Periscope Pitch + Artist Entrepreneur Showcase 2022

Sangeetha Ekambaram
Drama/Theatre/Performance Art/Dance/Music

Sangeetha Ekambaram is a classically-trained soprano with a background that spans a wide variety of cultural and musical disciplines. Her singing career has included both opera and concert works in various companies and institutions across North America and Europe. With an entrepreneurial spirit, she has also participated in creative collaborations with other local musicians, sometimes across artistic genres.

As a multi-dimensional artist with an ethnographic background, Sangeetha is particularly curious in how different cultural values are expressed through various music performance practices. She hopes to use this knowledge to stretch the boundaries of the culture of classical singing in her own communities. Sangeetha also teaches voice, with a passion for guiding her students, no matter the level or genre, to deeper awareness of vocal freedom and natural expression.

Becca Hoback
Drama/Theatre/Performance Art/Dance/Music

Becca Hoback is a collaborative movement artist, performer, and choreographer, based in Nashville, Tennessee. Becca developed Enactor Productions to create works that unpack what it means to be a human being having a relationship with your body. She worked with collaborators Ana Maria Lucaciu, Ben Green, Roy Assaf, and Ariel Freedman to curate the first Enactor performance program, which premiered at OZ Arts June 2021. Enactor’s repertoire also includes her self-choreographed solos “Rendering,” “Tends,” and “Reprise.” Becca is passionate about processing life experiences through creative physicality, and wants to inspire others to do the same through her movement workshop series, Body View. Through these efforts, she hopes to fuel participant’s physical curiosity and inspire artistic engagement. Her solo work has been featured at OZ Arts Nashville, Arts on Site NYC, SoloCoreografico’s Torino dance showcase, Kindling Arts, FALL Dance’s “Stories,” and Tennessee Women’s Theater Project.

In 2020, she received a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship for her solo work, and has participated in the Metro Nashville Arts Commission’s THRIVE program as an awardee and project mentor. She is participating in the Periscope Artist Entrepreneurship Program hosted by the Arts and Business Council of Greater Nashville. Becca trained at UNCSA.

She is a founding member of New Dialect, featured in the company as a performer, outreach workshop team leader, community and company class teacher, and choreographic assistant to artistic director, Banning Bouldin. She was the creative producer, rehearsal director, and collaborator for PRISM by David Flores, a collaborator with Asia Pyron’s PYDANCE, collaborator with Lenin Fernandez. She has worked with Crystal Peattie’s The Haunted Ballet, George R. Miller, DiMossa, FALL Dance, Nashville Ballet, and Montgomery Ballet. Becca trained at UNC School of the Arts. Learn more at beccahoback.com.

Benno Nelson
Film/Television

Benno Nelson spent 10 years as a freelance director and editor in Los Angeles, in 2009 he started his own production company where he served as owner and senior creative director. In 2017 he moved to Nashville and worked as Director of Video Content for Warner Music Nashville. His clients include; AMC, Republic Records, UGG, Atlantic Records and Princeton University. He loves green tea, the music of Spoon and a killer pair of shoes.

Lisa Reed Preston
Visual Art

Lisa Reed Preston is a self-taught artist who embraces the beauty of abstraction and interprets it through her fine art paintings, augmented reality paintings, and virtual reality art experiences.  Growing up a military child and oldest of 4, Lisa spent much of her youth moving and adapting to new environments.  At the age of 11, she won her first art contest with a Martin Luther King, Jr. portrait and acrostic.

For years, Lisa lost focus on her childhood passion as the challenges and practicality of life replaced youthful whimsy.  Upon moving to the Nashville area, she rediscovered her passion for creativity and became part of the Plowhaus Artist Co-Op until its dissolution. Most recently, Lisa has been part of the Nashville Arts and Business Council’s Periscope 2022 class.

Lisa’s continued varying life experiences as an audio engineer, graphic designer, STEM and robotics teacher, and data analyst provide her with an enthusiasm for problem solving and experimentation.  For the last 18 years, Lisa has resided with her husband in Bellevue, TN.

Amy Harms
Visual Art

Amy Harms is a Midwest native, most recently moving her art studio from Chicago to Tennessee.  Her paper-weaving art series stems from and gravitates towards music, which is a blend of her life – weaving the two art forms together.  This series starts with two paintings and vinyl record covers that she paints, cuts apart, rearranges, and finally weaves them all into a final weave. Her process represents life; taking the past, dissecting it, creating something new and making the end vision more evolved. 

