life stories through personal objects.
LABA EAST BAY FELLOWS 2022
“BROKEN”
-
MEG ADLER
Meg is a Jewish educator and illustrator born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a BA from UCLA in creating writing/poetry and a Masters in Religion from Yale Divinity School. She founded her illustration company Letters, Aligned, in 2014. Currently, she works as an educator for Camp Tawonga, Temple Sinai in Oakland, and Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo, along with maintaining her private tutoring and art practice.
-
LAUREN ARI
Lauren Ari is an artist and educator based in Richmond, California. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts from UC Davis after undergraduate study at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her primary focus is on drawing and sculpture. Her work has been shown and collected widely including by the Legion of Honor Achenbach Foundation.
-
JENNIFER ELLIS
Committed to shifting the boundaries of harp performance, Jennifer R. Ellis thoroughly enjoys using the harp in unexpected ways. She embraces firsts; she premiered over 100 works and was the first harpist to be a U.S. State Department One Beat Fellow and the first harpist to attend Bang on a Can, Fresh Inc., and Splice summer festivals. She teaches at Mills College and San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
-
SARI GILMAN
Sari Gilman is a filmmaker with 25 years of experience. Her debut film, Kings Point, was nominated for an Oscar in 2012. Sari’s career as an editor includes documentaries that have screened at festivals worldwide, aired on HBO, PBS, Netflix, and others. She received a Primetime Emmy nomination for her work on Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
-
RISA JAROSLOW
Risa Jaroslow’s dance-making process begins with questions, exploring the questions through movement with other dancers. We take the answers and stretch them, turn them into daring partnering, whirl them through space and arrange them across many bodies. Risa includes both the incredible virtuosity of highly-trained dancers and the unique and deeply human contributions of non-trained movers. By combining them, she aims to create a rich, complex picture that is resonant with all kinds of audiences.
-
DAVID ISRAEL KATZ
Musician and performance artist David Israel Katz works with the verbal and nonverbal texts of Jewish ritual. David studied Composition and Improvisation at Mills College, and Art and Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Ha’aretz described him as “an uber-performer,” and his art-ritual, THRESH, was praised by Jewish Currents as “an intense game you can lose yourself in.”
-
LEAH KORANSKY
Leah Koransky is an artist and graphic designer working with photography, collage, printmaking, and painting. She uses light, color, and form to explore the relationship between place and self. She received her BFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA and her BA from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. Her work has been featured in group and solo shows throughout the United States and in 2020 she co-founded Deep Time Press︎︎︎, an independent publishing imprint that focuses on concepts of time and place. She lives and works in Berkeley, CA.
-
MICHAEL DAVID LUKAS
Michael David Lukas has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a night-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, a student at the American University of Cairo, and a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. Translated into more than a dozen languages, his first novel The Oracle of Stamboul was a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. His second novel, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, won the Sami Rohr Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, the Prix Interallié for Foreign Fiction, and the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He lives in Oakland and teaches at San Francisco State University.
-
JEFF RAZ
Jeff Raz has performed in circuses, such as Cirque du Soleil and the Pickle Family Circus, and in theaters from Berkeley Rep to Broadway. He has directed dozens of circus, dance, puppet and theater productions and written 18 plays and three books.
-
KEN PAUL ROSENTHAL
Ken Paul Rosenthal makes documentaries that explore the intersection of art, madness, and the spectrum of difference. Ken’s work has screened widely at national and international film festivals and venues. He is the recipient of numerous festival awards, a University Film & Video Association Award, and a Kodak Cinematography Award. His mental health themed documentaries circulate in over 350 libraries and have been presented in person at hundreds of universities, symposiums, and community events worldwide.
LABA EAST BAY FELLOWS 2021
“CHOSE-N”
-
KYLE ADLER
-
-
NAOMIE KREMER
-
AVITAL MESHI
-
JESSICA KATE MEYER
Teaching Fellow
-
AVA SAYAKA ROSEN
-
REBECCA ROUDMAN & JASON ECKEL
LABA EAST BAY FELLOWS 2020
“HUMOR”
-
RACHEL BERGER
-
BRUCE BIERMAN
-
MARIKA BRUSSEL
-
RI DYM
-
SARA FELDER
-
CAROLINE KESSLER
-
JAKE MARMER
-
DAN SCHIFRIN
-
SARAH STONE