Director Bios:
GRIT Collaborative, Artistic Director
Composer and Social Activist
Joshua Marquez (b. 1990) is a Filipino-American composer and activist whose award-winning music explores the liminal space between tone and noise as a means to investigate the complexities and duality of Asian American identity. Searing a sonic imprint of cultural identity, his tranquil investigations of the noise spectrum represent the internal conflicts of multiculturalism and the struggles of alienation and assimilation through the fusion and fission of disparate timbres. Hailed as "cutting-edge" (The Gazette), "haunting" (The Daily Iowan), and "creepy" (Fanfare Magazine), Marquez's polemic deconstruction of sound is consumed by ever-evolving rituals of disintegrated perspectives from a postcolonial lens.
Marquez's music has been performed and recorded, internationally, by ensembles and musicians such as the JACK Quartet, Brno Philharmonic, Carmine Marcello Rizzi (violin), Iwona Glinka (flute), Akropolis Reed Quintet, Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, University of Iowa Center for New Music, Gate City Camerata, Quintet Sirocco, and the National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia.
His work has been awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency as an Arts Fellow, a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency as a CSG Fellow, a Millay Colony for the Arts Residency, a Brush Creek Artist Residency, a Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts Residency, a 2016 Sayat Nova International Composition Competition Prize, a 2013 Stony Brook Premieres! First Prize, a North Carolina Arts Grant, an Iowa Social Justice Grant, and an Iowa Arts Across Borders Grant in addition to other honors.
Recent performances include the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYC), the National Student Electronic Music Event (GA), Birmingham New Music Festival (AL), Brave New Works (CA), Fulcrum Point New Music (IL), SCI Concerts, Stony Brook Premieres! (NYC), Circuit Bridges (NYC), John Donald Robb Composers' Symposium (NM), An Art Artistry (GR), Electroacoustic Music Festival Ecos Urbanos (MX), and the International Ferienkruse für Neue Musik Darmstadt (DE) in venues such as Symphony Space (NYC), Abron Arts Center (NYC), the Englert Theatre (IA), Open House Chicago (IL), Detroit Opera House (MI), Weatherspoon Art Museum (NC), the Canada International Film Festival, and the Utopia Film Festival (MD), among others.
Marquez's research was featured at the 2015 Humpback Whale World Congress in Sainte-Marie, Madagascar. Recordings of Marquez's music have been released on ABLAZE Records (USA), RMN Classical Records (UK), Sarton Records (PL), and E.M.P.i.R.E.S Records (USA). Joshua is currently the composer for the upcoming video game, The Girl Who Sees, which explores Filipino culture and history against the backdrop of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during WWII.
Marquez holds a PhD in composition from the University of Iowa in addition to an MM from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Joshua is currently the Artistic Director for the interdisciplinary arts nonprofit, GRIT Collaborative. Marquez serves as a Resident Composer for the Saint Mary's College Summer Composition Intensive in Notre Dame, IN (2013-2018), having previously taught at the University of Iowa and the Preucil School of Music.
GRIT Collaborative, Executive Director
Visual Artist and Social Activist
Dana O'Malley is a visual artist based in Wilmington, NC. She holds an M.F.A in Painting from the University of Iowa and a B.F.A in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design, and has shown work in art spaces and hallways throughout the United States. O'Malley's narrative paintings investigate the fissures of our cultural landscape, defined by the tender and harmful binaries that we individually and collectively inhabit and sow. In her paintings, the glow of technology defines and melts the negative space between humans, figures, flora, and text. O'Malley hopes to ignite necessary discussions of womanhood, unearned white advantages, emotional wealth, millennial desperation, power, and body politics through the unnecessary, magical means of plastic and oil paint on substrate.
Rachel Wynelle Cobler
GRIT Collaborative, Board Member
Artist and Art Historian
Rachel Cobler is a recent graduate from the University of Iowa, currently based in Iowa City. Her current ventures surround museums and gallery spaces; her thought life is primarily concerned with animating minds to think creatively, exploring the themes in art history that she missed in college, and interpreting the culture of ceramics in museums and art history programs
Naoki Izumo
GRIT Collaborative Board Member
GRIT Collaborative, Board Member
Artist, Art Therapist, and Mental Health Counselor
Lindsey Schoeneman is a multidisciplinary visual artist, art therapist, and mental health counselor working in community mental health in Seattle, Washington. Lindsey approaches creative expression as a practice in curiosity, intuition, self-confrontation, and as a conduit for compassion and empathy. Her practice in both art and counseling motivates her to foster the creative potential in others, knowing that sparking and growing the imagination is essential for change in self and social systems. She is a graduate of Antioch University Seattle with an MA in Counseling and Art Therapy. She was a participating artist and collaborator for the GRIT Collaborative shows Water: Our World and Wind: Traveling Great Distances, and she joined the GRIT Collaborative Board of Directors in 2017.
GRIT Collaborative, Director of Creative Communications
Artist and Community Organizer
Rachel Poe is an artist, community organizer, listener, feminist, and educator. She maintains a multidisciplinary studio practice, which revolves around exploring cinematic scenes, theatricality, memory/fiction and platforms for alternative narratives. In 2016 she joined the board of directors of GRIT collaborative. She believes in making art accessible to communities outside of traditional spaces. She and her spouse live in Chicago, IL and they are both huge sci-fi nerds. She received her MFA in Painting from The University of Iowa.