While her focus professionally has been in the visual art world over the last 15 years, she also has a music degree from Missouri State University, and is still teaching piano privately. She studied interior design at Harrington College of Design in Chicago, and has directed several art galleries, along with art consulting for hospitality designers in Chicago. Amy currently lives in Brentwood with her husband, daughter and two dogs.

Trisha Peña
Visual Art

Trisha Peña is an original abstract artist based in Nashville. She came to the visual art world later in life by way of music, performing, and writing. She is a self-taught artist who fell in love with the medium by literally painting the walls of her house with invigorating and sensual treatments. Known for saying that she cannot draw a straight line, abstract work with acrylics is her most common medium, with an affinity for markedly textured canvases. A subset of work called “Team Spirit Reimaged” consists of abstract works using the official colors of sports teams, giving fans an alternative to logos and primary colors, displaying their favorite team colors in a more subtle and unique way. Her unique style transfers successfully into products such as purses, silk scarves, high-heeled pumps, and face masks. Dozens of her endeavors have received international recognition over the years.

Rachael Golden
Visual Art

Rachael Golden (b. 1984 Florida) is an abstract travel artist based in Nashville, Tennessee. However, beginning in September of 2022, she and her husband will leave for a six month stint abroad as digital nomads! They plan to split their time between South Korea and Portugal.
Rachael has traveled to 22 countries across 5 continents and is always ready for the next adventure. Her work celebrates the experience of world travel through the strategic use of color and non-representational shape. She uses reference photos to create unique color palettes that are distinctly connected to specific locations, such as, golden hour in Sorrento, misty Ecuadorian highlands, or the dusky glow of a spice souk in Dubai.

The lack of recognizable subjects in her paintings allows you to slip into your own memories of past travels and invoke a sense of wonder for adventures yet to be had.
Her paintings invite you to feel transported; they will feed your wanderlust, nurture your curiosity and help you celebrate the places and experiences that have shaped you.

Jade Michel Sotelo Carter
Visual Art

Jade Michel Sotelo Carter (she/her) is versatile artist and cyborg based in Nashville, TN. Raised in a creative household in Montana, she draws inspiration from her family, nature, caring for plants and animals, and Indigenous Peoples. Carter works primarily with acrylics but often explores different mediums. She finds great joy in working with her hands and this has manifested in a breadth of abilities including screen printing, playing guitar, bartending, framing art, and most recently, cake decorating. Living with limited mobility and chronic pain has greatly shaped her experience, bringing daily reminders to focus on what is possible instead of what is not. She has had the privilege of working on several projects with The Studio 208 and is currently expanding multiple artistic offerings with her sister Saphire, as Them Gems.

Marla Faith
Visual Art

Marla Faith makes art and writes poetry in Nashville. She has published 3 books of her art and poetry, which can be seen along with her oeuvre of paintings, drawings, and collages, at marlafaith.com. Marla has spent her career teaching art in schools, and directing education programs in art museums, while consistently creating her own art.

Ms. Faith grew up in Chicago, and moved to Nashville from New York in 1990. She has a BFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MS in Museum Leadership from Bank Street College in NYC. She has exhibited her artwork widely, including one person shows at The Parthenon and Nashville Airport.

Aaron English
Music

Nashville-based pianist/singer-songwriter Aaron English tours the U.S., Canada, & Europe singing his own world-music-inspired songs, as well as interpretations of traditional songs from around the world.

In 2015 he founded the International Youth Music Project, a non-profit that helps build & support music programs at orphanages in East Africa.

Highlights of Aaron’s career include having his music featured on the Fox TV drama Bones, a Top 5 radio hit in Italy, and a Top 20 radio hit in the US.

Catherine Hollo
Ceramic Sculpture/Jewelry

Catherine Hollo is a ceramic sculptor and maker based in Nashville. As a lover of nature and wildlife, those themes hold a constant presence in Catherine’s work. The creatures, textures and patterns found in the natural world provide inspiration for her art. The animal sculptures she creates reflect this love of nature while highlighting the personality and quirks of the creatures she has observed while volunteering in the local wildlife rehabilitation community.

Catherine earned a BFA in Graphic Design at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and has worked in that field for many years while always maintaining a connection to fine art. She has newly committed to making fine art and to the adventure this new creative path will lead.

Soteria Balmer
Music

Soteria Balmer was born in Atlanta, GA on November 22nd. Known lovingly by her peers and colleagues as SoB (So-Be), she graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in Music Business. In her early years of college, Soteria learned that A&Rs within labels were dying. It’s this discovery that eventually led her to pursue an internship with Power Entertainment (a small indie label and management company) in A&R. She coordinated label-related events, as well as developed and maintained relationships with artists, producers, and business partners.

