Volume 16 Contributor Bios
Living with the Land (Fall 2025)
Meredith Ahmed is an artist, researcher, and emerging archivist whose work bridges storytelling, material culture, and collective memory. Rooted in archival practices and community histories, they explore how the tangible and intangible shape our understanding of the past. With a foundation in Art History and Africana Studies from Warren Wilson College and a Master of Library and Information Science in progress at the University of Iowa, Meredith’s work is driven by historical inquiry, social justice, and anti-colonial frameworks. Their research reimagines archives as dynamic spaces of cultural memory, centering underrepresented voices and lived experiences. Through historical research and visual storytelling, they delve into themes of place-based knowledge, resistance, and creative reimagination. Based in Appalachia, Meredith continues to explore the deep connections between land, memory, and artistic practice.
Joseph Bathanti is the former North Carolina Poet Laureate (2012-14) and recipient of the North Carolina Award in Literature, the state’s highest civilian honor. The author of over twenty books, Bathanti is McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education at Appalachian State University. He will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in October of 2024. In 1992, he became close friends with BMC writer Fielding Dawson and, for the remaining years of Dawson’s life, Bathanti and Dawson offered creative writing workshops every spring to prisoners confined by the NC Department of Correction.
Clint Bowman is the co-founder and facilitator of the Dark City Poets Society (DCPS) – a free poetry group based out of the Black Mountain Library. When he is not volunteering his time with the DCPS, he works for the Town of Black Mountain, leading hikes, river cleanups, and various community programs.
Austen Camille is a Canadian-American artist, writer, builder and gardener. Camille primarily makes site-responsive public work that aims to build relationships with local ecosystems and their communities.
Eleanor Conover is an artist who lives and works in Topsham, ME. Recent exhibitions include Abattoir, Cleveland, OH; Praise Shadows, Boston, MA; White Columns, NY, NY; and Hudson House, Hudson, NY. She was a recipient of the Alice C. Cole Fellowship at Wellesley College from 2020-21, and her work has been supported by residencies including the Tides Institute in Eastport, ME, and the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation in New Berlin, NY. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Bowdoin College.
Tyler Emerson-Dorsch is a curator and writer based in Western North Carolina. From 2008 to 2025, she was a partner at Emerson Dorsch, a contemporary art gallery in Miami, where her work as curator, writer, and dealer developed alongside the gallery’s growth. Her recent essays include “Horses, earth, fire, wind and water” (2024), written for an exhibition she curated featuring Shauna Fahley and Ernesto Gutierrez-Moya; “Just Look at Yourself” (2023), a gallery note for Jen Clay’s exhibition at Locust Projects; and “Active Silence” (2023), an essay for the 2nd Fountainhead Biennial, curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud. In addition to those at the gallery, she has curated exhibitions at institutions such as MIA Galleries at Miami International Airport, the MDC Museum of Art + Design, Meetinghouse Miami, and the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery at Wayne State University in Detroit. Emerson-Dorsch holds an M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She serves on the boards of Artist in Residence in the Everglades (AIRIE) and the Asheville Art Museum. With her husband, Brook Dorsch, she co-founded the Emerson Dorsch Artist Residency—a retreat devoted to landscape, learning, and experimentation.
Corey Loftus is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and a Mellon-Marron Research Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She previously completed a graduate fellowship at the Asheville Art Museum, where she worked closely with the Black Mountain College collection and curated the spotlight exhibition Learning from the Land: Art, Education, and Nature at Black Mountain College. Research for this article was generously funded by the Peter E. Palmquist Memorial Fund for Historical Photographic Research.
Jillian Lepek is a current PhD student in Art History at Washington University in St. Louis specializing in contemporary ecocritical art. Her work investigates how art mediates our encounters with nature, especially in ways that complicate dominant narratives of expansionism and rationalism. She has held positions at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Smart Museum of Art.
