dirt palace

xander marro(American b. 1975) is a fake scientist/olde style tinker residing at the dirt palace; a feminist cupcake encrusted netherworld located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket river (which is to say in Providence, RI USA). From this post she makes movies, puppet shows, prints and phone calls. Her adventures underground have included curating the "Movies with Live Soundtracks" film series and performing in various theatrick/musical formats as one of the variety of her alter egos (Madame Von Temper Tantrum, Lady Long Arms, Lil Blood-n-Guts, Madame Von Malt Liquor etc.) Of recent days she has gotten herself deep into the wild world of community organizing around neighborhood social justice and human rights issues.

Sasha Wiseman, raised on the leaden tapwater of Providence, is now incapable of leaving the city for long periods of time due to the enormous electromagnet secretly buried under the statehouse for this purpose. She contents herself with a few hobbies- mostly waiting for the postman to deliver the latest issue of National Geographic so she can gaze jealously at the fantastic scenes inside, dreaming of the alchemic reaction that would set her free.

Pippi Zornoza is an artist, musician and co-founder of the Dirt Palace in Providence Rhode Island. She is a renaissance man in this renaissance city. Her work can be comprised of musical performance, printmaking, embroidery, lace making, carving, knitting, sewing and drawing, often all at once. Pippi's personal creations utilize the old techniques of craft to make everyday useful objects magical. You may see them here. Her printmaking work has been exhibited in the United States as well as Japan, Argentina, Columbia and Sweden,and was published in the art-poster anthology, , The Art of Modern Rock. Pippi is known for her frightening performance style which manifests the undernourished expression of female power. In 2004 she formed the musical performance project Bonedust, with musician/composer Chrissy Wolpert. Bonedust toured the US in 2006 and is currently in transition so that they may actualize their original vision of creating a 3 woman rock opera. Formed out of a mutual period of desperation, VVLTVRE a collaboration with Annapurna Himal Wagner began performing in 2007. VVLTVRE'S debut release is slated on .Corleone Records for next year. Other musical projects of hers include: Throne of Blood (2002-03) released on Corleone Records; Sawzall (2001-02); and the ongoing solo project, Master Pizor (songs for the heartbroken, horny and metalheads. Pippi is also the star in the cult movie classic, Die You Zombie Bastards, directed by Caleb Emerson. Someday she will direct and perform in a musical where she will star as death.

Kate Gronner survives exclusively off of chickpeas and chard, and possibly drinks as much tea, coffee, and other beverages as the whole dirt palace combined. She relocated to the providence from chicago during a blizzard in february 2006. She is excellent at loosing her cell phone, climbing trees and parallel parking pippi's van. She works in various mediums, such as embroidery, drawing, crochet, papier mache, carving, and printmaking, and is contemplating working in film again in the near future. Her interests include taxidermy, old pick up trucks, stereocards, blankets crocheted in striped patterns, succulents (and select other plants), her accordion, wood paneling, nature guides, encyclopedias, her mother's button collection, objects with a history, and the olneyville new york system. Rest in peace Salty.

Cassie Tharinger grew up in vermont—-but redneck vermont, not hippie vermont. she shares a birthday with george washington, teddy kennedy, frederic chopin (though his birth date is contested,) her great aunt faith, and julius "dr. j" irving, and someday they will all form a superstar basketball team together. she has been known to make costumes, undies, lampshades, little boxes with stories in them, movies, collages, drawings & sometimes prints, overly-conceptual installations involving ebay, and various apple desserts. she is fond of obscure children's books from the 70's, listening to the radio, irish whiskey, wendell berry, things that really happened, popcorn, and salt. currently, she is learning about herbs (cultivation and lore), and pondering the inevitable, imminent apocalypse.

Jean Cozzens is an artist, screen printer, poster designer, and "emerging professional in the field of architecture". She has lived in Providence since 1999, except for 10 months spent living and traveling in Italy. In June of 2005, after many years of effort, she received TWO! bachelor's degrees, one in Fine Arts and one in Architecture. She is currently following various pursuits including learning more about buildings and construction, mentoring high school students in design and screenprinting, and figuring out how to become a social justice architect. As an artist and designer, she hopes to use her skills to create radical change in the world!

Laura Rodriguez is in love with clay, candles, marinated mushrooms, maria (the cat), teaching, video & new media technology, and shamanic meditations. She is currently working on 2 installations & finishing up her movie, Lydia Li, which will soon be distributed to queer- & diversity-focused youth groups. For more info on that, check out www.LydiaPink.com.

