Goshen Area artists

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“My creative medium at the moment is styling and

“My creative medium at the moment is styling and photography. My job with Edible Michiana is recipe editor, so I do some writing, but I wouldn’t say it’s my first skill.

I would say my style is focused on what feels natural. That goes hand in hand with the visuals of my photography, how I’m editing my photos, but then also my subject matter is always food and nature and gardening. It’s all kind of encompassing of the natural world.

The thing I’m most proud of is how I’ve been able to ebb and flow my business to fit within what’s going on in my personal life. For seven years I did wedding photography, and I loved it when I was doing that. But when I started having my kids and my interests started to change, I kind of changed my business along with that instead of feeling stuck in a place that wasn’t bringing me joy any more. I feel really proud of my ability to say no. I’m also very proud that I could find a way to still do what I love even when those shifts were happening. I feel like a lot of times, creatives or people with creative jobs can hit a point in their career where it’s harder to keep going, and they just stop.

I have always felt supported no matter which direction I was going. I feel like Goshen is a really special place to live; I just think everybody knows how hard it is to have a creative job. Whenever someone tries something new or starts up their creative business, the whole community supports them - shares their work online or buys their work as gifts for other people - and I think that’s really special. I think that’s one wonderful thing about how small Goshen is: We know who all of the creative artists are in Goshen, so it’s easy to show our support. I have really felt that as an artist in town. Everybody is really supportive. ”

Name: Ashley Swartzendruber
Medium: Styling and Photography
Instagram: instagram.com/mywildhaven
Website: mywildhaven.com

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“My artistic medium is probably best defined as

“My artistic medium is probably best defined as general theatre artist. I’ve worn a lot of different hats doing theatre, but it’s definitely the art form I’m the most involved with.

One of my favorite things is community theatre, and it’s because of the community aspect. I know a lot of people are involved with theatre because they love performing or they love some certain aspect like design. But I love getting groups of people together from a community and putting on an art. Theatre is unique in the way that you can’t really do it without collaboration. Even a one-person show has somebody behind the scenes.

I didn’t get involved with theatre until I was in the 10th grade. I auditioned because my best friend was going to audition for the musical, and I was like, ‘Well, I’ll audition, too.’ And then I fell in love with performing in that way. Through doing that, I discovered an aptitude for choreography.

The year after I graduated high school, during my freshman year of college at IUSB, I was supposed to come back and choreograph a song or two. But then the director decided in the midst of that that she could not direct and choreograph it both herself, so I ended up choreographing the entire musical mysef. It was my first time getting to choreograph an entire musical. I was 19 years old, and at the time that was such a big deal to me. The choir director was so impressed with what I had done with the musical that she had asked me to choreograph their spring concert. I did, and I’ve actually choreographed that concert every year since then.

I love Goshen, and one of the things I really love about Goshen is how many community-oriented people there are here. I think that’s what makes the arts here so successful: There are so many people who are in this one spot who are all committed to either providing spaces for people to perform or committed to supporting those spaces or supporting artists. There’s just a bunch of people here who want to live in a vibrant community, and I think all of those people working together is what makes Goshen so special for artists here.”

Name: Matthew Manley
Medium: Theatre

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“For sure, my art medium is ice. I’m not artis

“For sure, my art medium is ice. I’m not artistic in any way for anything else. I’m pretty new at it, so I’m still learning my style. I would say I love to ice carve animals. That’s not really a style, but something I like to do.

At this exact time last year, I was competing with three other guys up in Alaska for the World Ice Art competition. It was pretty great. We didn’t place, but I was super proud of myself for how hard I worked. Being able to get there was a really good time. I also learned a ton.

Greg Beachey talked me into it one Downtown South Bend Art Beat. It was in the middle of summer. He was like, ‘Here, come carve something random.’ From there, he talked me into going to Shipshewana. All the other members of the Michiana Ice Carvers Association are awesome and helpful. They’ve talked me into getting more tools and doing more events.

This community really loves the Fire and Ice Festival and I think it’s cool that Goshen really excels at the art scene, because not a lot of other towns necessarily do.”

Name: Samantha Moore
Medium: Ice Carving

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“My medium kind of fluctuates depending on my mo

“My medium kind of fluctuates depending on my mood. I guess I’m typically known as a writer, if I am known at all. As a creative person, I feel compelled to work that out just constantly, whatever I’m doing.