Soteria believes that artist development is one of the most important phases of an artist’s career; that artists truly need support and nurturing during their development stage in order to become the star they dream of! Since interning with Power, Soteria has recently been promoted to VP of A&R and will be overseeing their new signee Yours Truly, Jai.

Jamison Taylor
Drama/Theatre/Performance Art/Dance/Music

Jamison Taylor is an original and highly accomplished multi-disciplinary artist in Nashville. Working in arenas of music, theatre, movement and communal art-making, he is continually finding the meeting ground between these forms of expression.

Jamison is also an experienced teacher and facilitator who hopes to continue nurturing his leadership skills in using creativity as a means of healing and community-building. He is ultimately an “explorer-of-the-arts,” and is a true believer that curiosity and play are essential components to the creative practice as well as self and community discovery.

Jamison hopes to one day found a unique theatre company here in Nashville that delves deeper into these practices and can ultimately become a space for not only original productions, but also for encouraging multi-level collaboration and deeper explorations of the creative process.

Victoria Quirk
Visual Art

Victoria Quirk is a photographer in Nashville. She is passionate about people, food, and using imagery as a medium for storytelling. Whether she’s pouring lattes at Crema, trying a new recipe at home, or brainstorming for a photoshoot, she believes creativity always has a place at the table, and that even the most mundane parts of life deserve to feel like magic.

Ashley Hylbert
Visual Art

Recognized for her energetic and vibrant style, Ashley Hylbert is an in-demand portrait, editorial, commercial and lifestyle photographer. There is a directness, authenticity and electricity conveyed in her images, which results in a connectedness between subject and viewer. She has steadily immersed herself in capturing subjects in her unique style. Lately, she has been experimenting with a new medium that incorporates her photography with acrylic paints to produce imagery that has a pop art quality that she is developing into a product-based business with a broad appeal.

Steve Wedan
Visual Art

Steve Wedan has created a body of work which encompasses figurative illustration, portraiture, and wildlife pieces. He is currently expanding his interests to include social issues and scenes of the working lives of musical artists and others.

Steve has illustrated magazine covers and articles, and he was the Senior Graphics Illustrator for Orbital Sciences Corporation. He illustrated children’s books and has sold reproductions of his art from his Web site, SteveWedanArt.com.

As his career unfolds, Steve intends to draw increasing attention to art as a conduit between the everyday material world and the creative energy of nature and its expressions.

Bonnie Aldcroft-Curran
Visual Art

As Darling Lucifer Productions, Bonnie Aldcroft-Curran’s work encompasses light projection and video content presented in various forms, from live experiences to film and print. She creates perception-altering visuals by combining traditional liquid light techniques, vintage projection tricks, experimental video synthesis, and warped video feedback loops with modern technology. The result is Darling Lucifer Productions outputting psychedelia for the contemporary world at the crossroads of analog and digital.

Bonnie’s work is often experienced live as performance art, accompanies musical acts and movement artists, or as immersive environments. Her live content is produced organically in real-time, and no two shows are ever the same. In this age where the need for engaging content is at an all-time high, her unique style of performance, accompaniment, music videos, visualizers, social media content, and print art shines.

Shea Moore
Visual Art

Shea Moore is an up-and-coming Watercolor Artist known for her striking watercolor portraits. After earning her degree in Fashion Design from Bauder College in Atlanta, GA, Shea earned a living as a makeup artist.

In 2016 while visiting Nashville’s downtown public library and checking out a book on watercolor, she fell in love with the way pigment and water worked together and decided to teach herself how to paint using that medium.

In July of 2017 Shea was one of 5 artists selected to paint individual murals in Historic Germantown in Nashville. This also gave her an opportunity to visit Buena Vista Elementary to speak about the importance of art and lead a class drawing session. In September of 2020 she was commissioned to do 6 portraits for The Women’s Foundation of St. Louis for their marketing campaign “Making A Difference.”

Kelly McKernan
Visual Art

Kelly McKernan is an independent artist based in Nashville. They graduated with a B.F.A. in 2009 from Kennesaw State University in Georgia and have been a full time artist since 2012. Original paintings are created for galleries, private commissions, and their online store where fine art prints and other products are also sold.

Kelly’s personal work is primarily informed by their journey as an artist and human. Their art explores their personal evolution of an ever-shifting human identity, informed by sexuality, gender, motherhood, a history of childhood trauma and subsequent time in a religious cult, toxic relationships, pregnancy loss and abortion, divorce, and mental illness. All of this weaves itself into the quiet narrative of self-exploration behind Kelly’s vibrant and ethereal paintings.