Sean Lopez is an intermedia artist and educator at George Mason University exploring consciousness and profanation through performance, projection mapping, and installation. Combining poetry, theater, folklore, and digital media, he examines humanity’s paradoxical relationship with imagination—craving creative freedom while fearing its power. He is a PhD candidate researching intermedial studies at the University of Maine, and holds an MFA from the University of North Texas.
SWANNATOPIA: If you are reading this, know that no one is in charge! We, of Swannatopia, are a group of experimental artists headquartered in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Over the past decade, we have set out to defamiliarize the familiar, to nurture an immersive, whimsical, thoughtful, experience of empowerment and offer a glimpse of what is possible. We believe that cross-disciplinary collaborations are essential to cultivate a healthy community and to maximize creative potential. Our installations and happenings are mutually supportive, multigenerational endeavors that help us all—individual, group, and participant-observers—to dream bigger, together. To this end, we launched our “Experimental Art Club” in 2021. An experiment in and of itself, Experimental Art Club aims to facilitate the free exchange of knowledge, experience, tools, and materials, while bringing the people together to “make stuff for fun!”
THIS LAND FILMS: Erin Brethauer and Tim Hussin are the filmmakers, photographers and co-founders behind This Land Films (@thislandfilms), a multi-disciplinary documentary production company and creative studio. Before filmmaking, we were newspaper photojournalists for over a decade at places like the San Francisco Chronicle, National Geographic and the Asheville Citizen-Times. Our background in photography helps us notice and capture subtle moments when filming. We love immersing ourselves in community and following our intuition and curiosity. We believe this approach leads to unexpected and enlightening moments of connection between collaborators and viewers.
Julie J. Thomson is a naturalist, environmental educator, independent scholar, curator, and artist who lives and works in Western North Carolina. Her writing and art focuses on place and memory. She has been researching, writing, and being inspired by BMC artists since 2006. She is the author of several books including Weaving at Black Mountain College: Anni Albers, Trude Guermonprez, and Their Students (2023).
Mats Werchohlad, M.Sc. in Urban Studies, explores spatial and transformational dynamics at the intersection of technology, education, and society. With a background in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in Urban Studies, he integrates interdisciplinary approaches and thematic fields in both his teaching and research. His work addresses, among other things, the cultural-historical dimensions of smart cities and the heterotopic qualities of English landscape gardens. He has worked as a scientific assistant at the Chair of Spatial Planning and Research at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and at the Institute for Transport and Space at the University of Applied Sciences Erfurt. Further projects and curatorial activities have been carried out within the framework of the Horizonte Initiative for Architectural Discourse, the Bauhaus Institute for History and Theory of Architecture and Planning, and the Venice Architecture Biennale. He is currently pursuing a doctoral project on environmental concepts and imaginaries at the historic Bauhaus.
Editors
David Silver is a professor of environmental studies and urban agriculture at the University of San Francisco (USF), where he has been since 2006. At USF, he teaches classes in urban ag, hyperlocal food systems, and food, culture, and storytelling, and serves as faculty advisor for the USF Community Garden, USF Food Pantry, and the USF Seed Library. Fiercely interdisciplinary, David has taught and published in multiple fields, including American studies, communication, environmental studies, internet studies, media studies, and urban agriculture. For over a decade, he has been researching the farm and food at Black Mountain College, resulting in multiple articles, book chapters, and, in September 2024, The Farm at Black Mountain College, his book co-published by Atelier Éditions and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and an exhibition, co-curated with Bruce Johansen, at BMCM+AC.
Thomas Edward Frank is University Professor Emeritus of Wake Forest University. He has taught and continues to write and consult about American communities of ideals, particularly liberal arts colleges and utopian movements, as well as the conservation of the natural and built landscapes that tell the stories of how American culture developed.
Kira Houston is Outreach Manager at Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. He graduated from Clark University with a BA in Art History and Spanish.
Special thanks to Isabel Baggett for their work as a Production Assistant for this volume.