Born to a family of factory workers and raised in front of a television in Detroit, Michigan, Dupuy earned an associate degree, two simultaneous honors bachelor’s degrees, a Masters in Classical Liberal Arts at St. John’s College, and an MFA in Fiction at Washington University in St. Louis; since that time he has been teaching fiction and writing courses, first at Washington University in St. Louis and, most recently, in Astana, Kazakhstan, at Nazarbayev University, where he has developed over five new creative writing courses–the first ever offered in the country in English–and has been nominated for six teaching awards, winning one for Overall Teaching Excellence. He is the co-founder and the fiction editor for the multilingual literary journal Angime.

Dupuy’s fiction is heavily influenced by music, film, pop culture, television, commercials,  his education in classics, philosophy, literature, and his time in the workforce as a dishwasher, Harley Davidson mechanic, golf caddie, bartender, film critic for public radio, journalist, DJ, and the four and a half years he served in the US Marine Corps infantry–traveling to over twenty-five countries, during which he was distinguished with the Marine’s highest non-combat award and a certificate of commendation for service.

His work has been published in Signal to Noise and The Santa Fe Reporter, and he has contributed writing to separate projects by local St. Louis artists Jose Garza, Michael Powell, and Serhii Chrucky. His novel in progress has been read publicly in four countries, awarded a $10,000 Seed Grant, two retreats at Breadloaf, and residencies at The Edward Albee Foundation and NES in Iceland, where he has spent the ninety days. During his residency he has completed a short story currently out for consideration titled “And the Night Turned In,” along with completing five chapters which conclude the first half of his novel in progress Ipsum Esse. His work and readings at NES has been invaluable, immersed in a community of like-minded passionate artists, beautiful landscape and solitude needed for continued progress. 

You can follow and receive updates at: www.jcddupuy.com & https://www.instagram.com/jcddupuy

Music Producer/Film Director

After 20 years working in the field of music production, Bart has spent over 10 years working with young people experiencing chronic physical and mental health issues. Bart has spent the last two years specifically practicing therapy with young people, helping them to discover a path through their mental health issues. At the NES artist residency, Bart has created a number of films/soundtracks to raise awareness of mental health issues, using themes of rhythm and changing contextual imagery to depict our relationship with unhelpful thought patterns, rumination and often subconscious self-judgement, learned through messages received from our environment, since birth. You can see more of Bart’s work at https://www.youtube.com/@BartElsmore and https://www.instagram.com/milleniumhut/

Emily is an early career artist and musician from London. She uses a variety of mediums to explore strange and unknown worlds, such as that of the past, future, or alien, and creates fictions to consider the possibilities within them. She also enjoys taking inspiration from the landscape and natural materials.

In her music, she likes to explore the personal subjective world; the world that is unstable; that constantly oscillates between the dream and physical world, the world of past and future and the within and without of oneself. You can see more of Emily’s work at https://www.instagram.com/emily.b.b/

Virginia San Fratello is an architect, artist, and educator. She is Chair of the Department of Design at San José State University in Silicon Valley but is on sabbatical this spring and has chosen to spend it in Greenland and Iceland, exploring the Arctic landscape in search of new and ancient materials and ways of building and being. 

She is the co-author of Printing Architecture: Innovative Recipes for 3D Printing, a book that reexamines the building process from the bottom up and offers illuminating case studies for 3D printing with novel materials like chardonnay grape skins, salt, and rubber tires. She is a partner in Emerging Objects, a creatively driven, 3D Printing MAKE-tank specializing in innovations in 3D printing, and Rael San Fratello, an experimental architecture studio in Oakland, CA.  

Her work is included in the permanent collections of MoMA, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Art Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, SFMOMA, the Albuquerque Museum, the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai, LACMA, and the Design Museum in London.
Websites and Social Media:

Rael San Fratello

Emerging Objects IG @vasfsf 

Nick Broad is a journalist, author, activist and campaigner who co-founded and directs The Busking Project (busk.co), the world’s largest community of street performers. He is now writing a book on the cultural impact of street performance. nickbroad.com

‘I am a graphic and printmaking artist focusing on phenomena of landscape. In wintertime there can be seen special formations, when parts are covered in snow whilst other sections lay bare. I extract these forms and set them into the white of the paper where snow and sky cannot be distinguished anymore. The mountain is pending. It has to be reconstructed in the viewer´s eye’.

www.elkeschweigart.de

Born and raised in Pittsburgh PA. Works and lives in Los Angeles, CA.

I strive to illuminate the profound interplay between texture, solitude, vulnerability, and the cosmic connection that binds us to the vastness of the ocean and the universe.

