Greetings Friend,

You're invited to join us for an evening of visual, literary, and musical art with the current residents of The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation.

Sunday, November 24th @ 6:00 PM

Abbie's' Studio Theater • 114 Los Pandos Rd., Taos, NM
Park at Smith's, walk 100 yards up Los Pandos • No cover

To start off the evening Gregory Mertl will be performing his original composition, Offertory, accompanied by fellow resident Aline Homzy. An offering to Florent Renard-Payen for whom it was composed, Offertory is also an offering on several levels – of Mertl's work, of an offering in the ritualistic sense and as a plaintive, muted plea. The materials are few: a long, sustained line in the violin and spare bell-like sonorities in the piano.

Composer Gregory Mertl is recipient of a Barlow Endowment commission for a piano concerto for Solungga Liu and the University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble (Bridge Records, 2017). He has also received commissions from the Tanglewood Music Center, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Phoenix Symphony, and the Big Ten Wind Ensembles and has a Ph.D from the Eastman School of Music.
gregorymertl.com

For this event Matthew Ivan Bennet will be reading selections from "Just Add Water," co-written by Matthew Ivan Bennett and Elaine Jarvik, premiering with Plan-B Theatre in October 2025 at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center with support from the Bloomberg Foundation and the Utah Division of Arts and Museums. "Just Add Water" is a mythic-surrealist adventure in which Great Salt Lake takes human form and does battle with developers, slick politicians, and apathy.

Matthew Ivan Bennett serves as a Resident Playwright at Plan-B Theatre in Salt Lake City. Since 2005, he’s premiered over 20 plays with them, including 13 radio plays in collaboration with KUER’s RadioWest. Last year, his play "From June to August" was the Official Selection performed at Meanwhile Park. Working with the Transgender Education Advocates of Utah, he developed "Eric(a)" and it won the Best Drama award at the United Solo Festival in New York. Twice he’s contributed to the Great Plains Theatre Commons and has been a finalist at the O’Neill for "Let Down Your Hair," a modern retelling of "Rapunzel" through the lens of sex education in America. He’s worked with the Omaha Community Playhouse, The Constructivists in Milwaukee, and his short plays have appeared in Toronto, New York, and DC. His poetry has been published with Sugar House Review, Western Humanities, Utah Life, and unearthed. His feature film "The Whole Lot" was an Official Selection at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival in 2022 and several others. Matt is a recent alum of Futurescapes and a member of the Dramatists’ Guild.
matthewivanbennett.com

SR will be exhibiting sculptures worked on during their residency and sharing insights into their creative process.

SR's sculptures are perpetual prototypes of trans corporeality ~ unfixed forms between hand and industrial processes, invisibility and legibility, mechanical engineering and poetry, fiction and function. SR received a BA with High Honors in Studio Art from Oberlin College (2015), was a Core Fellow at the Penland School of Craft (2017-19) and holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Yale School of Art (2023). They recently completed the West Bay View Foundation Fellowship at Dieu Donné in Brooklyn, NY and are currently a Fellow at The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM.
sarahroselejeune.com

The evening will showcase Aline Homzy performing excerpts from her original compositions for violin.

Aline Homzy is an award-winning violinist and composer. Originally from Montreal, born to a Québécois mom and an American dad with Eastern-European roots, Aline’s original music reflects her culturally-diverse background.

Beyond composing music, Aline is a regular violinist in the studios of Toronto, recording other artists’ original music. Aline is sought-out for her lightning-fast sight-reading skills, her deep knowledge of jazz and improvisation and her musicality and upbeat personality. Some artists that she has recorded for include David Occhipinti, Andrew Downing, Iskwé, The Weather Station, Amanda Tosoff and many more. She is the leader of the string section for SymphRONica (2019 Juno-nominated), Maurizio Guarini’s “A Goblin’s Chamber Music”, De Bouche à oreille – série de spectacles francophone, and many other Toronto- based projects.

