FED Launches on the Vernal Equinox
with Twelve Very Special Guests & You!
A dinner party can be a wondrous thing. Stimulation for all your senses and nourishment for body and soul. An evening to relish and remember. FED is designed to feel like that, but progressively and cumulatively over the course of a season. Our rhythm follows the sun.
We launch on the Vernal Equinox, aka March 19, and for our first season, we’re cooking up twelve tantalizing courses for you—one each week throughout the spring—courtesy of our wonderful and wondrous special guest contributors. Musicians, artists, writers, poets, growers, cooks, and craftspeople…all with a mind and practice of creating and sustaining community. Yum!
In order of appearance…
March
Darcy Reenis: Dutch-born graphic designer and DJ D:RC, currently residing in Athens, Georgia. Since the mid-90s, Darcy’s been a key player in the southeast US dance music scene. While at The University of Georgia, he launched Phungus, a DJ/artist collective that produced events in Athens and Atlanta. After Phungus disbanded, he established Studio:Machina, a graphic design practice specializing in music industry branding, which continues to this day. With a reputation as a prominent DJ in drum 'n bass and related bass music genres, he regularly shares club and festival stages with major names. During the pandemic, he created the Liquid Lovers Lounge, a recurring DJ stream and archive focused on the more melodic sounds of liquid DNB. As of 2022, he joined the team behind Torch, a long-running Atlanta DNB night held at The Masquerade music venue.
Socials
Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/d-rc
Twitch: www.twitch.tv/drcmachina
IG + FB: @drcmachinaPreeta Samarasan: author of two novels, Evening is the Whole Day (2008) and Tale of the Dreamer's Son (2022), as well as of numerous short stories and essays. Preeta is also a lifelong pianist and enthusiastic amateur musician, currently studying harpsichord. Preeta spent her childhood in Ipoh, a Malaysian town famous for its tin-mining history and its limestone hills, for which its fat beansprouts, smooth rice noodles, and juicy pomelos are credited. She saw out her adolescence in the mountains of northern New Mexico and then spent the following twelve years in the northeastern and midwestern United States. After earning an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, she moved to France, where she has been living since. Other current pursuits include learning to read and write her ancestral language, Tamil, and working on a novel about two elderly sisters. She is very excited about the opportunity to explore her interests in a way that is both playful and profound here on FED.
Socials
IG: @psamarasan_writer
FB: @preeta.samarasan
April
Gabriel Sacco: artist, teacher of 4D practices at Fairfield University in Connecticut, and senior manager of public programs and creative producer at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. Gabe uses art to describe consistencies between physics, aesthetics, and social connection, specifically related to knowledge and sensation. His work renders and maps out flows of information through drawings, photography, writing and video. The work exemplifies paradoxes such as the devotion to knowing and an archive’s inability to process information with the key notion that human beings have limited perception of the world. Gabe earned an MFA from Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts and is passionate about teaching how we learn inherited systems of power while also exploring ways to develop new systems for living socially.
Socials
IG: gabrielsacc0
Sahana Murthy: Ayurvedic chef and founder of Rasayana Mysore Kitchen. Sahana credits her mother with teaching most of her culinary skills, including the traditional recipes passed down for many generations that she favors. She conducts cooking classes and practices yoga in her hometown of Mysore, India, dubbed “the Yoga Capital of the World.” She also teaches online to reach a wider segment of people, constantly striving to connect the age-old wisdom of Ayurveda with the needs and people of our time. Cooking based on Ayurvedic principles not only nourishes the body but also nourishes the state of mind and consciousness. Eating right helps with balance, harmony, nourishment, good health, and vitality. When not in the kitchen or on the yoga mat, Sahana plays with her street dogs turned family and travels widely to explore wilderness areas.
Genji Siraisi: musician, producer, and Founder/Executive Director of MOMENT NYC. Genji was born in NYC in 1965 and raised in Brooklyn immersed in a diverse musical landscape of free jazz, salsa, disco, punk, minimalism, and hip-hop. As a teenager, his musical education was shaped by live performances from acclaimed artists like Elvin Jones, Fela Kuti, the Dead Boys, Defunkt, and Bob Marley. Notable street cred moments include playing drums with Tupac Shakur, recording with Curtis Mayfield, and performing at David Mancuso's Love Saves the Day loft parties. He’s also played with jazz legends like Pharaoh Sanders, Ramsey Lewis, and Tony Williams. His band Groove Collective received a Grammy nomination in 2007 for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Genji has produced records for major record labels including Warner and Universal, and he has written, produced, and performed music appearing in feature films and national ads. Most recently, he founded MOMENT NYC, a music museum to support local musicians and underground music scenes in New York City. MOMENT NYC hosts live events, concerts, and educational programs for underserved children and collaborates with various institutions and venues to advocate for underrepresented musicians and music workers across all genres and career stages.
