Artists in Residence

John Caddy

Poet, Naturalist and Teacher, Morning Earth

Poet and educator John Caddy is the author of With Mouths Open Wide: New & Selected Poems (Milkweed, 2008); The Color of Mesabi Bones (Milkweed, 1989), Los Angeles Times Book Prize and Minnesota Book Award; Eating the Sting (Milkweed, 1986); and Morning Earth: Field Notes in Poetry (Milkweed, 2003).  Adjunct faculty at Hamline for 25 years, Caddy has taught poetry to adults and children in over eight hundred settings over the past forty years. 

John is also the 2012 McKnight Distinguished Artist. The Award recognizes one Minnesota artist each year for artistic excellence as well as significant impact on the state’s cultural life over several decades.

Caddy's current project, Morning Earth, spun out of work with the Center for Global Environmental Education on his Self-Expressing Earth (SEE) program. Morning Earth "celebrates the confluence of art and ecology." Caddy's "Healing Image" poems and photos circulate daily to teachers, naturalists, artists, and students around the world. 

Read the Water Meditation that Caddy contributed to another of CGEE's earlier projects, Rivers of Life.

Marylee Hardenburgh

Artistic Director, Global Site Performance dancer and choreographer

Marylee Hardenbergh has choreographed large site-specific performances for the past twenty years, and she has received many awards including a Fulbright Scholarship, an NEA fellowship, five McKnight Foundation fellowships and a Soros grant. She maintains a Dance Movement Therapy practice. Her performances range from the Mother's Day Dance honoring mothers and their daughters, to Dance for Peace in Bosnia in 1996 at the end of the war, that honored the healing of the place and the ethnic groups there, to Solstice River honoring the Mississippi River as a vital national resource. She creates opening ceremonies for conferences, being an expert in a form of movement, called a Movement Choir, where large groups of people move in synchrony; participants comment on the profound beauty and power of these ceremonies, how “life-affirming” her work is!

Hardenbergh’s large site- performances create beauty in a particular site on the earth by drawing attention to the beauty that already exists in that place. She employs local performers and local composers so that all aspects of the performance are site-specific.

Dean Hawthorne

Exhibit Fabricator II, Science Museum of Minnesota
sculptor and visual artist

Dean Hawthorne is an Emeritus Prop Master for the Minnesota Opera. He is a Nemaa affiliate, and a member of the Alt/Industrial ensemble Savage Aural Hotbed. Dean says, "I like fire, metal and mysteries and cannot escape the pull of natural phenomena. Having chosen the natural world as my model, I take a rather minimalist approach to creating my representations in steel and other metals. Like a simple experience, a simple image can evoke complexities." Dean worked on an exhibit of a series of bodies of water, great rivers and land masses. 

Bonnie Ploger

Professor, Department of Biology, Hamline University
painter, photographer, performer

As a visual and performance artist and as a biologist, Bonnie Ploger uses the power of art to engender the sense of wonder, awe and curiosity that motivate so many artistic and scientific explorations. Her paintings, photography and performances are informed by more than 15 years of research on wetland wildlife and by her more recent cave explorations. Bonnie is a Professor of Biology at Hamline University, where she teaches interdisciplinary college courses and public workshops that integrate art-making with environmental awareness.

Bonnie's performances combine her visual art, improvisational singing, movement and story-telling to create a sense of journeying through powerful places in the natural world. She has performed internationally in Zhuhai, China, nationally at the National Society for the Arts in Healthcare conference, and at regional universities including the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Winona State University and Hamline University.

Bonnie is a 2014 Artist Initiative grant recipient. Her paintings and photography have appeared in regional art exhibitions and in a solo exhibition in Zhuhai, China. In addition to regularly exhibiting in open juried shows, she also exhibits in invitational shows with Project Art for Nature, a group of artists selected by jury, who are dedicated to enhancing public awareness of the natural areas of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Bonnie's visual artwork has appeared in university art galleries, museums and community art centers in both states.

Kim Sueoka

Vocalist and Musician, the Rose Ensemble and Lau Hawaiian Collective

Vocalist Kim Sueoka is passionate about creating musical insights into the human experience. Lauded as "radiant" (Cleveland Classical), she is an active performer of Hawaiian historical music, early music, chamber music, and new compositions. She has appeared as a soloist with the Neuss Chamber Orchestra, Glorious Revolution Baroque, and the National Lutheran Choir. She has been featured on The Schubert Club's Courtroom and Summer Songfest series, Minnesota Guitar Society's Local Artist Series, The American Composers Forum's SoundCheck series, The Owatonna Arts Center Chamber Music Series, and The Royal Hawaiian Band's 'Iolani Palace Outdoor Concert Series. She frequently appears in concert with The Rose Ensemble, Lau, Silver Swan Chamber Ensemble, and with pianists/composers Paul Cantrell and Todd Harper. Her "crystalline voice" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) can be heard on a growing number of recordings.
Kim received a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant in 2011 to research, perform, and record a collection of Hawaiian songs on the theme of fresh water, or wai. She received a McKnight Performing Artist Fellowship finalist award in 2007, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Cultural Community Partnership grant in 2005.

Originally from Koloa, Kaua‘i, Kim presently resides in the Twin Cities, where she has developed a great respect for snow shovels and mittens. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree in vocal performance at the University of Evansville under the instruction of Joseph Hopkins, and completed a Masters degree at the University of Minnesota, where she studied with Lawrence Weller. She studied Hawaiian chant and hula with the late Kumu Pohaku Nishimitsu.

You can learn more about Kim and upcoming performances at www.kimsueoka.com.