Sidebody Band
Link to Sidebody
Instagram @side.body
Sidebody is an experimental art collective based in Somerville, MA. We exist at the nexus of music, performance art, printmaking and bookmaking with a strong focus on local community engagement. Our collaborative practice was born in 2020 when we playfully picked up new musical instruments, and this ethos of starting fresh continues to guide our practice. Our songs, performances and other works always begin with a seed: someone brings a guitar riff, poem or journal scrap and together we experiment until a sonic pattern emerges. We harness this pattern together, adding structure through play and opening space for what naturally forms. This communal approach is also reflected in our membership model and our performances: we feature guest vocalists, and encourage audience members to participate through harmonizing with us or providing prompts for improvised live songs. We invite others to join us, fostering creativity and engagement in our local community.
Sidebody Band includes Lena Warnke, Martha Schnee, Hava Horowitz and Cara Giaimo
Orbiter
Orbiter is a 3-piece rock band based in Boston, MA. Orbiter features James Fair on guitar and vocals, Artem Aleksanyan on bass and vocals, and Pat Curtin on drums. Drawing influence from classic rock, punk, and shoegaze, the trio’s music focuses on a carefree attitude with a hard and driving sound layered with soaring 2-part vocals. Originally formed in Amherst, MA during their college years as a casual house band, they went on a brief hiatus and change in line-up before the three friends reformed in 2022 as the Orbiter we know today. They have released two singles, “Walk the Line” and “Never Enough”.
Zainab Sumu
Zainab Sumu is a contemporary artist based in Cambridge, MA. Originally from Sierra Leone, her work operates at the intersection of art, anthropology, and cultural identity, celebrating the resilience and heritage of African cultures. Through woven fiber sculptures, textiles, and paintings, she employs intertextuality- layering references from music, architecture, and symbolic traditions like the Sande mask and basket-making techniques- to create works that bridge past and present. Her art examines how identity, history and resilience are embedded in material culture, fostering a contemplative dialogue on humanity’s interconnectedness. Deeply autobiographical, her practice intertwines personal and collective narratives, illuminating themes of identity, cultural continuity and joy.
Colleen de Matta
Instagram @coldmatta
Colleen de Matta (she/her) is a sculpture artist and architectural designer based in Somerville and Boston. Native to Iowa, she received her B.Arch at Iowa State University in 2019 before settling in the Northeast. Her three-dimensional work primarily experiments with organic material and the body as a documentation of change over time.
Studio in the Sidebody realm off of the rehearsing space
Studio in the Sidebody realm off of the rehearsing space
VHF Studios
Jack Gruman is an installation and video artist with a BFA from the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston, MA. As an artist, his work explores the role of media in shaping our realities, and seeks to model alternative ways of seeing, being, and interacting with the world. He is inspired by traditionally “low art” formats like TV programing, haunted houses, clubbing, and queer camp, and love that it invites engagement from those who find fine art and critical theory to be inaccessible. The goals of his art are community oriented and he often create my work in collaboration with other artists. He has organized group shows at Dorchester Art Project, Artists for Humanity Epicenter, the Somerville Museum, Brookline Arts Center, and the Friend Street Project in Boston, MA. Jack is drawn to the group-show dynamic because it lets my work exist in dialogue with others, both viewers and collaborators, and our shared social and historical context.
VHF STUDIO is the artist collective I run in partnership with Logan Puleikis, a video installation artist who primarily works in social welfare advocacy and community healing work on an institutional and state level. The studio is a multipurpose space and organization, combining the professional, creative, and social spheres of art making – and our goal is to establish it as a meeting space for artists to create work together and organize for a better, shared world.
VHF STUDIO is the artist collective I run in partnership with Logan Puleikis, a video installation artist who primarily works in social welfare advocacy and community healing work on an institutional and state level. The studio is a multipurpose space and organization, combining the professional, creative, and social spheres of art making – and our goal is to establish it as a meeting space for artists to create work together and organize for a better, shared world.
Janella Mele
Janella Mele is an international multidisciplinary artist whose works and short films have been exhibited in Berlin, Mexico, Boston, the ICA, MFA, Art Basel Miami Beach, and Croatia. She studied animation at the Museum School of Fine Arts at Tufts and graduated with a BFA in 2018. Janella performed the first Self Tattoo Performance at Galería Monet in Tampico, Mexico during her artist residency and Solo Exhibition in May 2022. She works as a tattoo artist at Hidden Vibes in Cambridge using fine-line detail and dot work and loves imaginative free-handing, often creating emotive monsters and exploring surrealist abstractions.
Sri Thumati
Sri Thumati is a visual artist, print-maker and photographer; her primary focus is Cyanotype experimentation. As she explores the relationship between light and pattern, Sri uses botanicals, printed fabric, and monotypes to create a juxtaposition of colors and layers to create compelling images. Brush strokes, leaf formations, texture, paper type, exposure times and dried paint- all of these are used to enhance the visual effects of a piece to make it engaging and meaningful to the viewer. Her work is steeped in inspiration from the natural world of plants. Sri’s work has elements of emotion, whimsy, and magic, as she leaves room for her material to guide her experiments. Her fabric work is often used to make functional art and layered tapestries.
Kayla Scullin
Instagram @callmeanticipation
Kay is an interdisciplinary artist, crafter, academic, plant enthusiast, and JD candidate. Often described as a collector of degrees, she holds an MFA from Pratt Institute, an MA in Classical Art and Archeology from Kings College London, and an MA in Art Business Sotheby’s Institute. Her artistic practice draws on historical techniques, themes, and traditions while expanding and reinterpreting their original boundaries. This underlying interest expresses itself differently across mediums, phases, and series, reflecting an evolving creative dialogue with the past.