Texture, for me, is a language of emotions. It’s the tactile brushstroke, the roughness of weathered materials, and the smoothness of the untouched canvas that convey the essence of our experiences. It’s through texture that I invite viewers to immerse themselves in the tangible layers of existence, to feel the depth of solitude and vulnerability that defines our human condition.

Solitude, often misconstrued as isolation, is, in fact, a space for introspection and self-discovery. In my work, I seek to capture the quiet moments when we confront our own vulnerabilities, when we acknowledge the fragility of our existence. Solitude becomes a canvas upon which we paint our truest selves, exposing our vulnerabilities as we reach out to the cosmos for connection.

The cosmic and oceanic motifs in my art symbolize the infinite and the eternal. They remind us that, despite our vulnerability and solitude, we are part of something greater. The ocean, with its rhythmic tides, mirrors our emotional ebbs and flows, while the cosmos, with its stars and galaxies, beckons us to explore the boundless possibilities within and beyond ourselves.

Through my art, I hope to evoke a sense of wonder and contemplation, inviting viewers to embark on their own inner journeys. It is my belief that in embracing our vulnerability and seeking connection with the cosmic ocean of existence, we find not only solace but also the profound realization that, like stars in the night sky, we are all connected, and our vulnerabilities are the threads that weave the tapestry of the human experience.
My website is www.catherinebaumhauer.com and Instagram @catbstudio 

Born in Limoilou, Joé Côté-R moved from the suburb of Atontarégué, Kebec (Quebec) to Hochelaga to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in sculpture at Concordia University.

Joé’s works, which employ ever-changing mediums, bear witness to our interactions with the environment, with beings, and with materials. Through the various contemplations reflected in his works, one finds intertwined actions and political directions. Raising questions about our ways of functioning, interacting, and communicating. Joé’s work pierces through the methods by which things are constructed, how they fall, and what benefits these movements yield. It questions the writing of our collective history.

His undisciplined work allows the collagist from Hochelaga to extract creationism™ from the act of creation. Composing a populist art aiming to be a vantage point, a fixed stopping place, alone or together, to always look at the landscape with a fresh perspective. https://www.instagram.com/joe.c_r/

I’ve come here to NES for a second time. 

In September 2023, I worked with charcoal and other black-white materials with the theme of the power of movements of lines. This time I’ve been so charmed by the nearly floating atmosphere of the wintry landscape. For it is the season between winter and spring: it is snow and ice, the melting of snow begins, grass and rocks are appearing again. The chain of mountains, the “fells” in Icelandic, the Westfjord-coast, behind the sea, between sea and sky, it all seems to float. 

Nearly mystical this changing of light on these snowy landscapes, transparent, shining… between surreal and real, between sky and earth. Silence. Wide endlessness! It makes a special sound I feel in my soul…

So I took out the dry pastel sticks to try to give this inner and outer magic of flying an expression that could be adequate. Most of these drawings are not bigger than 15 cm x 40 cm. 

Now with the snow storms the world turns more closed, reduced, mysterious, the roaring sound of the blizzard…everyday weather changes here! Things and thoughts are reduced to the elemental extract of life. 

www.christiane-liedtke.de & https://www.instagram.com/liedtkechristiane/

I mainly create ceramic jewelry and small objects, but currently I am thinking about how the colorful and visually noisy urban environment in Pakistan causes some level of anxiety in residents because they lack empty visual and mental space to think. I have been working on this project to create 2D designs for Pakistani textile surfaces which could create some sense of calmness, visual depth and empty perspectives in order to bring some serenity and calmness to our environment. Since I was born and lived my entire life in visually rich Pakistan, I needed to learn the language of real minimalism and serenity. I came to Skagastrond to physically exist in an open space to cleanse my visual palette.

In addition to that, impressed by looking at the thin black electricity poles in white snowy landscape on the way to Blondous, I decided to construct delicate small ceramic sculptural objects.

https://shaziaumbreenmirza.blogspot.com

https://www.facebook.com/Yangxueta

https://www.instagram.com/shazia.u.mirza/

I am not the first to say that the arts is one of the purest records of our history, sociology and mythology; it is a glimpse into the truth of the past and often – at its greatest, a glimmer of the future. As bias, division, and indoctrination carve holes into our reality on a macro and micro level, it is art that continues to weave an honest fabric that will perhaps one day be the binding force we need.In the last few years, as my work began to define itself to me, I realized that my storytelling serves a provisional function of offering options, until, I hope, those options become a reality.

I am a playwright, screenwriter and director from New York City and within all these mediums devote myself to the investigation of the soft underbelly of human experience, my work often has a utopian ideology at its backbone, because well, we must imagine it until it becomes true. 

While at NES I have mainly focused on writing a deeply personal feature film that is largely autobiographical – a very new kind of project for me.  My two months here have been filled with honest self-reflection and acrobatic fantasizing, a maddeningly wonderful dichotomy to work from .  As with all my other work, my new piece attempts to stand up to prescribed societal norms and expectations, especially those relating to women (self-identifying and defining), and offer up alternatives. 