Jo Dery draws pictures and makes short films. Her current project, "Echoes of Bats and Men," has received funding from theLEF Foundation and RI State Council on the Arts, and was screened in 2005. In 2002, she and friend Devon Damonte brought you the 24-hour Movie Making Experiment Tour, a project where crazy people stay up all night and make short films any way they can. She doubles as Peace Fancy Fancy, a former Dirt Palace pioneer, and faithful student of the natural world.

Carrie Collier seeks otherworldly truth via the time/space routes of this world. She invents and repeats rituals designed to conjure sublime emotion and freedom from (fear of) death. Her practice is primarily literary. She explores the sorcerous or alchemical effect of words positioned and repositioned in relation to other words. She believes in revelation but finds its most authentic manifestation in the superficially humble personal narrative of female writers such as Marguerite Duras, Clarice Lispector, and Djuna Barnes. She has a particular affinity for nihilistic Francophone authors. She also makes films; regarding the relationship between her literary and cinematic pursuits she writes: “My films are about language and/or the body; my stories are about the body couched in language. The body, to me, is always a site of past or potential injury. Injury, in my work, wants to make an account of itself, to narrate a history, be rendered vocal. It wants to discover – perhaps to indict – a perpetrator. I like scarred bodies and scarred texts: works and forms that are crippled, that hobble, but that are potent enough to injure in turn, damage or harrow, that are thereafter culpable, injured and injuring alike.”

This year she is beginning an MFA program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.


________about the dirt palace_________ ________people of the palace_________ __________window project__________ _____________contact_____________ ______________links______________ _____subscribe to our mailing list!_____ ___The Dirt Palace Flickr Photo Page___ __________W I S H L I S T__________
		Natalja Kent Born under the hot expansive sky of Texas, this love child has since been merging with infinity. Settled between the week of New Language and the Cusp of Magic is the Seeker, also known as a Querent. Green Virginia hills reared a turbulent youth and in New York City she improvised a disheveled and decadent coming of age. Some landmarks of that time were: a BFA from School of Visual Arts, Good Good, The Woodser, collaboration with AVAF, releasing records/tapes/zines, collaboration with les potagers natures collective, several group exhibits, US and European music tours, various bizarre experiences, etc. One day in Brooklyn something (blue) tapped her on the shoulder and insisted a move to providence. Soon after her Czech passport arrived at the embassy. Today much of her time passes drawing, voyaging theoretical trajectories and playing music as Querent and with Jo Dery in Baba Yaga.
		xander marro(American b. 1975) is a fake scientist/olde style tinker residing at the dirt palace; a feminist cupcake encrusted netherworld located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket river (which is to say in Providence, RI USA). From this post she makes movies, puppet shows, prints and phone calls. Her adventures underground have included curating the "Movies with Live Soundtracks" film series and performing in various theatrick/musical formats as one of the variety of her alter egos (Madame Von Temper Tantrum, Lady Long Arms, Lil Blood-n-Guts, Madame Von Malt Liquor etc.) Of recent days she has gotten herself deep into the wild world of community organizing around neighborhood social justice and human rights issues.
		Upon entry into this world the first thing to strike Li Pallas' ears was Johnny Mandel's Suicide is Painless as the opening to M.A.S.H. on a hospital TV set in the Boogie Down Bronx. She proceeded to argue "poetic license" with her 1st grade teacher, and mastered the I Ching at age 9. In Seattle she spent seven years banding together with a wild pack of family poets, singing punk rock versions of "I Am a Believer", making spare cash as a live tarot reader, and riding around in bike gangs. She has never owned a car. She is more inclined to wear sunglasses on an overcast day. She then returned to NYC living in five different neighborhoods in three boroughs in thirteen months until a tornado leaving the lower east side sucked her up north to Providence where Toto proceeded to sing "Africa" and the Cowardly Lion gave her a fiddle. She has thus chosen to live out the fantasy of The Boxcar Children at the old Olneyville Library (now the Dirt Palace) in her best David Byrne pajamas collecting dust and love letters when she isn't otherwise squashbuckling countrysides or wandering the desert in search of natural building and sustainable design skills. She takes nearly 3-5 minutes to brush her teeth.
		ANNAPURNA HIMAL WAGNER is an estonian-american nihilist autodidact. she has lived in every time zone in the continental US. since 2005, she has been the core bassist of the goetic-theurgical murder jazz assault phenomenon known as Mating Dance. (Psychedelic people in love = ritual murder.) she contributes her cutthroat and impassioned paucity of musical skills to several other projects including: Ganja, Vvltvre (with Pippi Zornoza), and All Pigs Must Die (with s.k. redfearn.) in august 2007, she left Bugress, Maine for Providence. Divine or otherwise. her initiation to the Order of the Dirt Palace was sealed with the rite of The Whipping With The Extraneous CSA Fennel. Within the benevolent and elegant confines of the Palace, she studies witchcraft, Playboy Magazines from the 70s and the walls.
		Sasha Wiseman, raised on the leaden tapwater of Providence, is now incapable of leaving the city for long periods of time due to the enormous electromagnet secretly buried under the statehouse for this purpose. She contents herself with a few hobbies- mostly waiting for the postman to deliver the latest issue of National Geographic so she can gaze jealously at the fantastic scenes inside, dreaming of the alchemic reaction that would set her free.
		lauren Fisher
		Pippi Zornoza is an artist, musician and co-founder of the Dirt Palace in Providence Rhode Island. She is a renaissance man in this renaissance city. Her work can be comprised of musical performance, printmaking, embroidery, lace making, carving, knitting, sewing and drawing, often all at once. Pippi's personal creations utilize the old techniques of craft to make everyday useful objects magical. You may see them here. Her printmaking work has been exhibited in the United States as well as Japan, Argentina, Columbia and Sweden,and was published in the art-poster anthology, , The Art of Modern Rock. Pippi is known for her frightening performance style which manifests the undernourished expression of female power. In 2004 she formed the musical performance project Bonedust, with musician/composer Chrissy Wolpert. Bonedust toured the US in 2006 and is currently in transition so that they may actualize their original vision of creating a 3 woman rock opera. Formed out of a mutual period of desperation, VVLTVRE a collaboration with Annapurna Himal Wagner began performing in 2007. VVLTVRE'S debut release is slated on .Corleone Records for next year. Other musical projects of hers include: Throne of Blood (2002-03) released on Corleone Records; Sawzall (2001-02); and the ongoing solo project, Master Pizor (songs for the heartbroken, horny and metalheads. Pippi is also the star in the cult movie classic, Die You Zombie Bastards, directed by Caleb Emerson. Someday she will direct and perform in a musical where she will star as death.