Donna Rains
website coming soon
Donna Rains, living and working in Somerville Massachusetts, creates works, both 2 and 3 dimensional, using mainly textiles, along with other media. Donna studied Painting and Fashion Design at Massachusetts College of Art in the 90’s, and currently practices Massage Therapy. After having dealt with cancer for 19 years, and metastatic cancer for the last 8, she is having a rebirth of sorts, as an artist, focusing on themes such as the human body, motherhood, and other trials, tribulations, and beauty of this earthly life.
Jason "Bunny" Correia
Jason “Bunny” Correia is a Cape Verdean-American artist based in Boston. Born in Rhode Island and raised between Florida and Massachusetts, he began his career as a contractor, gaining experience in a variety of trades while simultaneously practicing art.Jason earned his BFA from the New Hampshire Institute of Art, where he delved into traditional art practices, such as printmaking, ceramics, woodworking, sculpting, and painting. After completing his MFA in Painting from Boston University, he’s teaching as an adjunct professor and mentor all while continuing his artistic practice
Nancy Kramer
Nancy Kramer is an abstract painter whose work is based on the freedom of creative exploration. She embraces the intuitive process, making rapid decisions and relying on sensibility and aesthetics rather than a predetermined need for statement or function. By allowing her materials and tools—including expired health insurance cards, plexiglass, and metal trowels—to guide her, Nancy creates vibrant, dynamic works of art. These tools enable her to manipulate paint in ways that give each piece depth and complexity. Nancy thrives in the tension and challenge of negotiating each movement of the paint to bring every piece to resolution.Having earned a Master’s in Architecture from Rice University and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Maryland, Nancy previously practiced architecture in Cambridge and Boston, MA. She resides in Cambridge with her family and much-loved labradoodle. Outside her Somerville studio, she works in real estate (since 2004), representing clients in property sales and management. Observers of her paintings and collages note a certain energy reminiscent of the buildings, facades, and site plans from her experience with built form.
Tommy Burke
INSTAgram @yo_tommy_burke
Thomas Burke is an abstract painter originally from Las Vegas, NV. His work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles and internationally.
LiLou Fiber Art
Instagram @liloufiber
Louise loves playing with wool. She hand cards (blends) wool and spins art yarn. She makes bespoke wall hangings, pillows, and knitted things. Louise loves color, texture, and all things weird/ imperfect. She has never had a creative practice before and is forever surprised by this experience. She creates as a hobby between teaching, running a small business, and raising a kiddo.
Andrea Ballou
Andrea Ballou is the author of Other Times, Midnight, winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize (forthcoming, Persea Books, April 2025). She earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in Romance Languages & Literatures and an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Andrea has received a National Resource Fellowship, a Tinker Foundation Grant, and Artist Fellowships from the Somerville Arts Council. Andrea has taught writing, literature, and language at Stanford University, The University of Chicago, and elsewhere. She teaches poetry at the VNA in Somerville. She divides her time between Massachusetts and mid-coast Maine.
Eve Lee Schauer
INSTAGRAM @EVELEESCHAUER
Eve Lee Schauer is an artist and metal worker from Cambridge, MA. She received a BFA in sculpture from MassArt in Boston in 2018, and has been fortunate enough to have a studio space at 57 Central St. since 2020. Most of her artwork is representational sculpture, depicting animal and human figures as well as plants. She is fascinated by the rhythm of their forms, the ways they move, and the potential for movement that is evident in them even when they are still. Careful observation of these subjects is central to her process, and so is the tactile experience of manipulating materials like metal, wood, and clay. She hopes the energy of her subjects and materials and of her own hands will be felt by those who view her work.
Rico St. Paul
Instagram @the.rico.bluem
Rico St. Paul is a conceptual visual artist still developing a central focus of his creation, though his work continually revolves around the concepts of sustainability, found objects, waste, transformation, symbol, and aesthetics as a philosophy. “I am striving to get these ideas into physical words and works, but the space which they are housed around is my studio, and the neighbors are just fantastic, in all their unique selves.
I've explored, and continue to explore various mixed media for my ideas and interests, including charcoal, still life painting, drawing, live modelling, photography, photomanipulation, and floral design; all for the sake of uninhibited artistic appreciation and the philosophical exploration of truth towards that beauty, using flora, foliage, branches, and the natural world as the substance to those thoughts. Recently I have been drawn to the concept of "lineage", as an artistic connection to other inspirations through space and time, and a "continuing on/sharing" of their work, spirit, art ideology.”
I've explored, and continue to explore various mixed media for my ideas and interests, including charcoal, still life painting, drawing, live modelling, photography, photomanipulation, and floral design; all for the sake of uninhibited artistic appreciation and the philosophical exploration of truth towards that beauty, using flora, foliage, branches, and the natural world as the substance to those thoughts. Recently I have been drawn to the concept of "lineage", as an artistic connection to other inspirations through space and time, and a "continuing on/sharing" of their work, spirit, art ideology.”
Zachary Stern
website coming soon
Zachary Stern is primarily a model-maker, experimental bookbinder, and illustrator. In 3D he works mostly with everyday balsa wood implements, creating surrealistic architectural worlds populated with found miniatures. Building the environments around the people, he explores the relationship between space, memory, and self through these cross-sectioned vignettes. When bookbinding, he experimentally subverts the traditional sketchbook form. By using accordion folds & a two sided design, along with nontraditional paper materials, he looks to directly change the kinds of ideas users will have when ideating or creating. Graduating from MassArt in 2018 with a BFA in Illustration & Sculpture his studio at Central St (The Imaginarium) has become a haven for his friends and peers to come and utilize locally scavenged materials to create anything they want, proudly displayed on the wall outside the studio or within the menagerie.
