Art in the Fields is located on the property of Jan Cohen-Cruz and Dionisio Cruz.
Jan Cohen-Cruz was born in Reading, PA, and recently returned to Berks County with her husband Dionisio to launch Art in the Fields at her family’s New Jerusalem property. She taught at NYU for over 25 years and then directed the national organization Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, whose e-journal, Public, she edits. Books include Local Acts: Community-based Performance in the US, Engaging Performance: Theater as Call and Response, Radical Street Performance, Playing Boal and A Boal Companion (both co-edited with Mady Shutzman), and, most recently, Remapping Performance: Common Ground, Uncommon Partners.
Dionisio Cruz, a bilingual Nuyorican (New York City native born of Puerto Rican parents), has been coming to New Jerusalem for 35 years with his wife Jan. Percussionist by avocation and social worker by vocation, Dionisio plays congas, other percussion, and homemade instruments. Trained in traditional Afro-Caribbean rhythms, he is also at home playing for theater and in other contexts. Dionisio is Director of Social Service and Clinical Coordinator at a shelter for homeless people in New York City.
In 2016, artist residencies were curated by the Holes in the Wall Collective.
Holes in the Wall Collective bridges people, ideas, and materials, curating new experiences of form and content through unexpected engagement. HWC produces events with artists in NYC and runs a creative residency program on the Art in the Fields property in New Jerusalem. More info at holesinthewallcollective.org.
Co-founder Dhira Rauch has performed and directed throughout New York, on giant boats in San Francisco, and in various media and mediums in Scotland, Los Angeles, and Kansas City. In the interest of asking the questions with no marks, Dhira has led paratheatrical research in Iceland, eaten popcorn nearing the speed of light, and corrupted academic conferences by transforming podiums into performative slinkies. Dhira sometimes moonlights as a sushi chef, teaches on an urban farm, and freelances writing culinary pith. She holds a Masters in Creative Inquiry from EPI at New College and a BFA from Tisch Experimental Theater Wing.
Co-founder Julia Rose Meeks, a designer of social systems, spaces, and concepts, trained in garment making and textile arts. Educated at San Francisco State University and La Nuova Academia di Belle Arti in Milan, she has learned about both product and social development — with study in apparel design and garment construction, wool-working, natural dying, urban planning, sustainable development, and farming practices.
The website was managed by Bill Bly.
Bill Bly is the author of the two-volume hypertext We Descend (1997, 2015), the online chapbook Wyrmes Mete (2002), and the libretto for the opera Young Meister Bach (2014). He has taught literature, writing and speech at NYU (where he met Jan & Dionisio), Fordham University, Wagner College (where he ran the writing program), and Northampton Community College. He served as dramaturg for Touchstone Theatre’s monumental Journey from the East, a two-year project engaging the influx of Asian visitors to the Bethlehem community since the opening of the Sands casino. Bill also sings whisky tenor in the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, now in its second century.