		Arley Rose Torsone grew up in a small river valley town in Pennsylvania. She moved to New York City to go to school at Parsons, where she met her music video hero, director Michel Gondry. After working for Michel, graduating design school, and being a freelance prop stylist, illustrator, designer, painter, and rumbler, she grew tired of the city and decided to get a job that had more soul. While doing research on her thesis at Parsons (which was to restore a historic Ice House in Milford, PA into a community arts center), she discovered AS220 in Providence. She sent a copy of her thesis to AS220 and the rest is history. While realizing that she was moving to a city she'd never even been to before, she posted a bulletin online asking if anyone knew anything about Providence. A friend wrote back, "Two words: 'DIRT PALACE'. Do your homework." And so she did. Arley draws, paints, whistles, sings, makes things on the computer, and does other stuff that can be observed here.
		Alexandra Goldberg is a member of the planetary society, has almost perfected her rosettalatte, and enjoys the blog of Roseanne Barr. She has illustrations featured in such publications as and Paranoia Magazine and Candy Butcher, and has built puppets for organizations such as the CYL and Dollywood. Some of her personal goals and projects include completing her degree in Library Science, continuing her studies in tarot, and finding and playing all the pinball machines located in NYC.
		Kate Gronner survives exclusively off of chickpeas and chard, and possibly drinks as much tea, coffee, and other beverages as the whole dirt palace combined. She relocated to the providence from chicago during a blizzard in february 2006. She is excellent at loosing her cell phone, climbing trees and parallel parking pippi's van. She works in various mediums, such as embroidery, drawing, crochet, papier mache, carving, and printmaking, and is contemplating working in film again in the near future. Her interests include taxidermy, old pick up trucks, stereocards, blankets crocheted in striped patterns, succulents (and select other plants), her accordion, wood paneling, nature guides, encyclopedias, her mother's button collection, objects with a history, and the olneyville new york system. Rest in peace Salty.
		Cassie Tharinger grew up in vermont—-but redneck vermont, not hippie vermont. she shares a birthday with george washington, teddy kennedy, frederic chopin (though his birth date is contested,) her great aunt faith, and julius "dr. j" irving, and someday they will all form a superstar basketball team together. she has been known to make costumes, undies, lampshades, little boxes with stories in them, movies, collages, drawings & sometimes prints, overly-conceptual installations involving ebay, and various apple desserts. she is fond of obscure children's books from the 70's, listening to the radio, irish whiskey, wendell berry, things that really happened, popcorn, and salt. currently, she is learning about herbs (cultivation and lore), and pondering the inevitable, imminent apocalypse.
		Jean Cozzens is an artist, screen printer, poster designer, and "emerging professional in the field of architecture". She has lived in Providence since 1999, except for 10 months spent living and traveling in Italy. In June of 2005, after many years of effort, she received TWO! bachelor's degrees, one in Fine Arts and one in Architecture. She is currently following various pursuits including learning more about buildings and construction, mentoring high school students in design and screenprinting, and figuring out how to become a social justice architect. As an artist and designer, she hopes to use her skills to create radical change in the world!
		Laura Rodriguez is in love with clay, candles, marinated mushrooms, maria (the cat), teaching, video & new media technology, and shamanic meditations. She is currently working on 2 installations & finishing up her movie, Lydia Li, which will soon be distributed to queer- & diversity-focused youth groups. For more info on that, check out www.LydiaPink.com.
		Jo Dery draws pictures and makes short films. Her current project, "Echoes of Bats and Men," has received funding from theLEF Foundation and RI State Council on the Arts, and was screened in 2005. In 2002, she and friend Devon Damonte brought you the 24-hour Movie Making Experiment Tour, a project where crazy people stay up all night and make short films any way they can. She doubles as Peace Fancy Fancy, a former Dirt Palace pioneer, and faithful student of the natural world.
