About the Artist

Elis is a kid-co-conspirator masking as an educator of 15 years. She is a poet focused on auto-ethnographic explorations of black fugitivity and abundance, who has recently been exploring a practice of applying text to ceramics. In all her work Elis is concerned with liberation, silence, and intersections. She's been creating containers for the young people in her care and in her classrooms to give voice to their feelings for as long as she can remember. She really wants to hear what it sounds like when a kid is making art in the sense that they are speaking not knowing if they will be understood but knowing that they will be listened to....."I don't know what to call that form. Sometimes an audience is affirming or makes that possible. Sometimes it disturbs. I don't know what that sounds like. I feel even more curious what kind of space that makes in their brain. How that connects to their sense of the self in communication with other people. I wonder if it helps build a muscle for compassionate communication across without understanding of. I want to know what it does developmentally even more than creatively. Playfulness is the heart of love."

Gum is a writer, director, performer and storyteller in the tradition of the many women in my family who worked and lived as teachers. That tradition is this: tell the whole truth as efficiently as possible, offered up in a package that students can carry away usably, with as much spectacle as you can manage because that's how people remember what's important, and make sure there's something in it that you can live off of too...because you'll need it to repeat it all tomorrow. I've been learning directing and writing from mentors in my community for 5 years, as well as developing my skills through stipend-supported residencies (such as The Fresh Ground Pepper Playgroup, Sharon Hayes & Brooke O'Harra's Performance Intensive). I recently began producing my own work as an early-career artist, including writing an

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