Team | Sky Stage

Artist Heather Theresa Clark

Heather Theresa Clark utilizes art, architecture, and public interventions to catalyze built environments that power themselves, cleanse themselves, transform waste, provide wildlife habitat, produce food, and enhance the lives of people. Through her art, she demonstrates how present reality is not a given and can be crafted to make life more fulfilling. As founder of Biome Studio, art is her tool to shift the paradigm of everyday life.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Digital Structures

Digital Structures is a research group at MIT working at the interface of architecture, structural engineering, and computation. They focus on the synthetic integration of creative and technical goals in the design and fabrication of buildings, bridges, and other large-scale structures. Digital Structures is particularly interested in how digital techniques and tools can play an unexpected, collaborative role in these processes.

Frederick Arts Council

The Frederick Arts Council serves as the umbrella arts organization for Frederick County, Maryland. Frederick Arts Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that builds a better community through arts programs, services, activities, and events. Their purpose is to foster an environment where the arts may flourish in their community through grants and scholarships, arts advocacy, and links to essential resources.

Caitlin Mueller

Caitlin Mueller is an academic who works at the intersection of architecture and structural engineering. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Architecture and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, in the Building Technology Program, where she leads the Digital Structures research group. Professor Mueller earned a PhD in Building Technology from MIT, a SM in Computation for Design and Optimization from MIT, a MS in Structural Engineering from Stanford University, and a BS in Architecture from MIT.

Kam-Ming Mark Tam

Kam-Ming Mark Tam is a researcher broadly engaged with computational design in architecture, who is currently an Instructor at the Singapore University of Technology (SUTD), and a Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) through the MIT-SUTD Graduate Fellows Program. With a research repertoire that encompasses architectural, structural, and urban design and research, Tam is currently investigating computational methods for geometric and topological design space exploration, and experimenting with novel robotic-enabled and stress-based additive manufacturing techniques for creating performative 3D-printed artifacts.

AmeriCorps

A STAR! in Western Maryland is a diverse rural AmeriCorps program, which engages members in full time, part time, reduced part time and education award only direct service opportunities meeting the pressing issues identified within the four-county region.

Anthony Owens Remodeling and Repair

Anthony Owens Remodeling and Repair in Frederick, Maryland, provides high-quality home improvement services, including painting, carpentry, tile floors, roof repairs, total home renovations, and much more. But they aren’t all business. They also understand the importance of community. Giving back to the area they live in is an important aspect of who they are and why they are in business. They invest in their local area through various charitable events and organizations as well as through their artwork.

Furbish

Furbish specializes in green roofs, green walls, and living systems. With a driving passion for innovation and a deep commitment to sustainability, they provide systems that utilize nature’s processes to create synergy between the built environment and its inhabitants. Furbish is dedicated to maximizing asset value via ecosystem services.

Rockwell Construction

Rockwell Construction Co., Inc. is located in Mercersburg, PA. They are an award winning family owned and operated, General Construction Company with over 50 years of experience in Commercial, Residential and Design-Build Projects. They are members of the Associated Builders and Contractors organization (ABC) and they recently received ABC’s prestigious Excellence in Construction Award for restoring the Historic Frederick County Visitors Center.

ADTEK Engineers

ADTEK Engineers, Inc. (ADTEK), founded in 1987, is a consulting firm with more than 50 design professionals firm-wide. ADTEK has offices in VA, MD, and MI, and specializes in offering broad-spectrum civil engineering, structural base building design, and specialty engineering services. Their design team embraces the application of sustainable design concepts, and they are committed to understanding the environmental consequences of their design and implementing conservation oriented technologies and materials.

Parlights

Parlights Theatrical Lighting and Rigging is a licensed stage equipment contractor and supplier specializing in the design and installation of theatrical lighting and rigging systems throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. Parlights maintains a showroom and boxed-goods sales department, as well as a service and repair department. Parlights has assembled a team of specialists from both the theatrical and construction communities to design, specify, and install complete theatre systems for new construction and renovation projects.

Provident Electric

Established in 2002, Provident Electric has grown into one of the most trusted electrical contractors in the MD/DC/VA areas for both residential and commercial contracting. Frederick Magazine’s ‘Best of Frederick’ awarded Provident Electric ‘Best Electrician’ from 2011 – 2015. Provident Electric is known for its philanthropic activities in the community.

Fountainhead Irrigation

Fountainhead Irrigation is a family owned and operated business serving Maryland, Virginia and DC since 2001 from locations in Frederick, MD and Chantilly, VA. They are the premier irrigation and lighting experts in the metropolitan area. They realize you have many choices for your irrigation and lighting services and that is why Fountainhead Irrigation has worked hard to to build their reputation based upon understanding your goals and providing quality results that will exceed your expectations.

Cable Concepts

Let Cable Concepts help you with your next cable railing project. Clean Stainless Steel Railing, affordable aluminum and vinyl or composite- wrapped posts, Cable Concepts has what you need to install the deck your neighbors will envy. Cable Concepts offers cable railing systems that are beautiful, versatile, strong and sustainable.

Cory Vinyard

Cory Vinyard is a woodworker and designer specializing in one of a
kind projects from custom made tools for artists to consulting/problem
solving and fabricating original works. A globe trotter who hails from
Potsdam, New York.

David Andrew Snyder

A Builder and Entrepreneur, focused on earth and social conscious projects, based in Frederick Maryland.