In addition to maintaining a large social media following, Kelly shares tutorials and teaches workshops, travels across the US for events and comic-cons, and also creates illustrations for books, comics, games, and more.

Shondell McFall
Multidisciplinary/Community

This short tale is of a boy, now a man, who decided that there was no limit to his value; either as an artist and a human being. Shondell spent a majority of his life trying to figure out where he belonged, who he was. It wouldn’t be until he one day in band class that he discovered his true self. This was a start with music that would turn into a 25 year journey – from touring the country and putting out records, to painting portraits, photography, and making contraptions from scratch. The array of opportunities were falling in from every corner. It was then that Shondell realized that his purpose in life wasn’t a singular linear goal, but a crucible in the way of becoming an everyman, building worlds, and creating the things we only dream about. It would be foolish to not share our gifts and learn how to use them together for a future bigger and brighter than we can fathom.

Amber Sweeney
Music

Amber Sweeney is a songwriter, performer, and recording artist. Her original songs have been featured in two of CW’s television series One Tree Hill and Life Unexpected, as well as in Queen Sugar. Her vocal performance has also been featured in Stephen King’s film adaptation of Riding The Bullet, while she was performing with other artists.Sweeney has released two EPs, two full-lengths, and multiple singles, one of which topped the UK soul charts at #1.

Prior to moving to Nashville in the fall of 2021, Amber served as governor for the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Recording Academy for 6 years, and co-chaired the chapter’s Education Committee. Dedicated to serving her community and sharing her expertise, she has organized, moderated, and participated in many education and professional development programs for both established and emerging artists.

James Jones
Visual Art

James was born on a farm in North Alabama in 1967. He studied art in high school where he was bitten by the creative bug. He created stained glass, hammered metal sculptures, and assemblage art in the early 2000s and sold his works around the Nashville area. He served on the board of directors at The Madison art Center in Madison Tennessee during that time.

Since then, his work has been focused on using recycled materials as much as possible. He currently creates paintings on sculpted recycled paper pulp on hand-built recycled wooden panels. His works can be found on his website, www.jmjarts.com, on his Instagram, @jamesmarkjonesarts, and will is featured on www.artlifting.com.

James is a mental health advocate who frequently shares his story of living with anxiety and depression in the hopes of helping others.

Amy Malinda Hoskins
Literary Arts/Film/Community Artist

Amy Malinda Hoskins is a visual artist, writer, poet and survivor of child abuse. In 2011, she self-published a novel called Rebekah’s Closet. Writing the novel served as art therapy for her, and by 2018 she had written a screenplay of the same name. In the meantime, Hoskins has hosted a poetry open mic since April, 2017. Called the Gestalt Poetry Open Mic, this monthly event is currently virtual. Amy has had more than fifteen poems published in the US, and one in Amsterdam.

Currently Amy is actively working towards releasing Rebekah’s Closet as a full feature art film about healing from child abuse. Amy’s goal is to help others who feel isolated by their trauma, save them having to reinvent the wheel in their healing process. www.amyhoskins.com

Patrick Volz
Visual Artist

Patrick TV specializes in cartoons, caricatures, and 2-D animation. His hand-drawn “A Mail Called Horse” won the Open Category at the Film Con Hollywood 2018 Short Film Competition and his illustrations and comics have appeared in several international publications.

Patrick TV is currently aspiring to bedeck the blank galleries of the Metaverse with curated collections of NFTs. Merging the excitingly nascent field of decentralized finance with traditional schema of printmaking, he seeks to install an open door for creators of Middle Tennessee to stake their pictorial claim in the virtually limitless frontier of the cryptosphere.

Alison Underwood
Visual Artist

Born in Denver, raised in Syracuse, but lived and sojourned in a metric “buncha” places, he has called Nashville home for the past few years. While away-from-sketchbook, he enjoys a serendipitous walkabout through Music City’s vibrant trivia scene.

Alison Underwood’s work spans most 2-D media, including painting, printmaking, and digital art. In her practice, the artist develops a visual vocabulary to examine the psychology of desire. Imagery of ropes, hair, disembodied limbs, fabric, plants, portals and flat geometries dominate her image making, bringing a visual dimension to the fear and anticipation that exists at the threshold of choice. Alison grew up in a small town in rural Kentucky. She holds a B.A. in Studio Art from The University of Louisville and an M.A. in History of Design and Curatorial Studies from Parsons/Cooper Hewitt in New York City. She currently lives and works from her studio in Nashville, Tennessee.

Periscope Pitch + Artist Entrepreneur Showcase is generously sponsored by Piedmont Natural Gas, FifthThird Bank, the Buckingham Foundation, and Southwest Airlines.