Frances McCue is an award-winning poet, essayist, educator, and arts instigator, as well as the the writer and executive producer of Where The House Was. She was the founding executive director of Richard Hugo House, even living in the building for a while with her husband and baby daughter. She is the author of six books, including The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs, a collection of essays on Richard Hugo and the towns that inspired his poems, and Timber Curtain, which was written as a companion to Where the House Was. McCue currently serves on the faculty of the English department at the University of Washington.
Ryan Adams is the director of Where the House Was. Unlike the singer you might be thinking of, this Ryan K. Adams has been making films for 27 years. He studied classic experimental cinema at the Evergreen State College. Adams’s collaborations with experimental filmmaker Jon Behrens, distributed by Canyon Cinema, are shown worldwide. As a cinematographer, Ryan has shot several feature-length films, including The Oregonian (Sundance ’11) which is currently distributed by Sundance and is available via iTunes, and William Never Married, which won Best Cinematography at the 2010 Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles. His collaborations with Seattle-based artist Susie Lee on a series of video portraits called Still Lives have been shown worldwide. Ryan created the video backdrops used in The Fisher Ensemble’s performance of Kocho at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, NY, in 2011. In 2012, he shot the documentary Massacred for Gold directed by Vernon Lott. In addition to his personal work, Ryan also directs music videos, industrials, political ads, and short films.
Cali Kopczick is the film's production manager and story editor. She has previously worked as a writing consultant and administrator at the Odegaard Writing and Research Center and editor-at-large for Chin Music Press. In addition to her work with Where the House Was, she currently works as a freelance editor and a project manager at a marketing firm specializing in nonprofits. As a writer, she is the recipient of the Joan Grayston Poetry Prize, the Charlotte Paul Reese Fiction Award, and a Best of the Net nomination. Her work has appeared in The Offing, the Ghosts of Seattle Past anthology, The Birds We Piled Loosely, and elsewhere.
Lisa Jaech is Team Demo Hugo's kaleidoscope-eyed animator. She graduated from California College of the Arts with a BFA in animation in 2015. She has produced more than seven animated short films, employing hand-drawing, stop-motion, and—occasionally—digital animation techniques. He work is usually both documentary-based and experimental in nature. She joined Team Demo Hugo after they saw her animated interpretation of James Tate's poem "Silver Queen," which was presented at a memorial event for the late poet. Jaech belongs to a collective studio in Seattle called Common AREA Maintenance, where she produces and shows her work.
Team Demo Hugo was built the same way Hugo House was built: by inviting people to come in and spill a little. Our crew is a mix of poets, geographers, artists, archivists, and activists, all of them rapscallions trying to approach this project with wisdom.
Get a load of our mugs below.
OUR TEAM
Luke Sieczek, the film's director of photography, makes short narrative, documentary and experimental films and digital media. His work has been exhibited widely, including the Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, New York Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, and the European Media Art Festival. Originally from Poland, Luke Sieczek studied at Bard College and received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin. He’s been living in Seattle since 2006, where the often overcast skies makes for most subtle and shimmering light.
Ian Lucero is the film’s editor. His recent work includes a collaboration with the Degenerate Art Ensemble entitled Predator Songstress, which premiered at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. With Etsuko Ichikawa, he created a filmic poem called "Echo at Satsop," responding to the disasters that followed the 2011 earthquake in Japan. Another piece, “Radiating Echoes, What is Beautiful,” premiered in 2016 at the Jack Straw Cultural Center. A short experimental film, "Waking the Green Sound: a dance film for the trees," was a collaboration with Yulia Arakelyan and Erik Ferguson of Wobbly Dance, the dancer Grant Miller, and the band Sweetmeat. It is currently making the rounds in several film festivals, including the Next Dance Cinema at the Northwest Film Forum.
Steve Fisk is the film’s sound engineer. As a record producer, artist, and advocate for independent music, Steve Fisk’s creative energies have been formative in the development of the Pacific Northwest as a global center of independent thinking and culture. He has worked with over 200 artists in the region, occasionally in the company of poets like Richard Denner, Belle Randall, Steven Jesse Bernstein, Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, and Calvin Johnson. He has been recognized as a Genius by Seattle alternative newspaper The Stranger, awarded a Gold Record for his work with Soundgarden, and created original sound designs for the Museum of Pop Culture. Previous work for film includes the score for About A Son with Ben Gibbard, the opening composition for Natural Born Killers, and production for the award-winning documentary My Country No More (2018).
Image credit: Kelly O
In addition to our current production team, we'd also like to thank:
Past and satellite teammates: Claire Summa, Ananya Garg, Flora Tempel, Anisa Jackson, Charlie Jones, Dandi Meng, Jack Chelgren, Natalie Hillerson, Tyler DeFriece, Suz Boretz, Mara Potter, Madeleine Greaves, Wanda Bertram, Lucas Burdick, Adria Goetz, Caleb Stein, Tania Kupczak...
Our sound and music team: Lori Goldston, Wayne Horvitz, and Steve Fisk
Our fiscal sponsors LoveCityLove
Our wisdom committee: Stephen Silha, Katharyne Mitchell, Tree Swenson, Lois Welch, John Vallier, Linda Johnson, Linda Breneman, Alix Wilber, Anita Braker, Josh Daniel, John Kazanjian, Mary Ewald, Charlie Rathbun, Dave Olsen, Maryna Ajaja, Carol Barton, Anne Stadler, and Matt Smith
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© Team Demo Hugo | 2016