My wish and dream for American (and international) arts is a release of perfection, of a “final product”, of an ideal and instead to accept global permission to deep dive into process, investigation, and the singular beauty of experimentation. NES has provided beautiful time and space for just that. https://www.instagram.com/kotryna________/

Sandra Kruisbrink is a visual artist from the Netherlands, her main focus is drawing but she often integrates printmaking and photography in her drawings.

Her works on paper appear light and open, yet they are highly complex and the product of an extremely labour-intensive process.

She works precisely, drawing the finest of lines, and her interest in craftsmanship is evident. Her inspiration is drawn from nature; mountains and trees are predominant in her recent work.

Two years ago she was in Iceland for the first time, for a residency at the Fishfactory in Stöðvarfjörður. Since then, she has continued to long for the silence and emptiness of the Icelandic landscape, which has been a  is a big inspiration.

Here in Skagaströnd the main subject of her drawings is the Spákonufell mountain and its various appearances.

https://www.instagram.com/sandrakruisbrink

www.sandrakruisbrink.com

Margot Stage is an eclectic artist who uses a variety of methods and materials in response to what she sees around her. At NES she is focusing on drawing, both the landscape and the Icelandic alphabet soup! You can see more of Margot’s work on her website https://margotstage.com/

In my artistic practice, I focus on exploring the relationship between women and nature, seeking to express their strength and determination through the symbolism of the natural world. My current project, which I am pursuing at the NES artist residency, titled “Iceland is a Woman,” delves into this interconnected dynamic, portraying women as an integral part of nature, reflecting their strength, beauty, and independence. This project is holistic, combining not only visual art but also elements of a healthy lifestyle and harmony with nature. This encompasses both the conditions of nature and the actions I undertake during the project. My inspiration stems from personal experiences seeking strength and balance in Iceland. It is a country that captivates not only with its landscapes but also offers the opportunity to explore various health practices, such as proper diet, regular running, cold exposure, cryotherapy, meditation, and energy work. All these elements influence my creative processes and constitute an integral part of my artistic life in Iceland.

https://www.instagram.com/arpena.art/

Lito Apostolakou is a visual artist based in London UK, working with drawing, moving image and installation. Her work investigates the architecture of remembered space, where the real and the fictional merge creating uncertain, often fragile narratives. She is currently developing an installation on the theme of hypnagogia, the state between wakefulness and sleep – an in-between space, where it is possible to dream without losing consciousness.

Drawn to NES by the promise of snow, solitude and darkness, Lito is filming the interplay of ice and water at the seafront of Skagaströd, and also capturing sounds with a field recorder and hydrophone. She is exploring ways of merging this visual and audio material with her drawings to create an immersive dreamscape installation, perhaps a Museum of Sleep.

See more of her work on www.litoapostolakou.com and her Instagram @inklinks

Linda Saul is a painter working in mixed water-based media and collage.

She produces semi-abstract and highly textured mixed media paintings focused on the landscape in its varieties – urban, rural, coastal and sometimes wild. She is particularly interested in how the landscape changes with the passage of time – not just seasonal change but how the landscape is shaped by human intervention, environmental forces, climate change and nature’s adaptations. 

Linda is currently working on a body of work based on her residencies at NES and road trips around Iceland for a major exhibition in London in October 2024. You can find more of Linda’s work at https://lindasaul.co.uk/ and https://www.instagram.com/linda.m.saul

Jackson Gearing is a classical composer from Denver, Colorado, currently working on writing a symphony during his one month stay at the NES Artist Residency. He has previously written various chamber pieces for wind instruments, large brass ensemble music, and music for wind ensemble and orchestra. He also frequently conducts his larger ensemble music, such as Meditations for Brass and River, the latter winning an “Outstanding Performance of a Student Composition” award from the Lamont School of Music in June 2023. This residency follows his first orchestral premiere of “Moskstraumen,” an 8-minute piece performed by the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in Bulgaria.

You can listen to Jackson’s work at jacksongearingmusic.com and https://www.facebook.com/jacksongearing/ 

Clay Mohrman is a multi-disciplinary lighting artist out of Burlington, VT. In 2017, he founded Clay Mohr Lighting, as a way to develop unique lighting sculptures using LED lighting and natural materials for indoor and outdoor spaces. His work lies at the intersection between nature, lighting and emotion. Clay uses lighting as a primary medium because of its ability to emphasize, connect and evoke emotions. He believes that integrating pieces of the natural world in artwork helps us start a dialogue with ourselves regarding our environment, our community and our connection with the world. https://www.claymohrlighting.com/ @claymohrlighting