Flora & Waking Worlds: First Look Preview Party

Dr. Bob

Robert Armstrong aka Dr. Bob has been performing as Dj Rhumpshaker since the year 2000. A rabid fan of multiple genres of music, Rhumpshaker got his start playing at house parties and art openings. Eventually settling in as the house Dj for the no name bar and hosting monthly dance parties for the last 10 years. Dj Rhumpshaker is also a multi instrumentalist and enjoys throwing his own original productions into the mix. Best known for his deep funk cuts, Dj Rhumpshaker also enjoys a wide variety of musical styles and is constantly exploring new and old music genres. An active member of the online Dj community you can find over a hundred of his mixes on mixcloud.com.

Mary Casanova

Mary Casanova is an award-winning children's author of novels and picture books. Many of her books stem from her life on the Minnesota-Canadian border; yet some of her stories have taken her as far away as France, Norway, and Belize. Whatever the setting for her books, Casanova writes stories that matter — and stories that kids can't put down. With 38 books published, she divides her time between writing and traveling. Nationally and internationally, at schools and conferences, Casanova shares her love of writing and reading with children and adults. She is the author of Wake Up Island (2016) and Hush Hush, Forest (2018) from the University of Minnesota Press.

Andy DuCett

Andy DuCett is from Winona, MN and received his M.F.A. from the University of Illinois and his B.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin – Stout. His artistic approaches span many disciplines in both studio and client based environments. He’s interested in the slippage that re-contextualization of images and experiences offers —  going from familiar to unfamiliar, easy to complicated. His work has been shown in galleries and museums around the country, and is in the collections of The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and The Walker Art Center. He has been featured by Artforum, New American Paintings, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post, as well as publications in Toronto, Berlin, Tokyo, and London. He was the recipient of a 2017 McKnight Visual Arts Fellowship, and is listed on the curated registry of the Drawing Center in New York City. He recently completed a series of projects commissioned by SITE Santa Fe,  and is a 2021 recipient of grants by The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and City of Saint Paul Cultural STAR to fund Conservatory, a collaboration with Jovan C. Speller.

The Nunnery 

The Nunnery begins with one voice, layered upon itself becoming a lush soundscape. Sarah Elstran is an independent musician that bridges the gap between bright-eyed pop composition and hands-on atmospheric live layering of voice. Her vocal loops give us the kind of detail and wide multi-octave range that we might come to expect from a marquee pop star, while her production decisions continually keep us guessing as to what rabbit holes her tracks might fall into next.

Fumi Nakamura

Fumi Nakamura is an artist and illustrator based in New York City. Born in Shizuoka, Japan, she moved to the Bay Area of California when she was 12. She is represented by Thinkspace Art Projects in Los Angeles, and her commissions include original work for clients such as Harper's Magazine, HarperCollins, Milkweed Editions, Puma, GAP, Dior, Urban Outfitters, and the Cornucopia Institute. Nakamura illustrated Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s best-selling book World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (2020, Milkweed Editions).

Aimee Nezhukumatathil 

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (2020, Milkweed Editions), which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year. She has four previous poetry collections: Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), Lucky Fish (2011), At The Drive-in Volcano (2007), and Miracle Fruit (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House.

Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. In 2021, she became the first-ever poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.

Nick Wroblewski

Nick Wroblewski is a Midwest based printmaker of hand cut woodblocks. His interest in art was cultivated young by a strong community of artists in Minneapolis, MN, where he grew up. Early experiences in puppetry, painting, and sculpture led to his work as a printmaker. Nick focuses on large multicolor woodcuts and has developed a distinct aesthetic reminiscent of stylized Japanese masters, yet uniquely his own. His work depicts the reverence he has for conversations of the wild and loyalty to the honesty of handcrafted arts. Nick's work can be seen in private collections and galleries throughout the country, as well as commercial design and illustrations. He lives in Duluth, Minnesota and prints from his studio near Lake Superior. Nick’s woodcut illustrations appear in Mary Casanova’s books Wake Up Island (2016) and Hush Hush, Forest (2018) from the University of Minnesota Press.