StreetCry Board of Directors
ROB STUPAY President. Rob has been an architect, a visual artist, a designer, a programmer, and a technical writer. As a performer, he has worked with Trajal Harrell Dance Style, KJ Holmes, 600 Highwaymen, and Reza Abdoh. He has taught at the Boston Architecture Center, lectured at RMIT, and been a visiting critic at Pratt and City College. He has a Master’s degree in Architecture from MIT. He currently works for the Ethereum Foundation and is on the curatorial board for an art exhibit at NASA’s Biocene conference.
ELISE BERNHARDT has worked in the non-profit sector for over 3 decades. Her experiences include: Founder of Dancing in the Streets and producer of numerous site-specific performances; Executive Director of The Kitchen; CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Culture; Executive Director of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and numerous other roles as a curator, artistic director and consultant. Bernhardt started Fleur Elise Bkln, a floral design company focused on Team Building through Floral Design Workshops. She is also Director of Jerusalem International Fellows: A Cultural Residency Program. She is on the board of Hook Arts Media.
SANDOR ELLIX KATZ is a fermentation revivalist. He is the author of five books: Wild Fermentation; The Art of Fermentation; The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved; Fermentation as Metaphor; and his latest, Fermentation Journeys. Sandor’s books, along with the hundreds of fermentation workshops he has taught around the world, have helped to catalyze a broad revival of the fermentation arts. Sandor seeks to expand the context for thinking about fermentation beyond its food and beverage applications to its profound role in the generation, maintenance, and evolution of life, and its continuing metaphorical and creative power. A self-taught experimentalist who lives in rural Tennessee, the New York Times calls him “one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene” and the BBC says “his teachings and writings on fermentation have changed lives around the world." Sandor is the recipient of a James Beard award and other honors. You can learn more at his website www.wildfermentation.com.
NEIL GOLDBERG makes video, photo, mixed media, and performance work about embodiment, sensing, mortality, and the everyday. Exhibitions include: the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, the Hammer Museum. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He teaches at the Yale School of Art and has been resident faculty at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and is a mentor with Queer|Art|Mentorship. neilgoldberg.com
SEAN MEEHAN, ESQ., is a drummer who works in contemporary and experimental music. He received a 2020 Grants to Artists Award in Music/Sound from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Sean served on the board of ABC No Rio, a center for art and activism in New York City from 2001-2008. He holds a Master’s degree in Urban Planning and practices as a volunteer tenant lawyer. mee-han.com
ANNIE RACHELE LANZILLOTTO, Poet, performance-artist, author, songwriter, cantastoria, pluralist by nature. Inspired by the demos, cacophonous opera of pushcart peddler street cries, the roots of theater in the agora, singing the story in the piazza. Lanzillotto's stories rivet attention and ignite audience interaction. Author of the books: "Whaddyacall the Wind?" "L is for Lion" "Schistsong," "Hard Candy" and "Pitch Roll Yaw." Podcasts as "Annie's Story Cave." annielanzillotto.com
Downtown NYC performance-artist icon Salley May led the spiritual charge of the Founding Board. Here she is pictured with CityLore’s POEMobile, in Annie Lanzillotto’s 2013 “Blue Mailbox Book Tour.” Photo: Lisa Festa.
Creation Story
StreetCry was incorporated in New York State on the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, 7/16/2018. Thanks to the guidance of Neil Goldberg, Sandor Katz, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, and K&L Gates, LLP: Holly D. Hatfield, and Hilda Li. Founding Board Members were: Emily Jordan Agnes Kunkel, Annie Lanzillotto, Audrey Kindred, Salley May. Soon after incorporation, Ellynne Skove joined the Board of Directors.
INTERNS
Anastasia Hristidis is Street Cry's 2023 intern. She came to us in collaboration with The Loft Recording Studios in Bronxville, New York. Anastasia is a singer-songwriter, actor, filmmaker, artist and writer. She graduated cum laude from Barnard College, Columbia University with a B.A. in Film & Media Studies, and concentrations in Music and Acting. She explores healing and transcendent acts of creation. Her work focuses on mental illness and the complexity of female trauma, pain and power. Her music, which she releases as Mystery Girlfriend, spans indie and folk.
Paola Nicole Egipciaco-Cruz is Street Cry's 2021 intern. She came to us through Jan Cohen-Cruz' class "Art and Social Engagement." Paola is a writer and NYU graduate student in Experimental Humanities. She was born and raised in Sabana Grande, a small town in the southwest of Puerto Rico. Paola believes in the power of self-organization as a form of governance. Her research interests are culture, self-organization, writing as a healing method, and Caribbean and Latin-American studies She double majored in Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature from the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez. Her favorite food is arroz con habichuelas.
Mavera Rahim is Street Cry's 2021 intern. She came to us through Jan Cohen-Cruz' class "Art and Social Engagement." Mavera is a co-founder of “The Being Body” podcast. Mavera describes herself as: “a Pashtun girl passionate about creating spaces of vulnerability and honesty with other women, in order to regain the confidence we are usually robbed of growing up.” Mavera has a BA from Beaconhouse National University, in Lahore, Pakistan, and is a Fulbright scholar pursuing a Masters in Politics at NYU. Mavera’s favorite food is Matakarey Rotay.
StreetCry’s “Rosa Rachele Fellow”
SHAYLA DEMETRICE COOK, aka MUBI ATAI, was awarded StreetCry's 2021 Rosa Rachele Fellowship in transformational mentorship. Shayla is a Teach for America fellow. Born in Jersey City, NJ ‘Chilltown,’ Shayla D. Cook aka Mubi Atai, is a Creative Intuitive with a B.A. in English, and concentration in Creative Writing from New Jersey City University. A visual artist since age eight, Mubi Atai thrived to transform her multiple traumas and identity as an African-American lesbian, by coloring the world with poems, prose, and acrylic paint.Shayla is a Creative Intuitive, writer and painter. Her keen sense of creativity allows innovative ways to approach social issues with safety to establish communal and planetary healing. The artist has several years of experience working with youth to raise awareness of health and wellness, self-advocacy, academia, leadership, and professionalism. A s a proud PEP/NJCU Alum, Mubi Atai believes, “One must remember the medicine of ancestors, community, and Spirit. We must pay it forward if we wish to be unbound and unshackled.”