View.Point.2 is a multi-disciplinary performance event occurring on Tuesday, June 21, 2022, the Summer Solstice, at the Bradner Gardens Park in Seattle. This is the sequel event to 2021’s View.Point.

View.Point. will feature the following poets and musicians:

• Greg Bem
• Justine Chan
• Aaron Kokorowski
• Nadine Maestas
• Sarah Mangold
• Jim O’Halloran
• Skyler Reed
• Raúl Sanchez
• Stephanie Shadbolt and Jesse Snyder
• Denny Stern
• Matt Trease

The event will be recorded by the fabulous Amy Billharz. Videos will be posted on this site after.

The format for the event will involve centralized and roaming performances, utilizing much of the garden space. There will be installed art from Denny Stern within the garden as well.

In the event of rain, the event will take place underneath the garden’s primary shelter. Consider bringing a personal umbrella.

This is a community event. We are encouraging BYO. Please be respectful. Please note that due to a recent arson, there is only one portable toilet on the property.

Access the event easily via public transit. The 14 bus runs along 31st, connecting the Mt. Baker Transportation Center (adjacent to the Mt. Baker Light Rail Station) to downtown Seattle.

We acknowledge that this event is occurring on Duwamish and Coast Salish land. We are grateful for the stewardship of these tribes since time immemorial. Consider donating to Real Rent Duwamish.

This event is co-organized by Greg Bem, Jim O’Halloran, and Joyce Moty of Bradner Gardens.

Meet the Performers

Greg Bem

Greg Bem is a poet, librarian, photographer, and videographer, based in Seattle for 12 years, currently residing on Mt. Baker Ridge with his partner. His work can be found at gregbem.com.

Justine Chan

Justine Chan is a singer-songwriter and poet/writer from Chicago.

Stephanie Shadbolt and Jesse Snyder

Originally from Australia, Stephanie Shadbolt has lived and worked in Japan as well as the US. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, a Bachelor of Music from Cornish College of the Arts, and a Master of Arts degree in ethnomusicology from Monash University (Australia). Stephanie is also an active gamelan musician, and has performed both Javanese and Balinese gamelan in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. She regularly performs in the Seattle area with Gamelan Pacifica. Stephanie currently works at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.

Jesse Snyder began studying Javanese gamelan music in 1988, as a Music major at Wesleyan University, where he also studied Carnatic and Hindustani vocal music. Jesse first traveled to Solo, in Central Java, in 1997, and returned in 1999 for a yearlong Dharmasiswa scholarship to study gamelan music. During this year he had the privilege to study with many of the leading exponents of the Solonese tradition, including both faculty from Sekolah Tinggih Seni Indonesia (Indonesian College of the Arts) and freelance musicians. Back in the US, Jesse loves to encourage and guide others who share his fascination with Javanese music, both through formal group and individual instruction, and as leader of ad-hoc musical ensembles.

Aaron Kokorowski

Aaron Kokorowski remains mysterious, especially to himself. “While dreaming recently, Bob Dylan told me that he was the deer that ate all the roses in my garden. I have not been able to listen to his music the same since.”

Nadine Maestas

Nadine Antoinette Maestas is a poet’s poet and believes that the empire of the sentence is an extremely oppressive totalitarian regime. She prefers the company of poems so much that she would rather read a bad poem than a good novel, but when she is not doing poetry, Nadine loves mountain biking and trail running in dangerous and remote places in the Northwest.

Sarah Mangold

Sarah Mangold was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Kansas and Oklahoma. She received a BA from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA from San Francisco State University. Mangold is the author of Giraffes of Devotion (Kore Press, 2016), Electrical Theories of Femininity (Black Radish Books, 2015), and Household Mechanics (New Issues, 2002), which was selected by C. D. Wright for the New Issues Poetry Prize. In the foreword to Household Mechanics, Wright describes the book as “a disquieting review of indirect disclosures, internal churnings, and palpable notions, subjected to a tense and skeletal language.” Mangold is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Seattle Arts Commission. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

Jim O’Halloran

Jim graduated Magna Cum Laude from Eastern Washington University in 1976. He did post graduate study with Felix Skowronek and attended master classes with Julius Baker and James Galway in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Jim has played internationally based out of Seattle since the late 1970’s. He was the leader and composer for afro-cuban jazz bands Chela and Freezerburn. Jim has played and with Orquestra Yerbabuena, Mambo Cadillac, Expresión Latina, Global Village, Orquesta Ilusion, Latin Dimension, Orchestra Zarabanda, the Deano’s House Band, Michael Nicolella, Bochinche, and Charanga Danzon.

Jim was awarded a King County Arts Commission grant in 1998 and completed a large project involving flute, harmonica, violin, cello, trumpet, trombone, piano, organ, guitar, baby bass, electric bass, drum set, multiple Cuban and Indian percussion, berimbau, and digeridu. This project of original compositions is available on multiple platforms including Apple Music, Amazon, and Spotify.

Another trip to the studio in 2011 resulted in a pared down group, mostly trio with Dean Schmidt and Jose Martinez with Eric Verlinde on one tune and Michael Nicolella on another. This featured two of Jim’s original compositions., and is also available online.

Jim is currently appearing with Mambo Cadillac, Son Los Que Son in addition to playing with his own groups, the Jim O’Halloran Trio and Quintet including top Seattle players D’Vonne Lewis, Ehssan Karimi, Jacques Willis, Marina Albero, Bill Anschell, Dean Schmidt, Farko Dosumov, Osama Afifi, Paul Gabrielson, Ricardo Guity, Lance Lu, and Denny Stern.
Jim’s music is available on Spotify, Amazon, iTunes, and other platforms.

Skyler Reed

Skyler Reed is Sycan River Paiute, a Klamath tribal member, and is the 2000 Northwest Folklife Slam Champion. As the founder of Moved By Words, a writers advocacy project for new and developing writers, Skyler is the host of New Voices of Color, an annual showcase of new and experimental work by writers of color held at the Northwest Folklife Festival and around the Pacific Northwest and can be found at www.movedbywords.org.

Raúl Sanchez

Raúl is the former City of Redmond WA Poet Laureate. He teaches poetry both in Spanish and English through the Seattle Arts and Lectures “Writers In The Schools” and Jack Straw Cultural programs. He volunteered for PONGO Teen Writing at the Juvenile Detention Center. His second collection “When There Were No Borders” was released by Flower Song Books, McAllen Texas July 2021.  

Denny Stern

Denny Stern AKA Nicholas Denison Stern seeks freedom from sentences, rhythms in paintings, colors in drum grooves, and grapples ineluctably with the ineffable.

Matt Trease

Matt Trease is an artist and astrologer living on the Duwamish ancestral homeland in Tukwila, WA, where he serves on the board of the Cascadia Poetics Lab, co-curates the Margin Shift reading series, and teaches at Hugo House. His poems have recently appeared in small po[r]tions, WordLitZine, Phoebe, Fact-Simile, Hotel Amerika, Juked (among others), and in the anthologies, Shake the Tree Vol 3 (Brightly Press, 2018), Make It True Meets Medusario (Pleasure Boat Studios, 2019) and Cascadian Zen (Forthcoming 2023). He is the author of the chapbook Later Heaven: Production Cycles (busylittle1way designs, 2013).