Belvedere Craft Fellow

Nisa Smiley

Nisa Smiley is a studio jeweler, metalsmith, instructor, and owner of Nisa Jewelry in Franklin. She graduated from the Maine College of Art with a BFA in 2000. Soon after graduation, she moved to Downeast Maine and started her family. Since founding Nisa Jewelry in 2006, her work has been shown in juried fine craft shows, galleries, private trunk shows, and public exhibitions, and has been published in multiple books and publications.

She is also a seasoned teacher and enjoys assisting others in their creative pursuits. Nisa designs and handcrafts fine jewelry using precious metals, gemstones, and natural objects. She takes inspiration from the natural world, with a creative process involving the reimagining and exploration of tangible relationships among organic textures, patterns, and forms found in her environment.

“My artistic practice is motivated by an innate desire to explore the essential connections between humans and the natural world. Each piece that I create is an expression of my curiosity and delight, as well as an offering and an invitation to pause and consider our profound interrelatedness,” says Nisa.

Fine Craft Fellow

Patricia Daunis-Dunning

Patricia Daunis-Dunning is a jeweler and metalsmith who has worked as a professional craft artist since 1973. Her studio and showroom are located in downtown Portland, and she lives in Brunswick. She graduated with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. As a student, her focus was hollowware, including the design of vessels and sculptural forms, and she did not initially consider the possibility of designing jewelry.

When Patricia attended the Rhode Island School of Design, she turned every jewelry-making assignment into some form of hollowware. “When I graduated and started my own studio, I realized no one was lining up for a chalice or sterling teapot, but they were asking me about jewelry. It was then that I discovered that my ability to move the metal into all kinds of sculptural forms, thanks to training in making hollowware, allowed me to create any jewelry shape I could dream up,” she says.

Patricia’s skills in sculpture and hollowware translated into her ability to make jewelry that represents a smaller-scale, site-specific form of sculpture.

Visual Arts Fellow

Candice Gosta

Candice Gosta graduated from the Maine College of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting. During their time in Portland, their work was included in multiple group exhibitions at the Maine College of Art, SPACE, and the Portland Public Library. The Let Equality Shine mural in Portland is among the public projects showcasing Candice’s work.

Their Afro-Boricua upbringing in New Haven, Connecticut, has a significant influence on their work. Candice’s identity as a Black Latino artist has inspired them to use their work as a mode of documentation. They describe their work as a diary of complex emotional trauma, memories of childhood and domesticity, and an exploration of the gender binary.

Creating large-scale paintings, prints, and installations with bright and bold colors, found objects, and repurposed materials, their work relies on tactile materials to engage viewers’ senses and create an emotional impact.

Performing Arts Fellow

Amanda Huotari

Amanda Huotari is an award-winning performer and international touring artist who resides in Buckfield. Her original productions include Pretty Face: An American Dream, A Woman Alone, The Last Chocolate, and Camp Maine: A Night of the Town.

“I approach the stage with a joyful spirit for ferocious play. I seek to make bold choices that are as empowering as they are exciting. In playing with the right here, right now reality of the moment, I look for connection and liberation, for both myself as the performer and for the audience,” says Amanda.

For 15 years, she served as Executive Artistic Director of Celebration Barn Theater, supporting a worldwide community of more than 200 artists who came to Maine each year to create new work and complete training.

After stepping down from that position, she created the time and space to develop a new one-woman show with the working title Full of Life. The ambitious solo show explores the anxiety of raising a daughter and the pursuit of personal freedom from societal expectations, while engaging the audience in new ways.

Amanda also looked forward to extended touring that would build on her experiences with previous solo shows while deepening relationships with artists in creative communities throughout Canada, Europe, and South America.

Media Arts Fellow

Lindz Amer

Lindz Amer of Portland is an independent LGBTQ+ digital creator and activist specializing in queer storytelling and performance in children’s media. They became interested in this area of media while studying theater and gender studies as an undergraduate. Lindz graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science in Theater and a minor in Gender Studies in 2014.

The project that helped Lindz begin their career was the web series Queer Kid Stuff, through which they created educational LGBTQ+ and social justice videos for children and families of all ages on YouTube. Since its beginning, the series has been recognized by national publications, received grants, and been recognized by organizations including GLAAD.

Lindz wrote, produced, and co-hosted four seasons and more than 50 episodes, earning more than three million lifetime views. They created a Pride music video and campaign to celebrate the diversity of the queer community and spread queer joy for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Lindz also created live and virtual performances based on the web series for audiences across the country.

“It’s a different world today than it was when I started Queer Kid Stuff and there were no other resources for kids of its kind,” says Lindz. “I want to tell stories about nonbinary kids and queer families. I want to show kids that you can be queer and live a joyful life.”

Lindz also created a TED Talk about the importance of this work, which was featured on the front page of TED.com and accumulated more than 2.5 million views. They began adapting the talk into a progressive parenting book for St. Martin’s Press.

Literary Arts Fellow

Zahir Janmohamed

Zahir Janmohamed is a visiting assistant professor of English at Bowdoin College who lives in Portland. He graduated with an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan, where he received multiple awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and playwriting. His work has been featured in national publications and television broadcasts.

He co-founded the podcast Racist Sandwich in May 2016 while living in Portland, Oregon. The podcast explores the intersection of food, race, gender, and class and was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2019.

Zahir was working on a book titled The Permitted Hours, which explores the question, “What does it mean to be from a country that no longer wants you?” The journalistic memoir examines his conflicted relationship with his ancestral homeland of India. Structured as a series of essays, the book weaves together his family’s history and his experience of race in America.

Traditional Arts Fellow

Hanzaburo Araki

Hanz Araki of Springvale is recognized as one of the most talented Irish musicians in America. A flutist, whistle player, and singer, he is a Juno Award winner who has performed worldwide. His three decades of musical exploration in Irish, Scottish, Japanese, and American traditions have influenced his distinctive style.

Hanz grew up in Seattle with both Irish and Japanese musical influences in his family. His mother was Irish American, providing his connection to Irish music. His father was a professional Japanese shakuhachi player and the fifth person in the Araki Kodo lineage.

“Perhaps no other instrument in the traditional music of Japan is as easily recognizable as the shakuhachi, an end-blown bamboo flute. Originally played by itinerant monks as a form of meditation, it has endured centuries of change throughout Japan’s history,” Hanz explains.

Only four months after his father taught him his first lesson, Hanz made his professional debut in Japan in 1988. In 2009, his father bestowed upon him the name Kodo, making him the sixth person in the family’s lineage to carry the title. He has taught at Keio University in Tokyo and remains in demand as an instructor for his expertise in Kinko-ryu, the primary branch of shakuhachi music.

His album Hankyo, meaning Reverberation, is a solo recording featuring compositions by Kodo II and Kodo V.