I am an artist, teacher, poet, and father based in the city of Bellingham (US), on the Salish Sea near the northwest Canadian border, where I work as Assistant Professor of Socially Engaged Art at an experimental student-centered program called Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University. My artistic work and research as well as our family relations bring us annually to Germany and Poland, where sometimes we get to stay for longer periods. In my artistic work, I create, more often in collaboration with other artists and specific communities, public interventions, alternative monuments, essays, performances, poems, films, and installations.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

When I was younger I worked as a street poet, writing poems by commission for passersby in New York City, and would often meet and end up hosting travelers from different parts of the world. I learned and received much from these many interactions and brief, though significant, relationships. Now, as my daughter grows a bit older, and my artistic work and research takes me to different places, particularly in Europe, I am finding time to explore. Although this specific formalized structure is new to me, Couchsurfing feels like an important and humane alternative to what are often and increasingly exploitative and sterile lodging options. When one doesn't have friends in a place, this feels like the next best way to respectfully visit, learn, and experience a new place.

Interests

• literature
• walking
• folk music
• jazz
• rivers
• art
• activism
• wandering
• listening
• traditional music
• history and culture

Music, Movies, and Books

[Currently]

Music: Youmna Saba, Lisa O'Neil, Soghomon Soghomonian (Komitas), Violeta Parra

Movies: Fanny and Alexander dir. Ingmar Bergman (1982), Monster dir. Hirokazu Koreeda (2023), Andrei Rublev dir. Andrei Tarkovsky (1966)

Books: Memed, My Hawk by Yaşar Kemal (1955), The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (2014), Breathturn by Paul Celan (1967)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

When I was 23, I hitch-hiked, with a companion and carrying a typewriter, across nearly the entire southern length of Canada in nine days, from the Okanagan Valley (BC) to the Gaspé peninsula.

Teach, Learn, Share

My desire to respectfully visit places and regions where I have not before been usually focuses on confronting and thinking about the presence of history within contemporary struggles and life-ways as well as the creative methods communities unearth to resist homogenization and oppression in building or renewing worlds.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I can cook a good stew.

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Palestine, Poland, Scotland

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany, United States