Aline has performed and/ or recorded with international artists such as Munir Hossn (Brazil), Emma Smith (Edinburgh), Jake Sherman (USA), Leah Michelle (USA), Ed Sheeran (Great Britain), Danilo Perez (Panama), Cho Yongwon (South Korea), Mikko Hildèn (Sweden), amongst others.
alinehomzy.com

Current playwright-in-residence Matthew Ivan Bennett will be reading poetry by Joanna Klink.

Across five books, most recently The Nightfields, Joanna Klink’s work has been marked by emotional intensity, her poems driven by the desire to connect “the endless daily sorting of our lives” and the otherworldly. Her awards include the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, an Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, which allowed her to live in Rome in 2018. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Klink taught for many years in Missoula, Montana. She now teaches at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. Her new book is forthcoming in September 2026.
joannaklink.com

Alba's Suau will be showcasing the paintings that she has worked on during her time in Taos, and sharing insights into her creative process.

Alba Suau, born in Pollença, Mallorca in 1997, is a visual artist based in Brussels. Her artistic practice focuses on painting not as a static image but as an event, aiming to capture and share the tangible experience of the present through her works. Alba begins her creative process with aimless walks, allowing her to access a meditative reality that she later translates into her paintings.

She has showcased her work in various solo and group exhibitions at venues such as Alzueta Gallery in Madrid, Kaplan Projects in Palma, Dorotheum in Brussels, and the Casal Solleric in Palma. Additionally, she has participated in artist residencies, including the Moonens Foundation in Brussels and Weil Art Exchange in New York. Her talent has been recognized with awards such as the "Mallorca International Award" and the "Prix des Amis de La Cambre", solidifying her presence in the contemporary art scene.

During her residency at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the landscape of her walks has shifted to the unique surroundings of Taos, infusing her practice with new layers of inspiration. Through her art, Alba invites the viewer to explore and reinterpret lived landscapes, creating a dialogue between memory and reality.
albasuau.com/

Poet-in-residence Dara Yen Elerath will be reading some of the poems she has crafted during her time in Taos.

Dara Yen Elerath is a mixed-race, Chinese-American writer, born in California and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is the author of Dark Braid (2020, BkMk Press), which won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. Her writing has appeared in Poetry, the American Poetry Review, AGNI, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, High Country News, and elsewhere.

Dara recieved her MFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and is the recipient of a fellowship from The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, where she will be in residence during the fall of 2024.
daraelerath.com

The evening will feature an exhibit of the paintings that Megan Angolia worked on during her residency, and Megan will share insights into her creative process.

Megan Angolia is a Virginia based figurative artist who will be sharing acrylic self-portraits that humorously reframe the female form through hyper-specific, unfiltered examinations of the body. Angolia’s work is exhibited nationally, with recent work shown at the Susquehanna Art Museum and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. She is a recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship and first time Artist-in-Resident at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. When not in the studio, Angolia can be found uprooting invasive plants while grumbling about her neighbors' monoculture lawns.
meganangolia.com

Jerome Kitzke will be presenting a video of a live performance of an excerpt of his work about bison, Buffalo Nation (Bison bison). The excerpt describes a group of 19th Century bison “hunters” and a bison slaughter perpetrated by them as well as the impressions of the aftermath in the words of the bison themselves, followed by some further history. It is for Baritone/Actor, 4 Actors, Sound Effects Chorus, and a 15 piece ensemble.

Jerome Kitzke wrote his first piece, Song of the Family, in 1970, and finished his most recent one, I Wonder If This Ground Has Anything to Say (A Treaty Illumination) on October 19th in residence at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. His music has been played around the world and is recorded extensively on the Innova, Mode, and New World labels. His next projects are an electric guitar quartet called Nothing Wrong With Quiet, a theatrical musical adaptation of Andrew Krivak’s 2020 novel, The Bear, and a piece about Burr Oak Trees. He lives in New York City.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Kitzke

Sincerely yours,

- Nic Knight, Executive Director