I don’t play video games. I don’t work well within some sort of realm that someone else has created. I don’t like to manipulate; I like to create. Oftentimes that’s with words, with poetry, but also with music. I’m just kind of obsessed with sound, but that kind of depends on what I’m feeling at the time, too. I really love visual art as well. I’m not as talented in that area, but I do like to mess around with it. Whether or not anyone sees what I do is not nearly as important as just me doing something.

I teach at Goshen High School. This year is a bit different than normal because of the pandemic, so right now I’m actually one of the online teachers. Under normal circumstances, I teach literature, composition, and rhetoric, mostly to high school seniors going into college. I teach both college prep courses and also actual college courses through Indiana University. I love working with people at that age, right as they’re on the cusp of getting out into their own and really discovering who they are and how they function, especially as learners.

Starting at about the time I was 15 up until I was in my early 30s, I spent a lot of time onstage in lots of different bands, traveling all over doing that kind of thing. Those were wonderful moments. To have everything come together where it seems as though everybody in the room - regardless of whether they’re on the stage or not - is participating. Everybody is somehow contributing to that moment. I don’t know what you would want to call it. ‘Shared autonomy,’ maybe? Like you’re all just working as one unit. Everybody has a role, even if you can’t articulate what it is. I absolutely love those moments. (continued in comments)

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“My medium is words, for sure. My style is eclec

“My medium is words, for sure. My style is eclectic. I love trying out new genres. I have published in creative nonfiction and memoir, and I’ve published in scholarly writing. Those are the main two areas that I’ve published in, but I love, love, love writing in all different types of genres. What I love most are my more experimental pieces - pieces that are kind of trying to find words and images for things that feel like they were so hard there are no words for them. I also love writing in humor.

I teach at Goshen College. Much like I write in a lot of different genres, I love to teach in a lot of different genres. So I teach a lot of writing. I teach memoir, fiction, composition, and comics and graphic novels. I teach women’s and gender studies. Just a lot of writing, but also literature. American literature, especially.

I write about some hard stuff sometimes. My husband and I, our very first son was stillborn. As a writer, I just wrote my way through that. That was my best form of therapy. Some of the stuff I ended up publishing because it gave me a sense of, ‘OK, I know I’m not alone in this, and this needs to be in the world.’ They’re still semi-humorous - I think dark humor definitely is important. I had to remind people at the beginning, ‘It’s OK to laugh. There are parts of this that are funny.’

I love the Goshen creative community. I love that Goshen has pushed me to be a different type of writer than I might have been. There are so many creatives around here and so many cool events around here. It’s a small enough community that you get to know people and people say, ‘Oh, you’re a writer, come to my reading.’ Goshen is so welcoming and so encouraging and so artsy. I’m an introvert at heart, but Goshen has pushed me - for the sake of a friend who’s having a reading, or something like that - to get out of my comfort zone. I think I’ve become a different and more versatile writer than I might’ve been in another place if I was just left to my own devices, just me and my coffee and my computer.”

Name: Jessica Baldanzi
Medium: Writing
Facebook: https://bit.ly/3bbBcj2
Website: https://bit.ly/3av8U3Y

“For Brides of Neptune, mostly I’m a vocalist.

“For Brides of Neptune, mostly I’m a vocalist. I do some of the lead vocals, but mostly I do harmonizing, which I really enjoy. Then I do some silly background folksy percussion, and I’ve been playing more and more acoustic and electric guitar in our songs as well. That’s been really great because it’s pushed me to get better.

With Brides of Neptune, I call the music irreverent folk. It’s folk rock music. We take folk songs and usually make them about something else. We have lots of themes that are biblically rooted.

What I really like about our band is that people don’t really know quite how to take it. They’re like, ‘Are they being serious? Are they being tongue in cheek? Is it both?’ I think I’ve never heard another band quite like Brides of Neptune.

We were supposed to open for Steel Wheels right when the pandemic hit. We didn’t get to do it, but even the fact that we were going to do that felt really, really special.

Generally, I’ve just been really thankful that anyone in our community has any interest in us at all. We just always have support.

I think Goshen is such a supportive community in so many ways, particularly in the arts. I don’t feel a sense of competition or anything like that. It’s been nothing but very nourishing and nurturing and supportive. I think that’s kind of true of Goshen in general: If people see you doing something that you are passionate about, then they are going to support it. I’ve felt that the whole time.”

Name: Erin Floyd
Medium: Music
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bridesofneptune
Website: https://bridesofneptune.bandcamp.com/

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