Erica Gressman is a Miami-born, mixed Latinx queer artist working in Chicago who fuses sound art with performance. She received her BA from New College of Florida and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Performance in 2012. After she received her MFA she became a fabricator and now a Design Engineer. These experiences have greatly influenced the heavy interactive structures that function as the sets for her compositions. Her work 'Wall of Skin' was featured in Performance Matters journal written by Dr. Sandra Ruiz, Barbed Magazine, Emergency Index Vol. 2, and on ‘La Estacion Gallery’ podcast. She has given lectures at institutions, such as University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, Northwestern University, University of Illinois, Royal Danish Art Academy, and New College of Florida. In 2019, they became an Illinois Arts Council Fellow after finishing Krannert Art Center's debut of her performance, 'Limbs'. She has performed at the Museum of the Contemporary Art Chicago, MANA Contemporary, Defibrillator Gallery, Pittsburgh’s VIA: Video/Music Festival, New York’s Grace Exhibition Space, Theater Factory in Malmo, Sweden, and Miami Art Center. Since the pandemic, Gressman has performed new live streamed works such as 'Covid 19' for Experimental Sound Studio's Quarantine Concert Series, along with 'Dissever' for Brooklyn's The Hive Art Community Re:Live Performance Lab online series. Currently, Gressman is working as a designer/fabricator in collaboration with La Vuelta Ensemble creating a customized metal rig for their residency at Urban Theater. Gressman is also in the experimental phase of capturing biological sounds to turn them into visual sculptures and performances.
Mixing genres, Gressman explores their hybridity through noise inspired by Miami’s underground punk scene and performances drawn from the bizarre culture clashes that punctuate daily life in Florida. They fuse sound art with performance practices to experiment with the body as technology amplified by spectacle. She builds her own theatrical sets, interactive electronic instruments, and costumes to create a synesthetic experience. They strive to translate sound and light using the body as a technological movement interface to create a cybernetic system that amplifies the abstract sentiments of a body evacuated of the human.
Beth McDonald is a classically trained tuba player gone awry. She performs mainly as an improviser, using the tuba acoustically and in conjunction with electronics. Her most recent solo album, densing (2021), is built upon thick layering of tuba with resonance, and explores how these sounds parallel the visual processes of textile felting. A follow-up album project on these ideas, featuring collaborations with other musicians and textile artists, will be released in early 2023.
Beth performs with the groups No Trust and the Duck Brain Ragtime Band, and enjoys collaborating across disciplines with artists such as Becky Grajeda, Eli Wallace, Sasha de Koninck, and Mark Booth. Beth has degrees from New England Conservatory, Northeastern Illinois University, and the University of Kentucky. In a previous musical life, Beth toured as a classical chamber musician, concerto soloist, and as part of the orchestra academies at the Lucerne Festival (CH) and Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival (DE).
You can learn more about Beth and her latest work at www.bethtuba.com.