		Carrie Collier seeks otherworldly truth via the time/space routes of this world. She invents and repeats rituals designed to conjure sublime emotion and freedom from (fear of) death. Her practice is primarily literary. She explores the sorcerous or alchemical effect of words positioned and repositioned in relation to other words. She believes in revelation but finds its most authentic manifestation in the superficially humble personal narrative of female writers such as Marguerite Duras, Clarice Lispector, and Djuna Barnes. She has a particular affinity for nihilistic Francophone authors. She also makes films; regarding the relationship between her literary and cinematic pursuits she writes: “My films are about language and/or the body; my stories are about the body couched in language. The body, to me, is always a site of past or potential injury. Injury, in my work, wants to make an account of itself, to narrate a history, be rendered vocal. It wants to discover – perhaps to indict – a perpetrator. I like scarred bodies and scarred texts: works and forms that are crippled, that hobble, but that are potent enough to injure in turn, damage or harrow, that are thereafter culpable, injured and injuring alike.” This year she is beginning an MFA program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
		Polina was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and then emigrated to NYC. Through her travels, she has learned that there is endless beauty in the world, even though it is surely rivaled by all the despair. Equal parts hope and despair have propelled her to work intensively as an artist, a writer, a teacher, and a community organizer in a variety of places and contexts. Sometimes these roles have blurred into a singular amorphous mass of energy, other times they have remained remarkably distinct. Sometimes her political thinking ends up directly informing the artwork and other times, the politics are more nuanced and sublimated. Ultimately, the hope is that the principles of respect, democracy, beauty, and empowerment can guide the choices. For the past several years, Polina has been publishing work under the name "The Archaeology of the Recent Future Association". The "Association" is the catch-all moniker for the many projects and things that Polina likes to do, individually and/or collaboratively: film/video, community organizing, zines, drawing, printmaking, installation, sculpture, music, curating, and writing. Actually, the name was born right in the Dirt Palace kitchen, of a feverish mind, when the group embarked on its first collective art show. While she has shared her artwork in basements, galleries, and festivals around the world, she has also worked on several local social justice projects. Currently, she is working on two film projects: One is a series of portraits made while traveling in Eastern China, and the other is a collection of portraits of children (in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) performing as their favorite animals, in costumes and sets of their own making. She is also learning about bee-keeping, curating a women's film festival (The Citizen Jane Film Festival in Columbia, MO), researching gray water systems, and running a small arts space called NEIGHBORS where a variety of public events, art shows, and a residency program are all hosted.
		Erin Rosenthal b. 1976 Planet Earth creator of shadows, sculptures, and sounds as drummer/percussionist and singer in Crude Hill, Urdog, Sleepy Bones, and more guises to come. a shape shifter of cut-paper prints and dancing feet, she transforms ordinary objects into forms for focusing the ground state and exploring the myriad realms of mystical experience. most recently, she tends to spend as much time outside as possible, learning from plant and animal teachers.
		Sam Lopes Samuel Lopes is a painter, carpenter, teacher and a feminist living in Oakland, California. He was part of the D.P. from 2001-2002 and learned how to hang drywall there and use a screw gun. For this he is eternally grateful. His current work has focused on queer history, and fantasy. In the last five years, he erected a monument to the dreams lost throughout the AIDS crisis, made a visual biography of a genderless society, and most recently began a series called "house of no," which begins to address a queer relationship to architecture and geographical location.
		Jung Hong AKA Jhonni Glug came to fruition in a small Tower in korean, after being given instructions from a satellite orbiting around europa, Jhonni began growing her beard in order to knit a bridge into space and past. a battalion of cats has been enlisted to do the actual knitting.
		Robin Nanney

		Louise DeCurtis