Luc Fiedler

Luc resides in Mt. Airy, Maryland and is the owner of Elf Studios, specializing in metal fabrication and casting. He is a sculptor who works in metal, wood, and stone and received his MFA from University of California, Santa Barbara. Luc’s favorite medium is bronze casting. His work has been shown in Maryland, Philadelphia, Seattle, West Virginia, California, and Virginia totaling over 50 national, state, and regional exhibitions. While his primary focus is his own sculpture, he also works with other artists on a variety of projects ranging from replications to building projects for design companies.

Peter Wechsler

Peter Wechsler lives with his family in Boonsboro, MD. He studied temple carpentry in Japan and specializes in traditional Japanese style woodworking. He has built a number of projects including a tea house, a pavilion for the Korean ambassador’s residence, and a variety of garden structures such as gates, fences, and bridges.

Chris VanDoren

Christopher VanDoren is an award-winning sculptor, interactive multimedia installation artist, and experimental musician. He studied metal working and sculpture at the Pratt Institute and has exhibited work in several juried gallery exhibitions in New York City as well at the National Museum of the American Indian. Chris is the founder of VulcanMADE, a small works metal fabrication shop; VulcanMADE serves artists, television and theater, businesses, and individuals for all things metal.

Peter Stockmaster

Peter Stockmaster is a carpenter and handyman from Harpers Ferry, WV. Peter volunteered his services and single handedly water sealed the bleachers and the sculpture wood.

Maya Ragazzo

Maya Mayer Ragazzo was raised in Los Angeles, California, and has since moved to Baltimore, Maryland, receiving her BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she studied sculpture, photography, and art history. Her current work highlights people and objects that go unnoticed, working to revise history from a more justified perspective. Ragazzo first debuted her work at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2012, and has since group curated and shown in exhibitions in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and South Korea.

Andrea Zona

Andrea Baker holds a degree in Art History and Archaeology from Hood College where she graduated in 2013. Since then she has worked as an archaeologist and served a term of service as an AmeriCorps Volunteer Maryland Coordinator with the Asian American Center of Frederick. Andrea serves the community through making Sky Stage come alive by booking artists, accepting community feedback to implement in program/event planning, and educational development focusing on the STEAM initiative for youth K-12 of Title I Frederick County public schools through the use of Sky Stage.

Besan Z. Khamis

Besan Z. Khamis (b. San Francisco, 1994) is a Palestinian-American artist living in Baltimore, where received his BFA in interdisciplinary sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art. His work consists of paintings, sculptures, performances, and musical compositions. He is currently working on multiple musical collaborations, and on a series of theatrical art performances called Bird’s Eye View of the Occupation. Concerned about the condition of the Palestinian people, Besan is focusing on the creation of a political artists’ movement that specifically addresses Palestinian grievances.

Jacob Warrenfeltz

Jacob Warrenfeltz is an illustrator and musician in the Appalachian region of Maryland. He is a seminal member of Washington’s D.C. Conspiracy, an underground comics collective. His artwork can be see on the cover and interior of Aesop Awards winning and Eisner Awards Nominee Trickster: Native American Tales, N.Y. Times Best Seller Fubar 2: Empire of the Rising Dead, and local district albums like The Franchise’s debut album, To The Rescue! He’s currently the bassist for D.C. area band Crooks & Crows.

Emily Holland

Emily Holland, FAC Associate: Emily is a 2014 graduate of the University of Chicago, where she majored in English. She has completed journalism internships at the Frederick Gorilla and The New Republic, and spent a year after college as an AmeriCorps volunteer literacy tutor in a DC Title I elementary school. She has a varied arts background in dance (ballet) and music (piano and voice), and she also writes fiction.

Sasha Carrera

Sasha Carrera is an actor, writer, producer and former director of the Corita Art Center in Los Angeles. After heading up the theatre/dance component for Artomatic in May, Sasha is excited to reprise the role for Sky Stage. As an AEMS (Arts Education in Maryland Schools) Advisory Board member, Sasha expects Sky Stage will be a fantastic venue for highlighting the AEMS work already being done in Frederick schools and will inspire more arts integration in classrooms throughout the county.

Zarmina Warrenfeltz

Zarmina Warrenfeltz is a marketing professional in Frederick, MD. She earned her bachelor’s degree from George Mason University’s School of Business. With over a decade of experience, she has worked with both business to business and business to consumer organizations in the Washington metropolitan area with their lead generation, digital advertisement and print marketing. She lives downtown with her husband and tiny dog.

Renaud Danhaive

Renaud Danhaive is a PhD student in Building Technology at MIT, within the Digital Structures research group. Driven by his belief in creative and inclusive architectural design, he was trained as an architect and an engineer during his undergraduate studies at the Free University of Brussels where he received the highest honors upon graduation. Passionate about the use of computation to develop design methods enabling the exploration of the structure-architecture interface, he investigated the integration of parametric modelling and interactive evolutionary optimization for his M.Eng. thesis.

Maura Parrott

Maura Parrott trained in art history with an MA from George Washington University, and early work in collections research and documentation for the Phillips Collection and National Gallery of Art. She has served on the Rockville, MD Cultural Arts Commission, the Las Vegas Arts Commission and the Southern Nevada team of the Kennedy Center’s Any Given Child initiative toward arts access and integration in K-8 education. Maura particularly enjoys community collaborations on all incarnations of art in public spaces.

Bryce Cox

Bryce Cox has been a Frederick County native for 30+ years and jumped at the chance to bring the truss design expertise of Shelter Systems Limited to this creative project.