Ayelet Amittay: poet and psychiatric nurse practitioner in Eugene, Oregon. Ayelet’s first book of poems, The Eating Knife, will be published in 2025 by Fernwood Press. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Michigan Quarterly Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. She has received fellowships from the Yiddish Book Center and the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. You can find her online at www.ayeletpoet.com
Judith Bryant: potter and ceramicist. Judith has been making pots and creating community in western Vermont for more than fifty years. Her trajectory of study in clay includes working with the Scatchard family potters at the Shelburne Craft School and ceramics programs in Boulder, Colorado; Burlington, Vermont; and Alfred, New York; plus a degree in art, art history, and French from New York University. While at the Shelburne Craft School, Judith taught pottery classes and served as Assistant Director. She has also served as Resident Potter at Frog Hollow, the Vermont State Craft Center in Middlebury. Currently, she creates hand-thrown forms, primarily in porcelain, at a private studio in Bristol, Vermont, which she founded with fellow potter Marcy (Matlak) Mayforth. Strong, graceful forms with splashed glaze combinations often suggest landscapes. Her practice is collaborative and includes many friends and students who have met weekly for thirty years to do their own work and help load and fire kilns together.
May
Andrew McKnight: accomplished woodworker and Founder/Executive Director of The Challenge Program, one of Delaware’s most successful construction training programs and home of CP Furniture. A LEED Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of green building technologies, Andrew has been recognized often for his work in the community. He is the recipient of the 2008 Jefferson Public Service Award, and in 2017, Governor Markell awarded Andrew the “Order of the First State” for his “meritorious service to the citizens of Delaware.” It all started with a notion, in 1995, that the world is made a little better if you build a wooden boat. From boats to post and beam to tables!
Milito: singer-songwriter and producer—creating music that broadens acceptance for masculine sensitivity and diversity—visual artist, and poet from Poland. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Milito focused mainly on body art and musical performance. This experience informs his concerts, for which he plays with choreography and visual elements in addition to music. Gwiazda rubieży (Star of the Edge, 2016), his debut album, features a collection of songs based mainly on the sounds of the reed organ. With his latest mini-album Nesting (October 2022), Milito returns to his musical roots to create the eclectic avant-pop style, he describes as, "American musical roots, post-punk and trip hop, ground with human flesh and an oriental vibe." Songs oscillate between blissful calm, wild joy, and psychedelia.
Rose Skelton: writer, reporter, and editor from Scotland. Rose is currently working on two books––Homescar, a collection of short stories set on an island in the Inner Hebrides, which won the Larry Levis Fellowship for Fiction in 2017 and an Elizabeth George Foundation grant––and a nonfiction book about composting and mental ill health. Her fiction has been published in Four Way Review and Waxwing, and her non-fiction essay, “Little Starts” (Ecotone 2021) was a Pushcart Special Mention. She is a co-founder of Field Studio. Previously a reporter in west Africa, and a member of an ocean search and rescue crew on the Isle of Mull, she now lives and gardens in Texas.
Shaun T. Griffin: poet, writer, teacher, and community organizer. Shaun has dedicated his life to creating a caring community. He and his wife, Deborah, founded the Community Chest in 1991, a nonprofit organization that directs more than thirty programs for northern Nevada, including hunger relief, service learning, counseling, drug and alcohol counseling, early childhood education, and art and social justice projects. Shaun taught a poetry workshop at Northern Nevada Correctional Center for thirty years and published Razor Wire, a journal of the men’s work. He is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including, Because the Light Will Not Forgive Me: Essays from a Poet and Anthem for a Burnished Land. His memoir, River Ask Me Why—Into the West on Two Wheels, will be out soon, as will No Charity in the Wilderness, poems. In 2014, Shaun was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
June
Lluvia Dunn: Latina DJ, Topo Chica, from El Paso, Texas—a vinyl lover turned music selector. Lluvia brings a diverse range of Latin American Sounds such as rare Cumbia, Mexican Garage Rock and Psych, plus other rare Latin Grooves to her sets. Her goal is “to share a part of me and my culture, and to keep these Latin Sounds alive as long as we can.”
We’re so happy you’ve joined us for the feast. And, the more, the merrier. So, go on, shout it from the mountaintops… Soup’s on!