President & Co-Founder: Betsy McCall– Visual Artists & Synchronized Swimmer – San Francisco/Labro

Betsy is an American visual artist whose investigations of sacred geometries in paint and video have been exhibited from San Francisco to Amsterdam. She is also an internationally ranked synchronized swimmer and is co-founder of San Francisco Tsunami Synchronized Swimming. She was previously Editor of Publications at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the world-renowned museum of Buffalo, New York, and founded Shizknits, an innovative small business developing knitted accessories and custom sweaters. Betsy has degrees from Yale University and San Francisco Art Institute, and her writing and visual art have been featured in publications such as Buffalo Magazine, Readymade, Lucky, Bust Magazine, MacWorld, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Gazette, and Knitty, and has appeared repeatedly on HGTV’s “Crafters: Coast to Coast,” DIY’s “Knitty Gritty,” and CBS’s “Evening Magazine.”

Artistic Director & Co-Founder: Christopher Fülling - Director & Tenor – Los Angeles

Christopher is an American tenor specializing in 17th century music and Gregorian chant, as well as a director of traditional and experimental ritual theater projects. Educated at Princeton and California Institute of the Arts, he moved to Amsterdam on a Beebe Foundation Fellowship in 1999 to study baroque singing with Max van Egmond and Peter Kooy. With his music ensembles (such as The Pacelli Project) and theater projects (such as Canticum), and as a tenor with conductors including Gabriel Garrido, Eugeen Liven d’Abelardo, and Daniel Reuss, he has explored not only historically-informed performance practice in concerts, but also brought to life this music in its original liturgical context through ritual reconstructions. Simultaneously, he has directed avant-garde music theatre pieces from Burning Man to Bali that explore similar issues but in radically creative contexts.

Artistic Director:  Liz Maxwell  – Director & Actor/Singer/Dancer - New Orleans/Labro

Liz Maxwell is a theater director and physical performer who has worked and collaborated with professional theatrical productions across the United States and abroad. Originally from New Orleans, Liz was born to a family of musicians and grew up on the stage. She graduated from Louisiana Scholars’ College at Northwestern State University in May 2008 with a double major in Theatre (Minor: Dance) and Liberal Arts (Concentration: Humanities and Social Thought). Her primary interest as a theater director lies in devising original pieces such as gravesongs., which was voted the Audience Pick of the 2009 Cincinnati Fringe Festival and earned three Cincinnati Acclaim Awards, in association with a Directing Internship with the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati. In 2011, Liz trained with the prestigious SITI Company in New York, deepening her interest in the Viewpoints technique and artistic discipline.

As an artist, Liz seeks to create work that is profound, funny, smart, epic, and relevant. Liz has an unending fascination with human beings: how human beings cope with being alive, how and why individuals turn themselves into group (socially, politically, and spiritually), and the many diverse ways this occurs in cultures all around the globe. Liz strives to make work that is deeply personal, culturally specific, and at the same time touches upon the universal.

A longterm Artmonk since March 2010, Liz directs and performs in AMP events, in addition to programming the artistic season.

Music Director & CFO: Charles Darius – Composer, Singer, Multi-instrumentalist - San Francisco/Labro

After studying mathematics, Charles discovered the art and science of music theory seven years ago and has been a serious musician ever since. Since then, Charles has been involved with approximately 20 choral ensembles, three of which he founded and led, including the first ever all-male youth chorus in Santa Cruz, California, and has sung solos in pieces ranging from choral masterworks (Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Handel’s Messiah) to musicals and Peruvian folk songs. He has studied voice under several members of the world-renowned San Francisco chorus, Chanticleer, and studied music theory in college, but is primarily a self-taught performer and most often plays and sings his original music. His stage experience ranges from actor to dancer to instrumentalist in a range of media, including vaudeville shows, symphonic wind ensembles, funk bands, and musicals and plays, including last year’s rock opera How To Survive The Apocalypse: A Burning Opera, in which he played 11 different instruments. Charles has been at the Art Monastery since April 2010 and is now the Project’s Chief Financial Officer, Music Director, Community Director, and Chef.

Communications Director: Molly Freedenberg – Writer, Dancer, Alto, Pianist – San Francisco/Labro

A lifelong dancer, singer, and performer, Molly’s main artistic practice is conceptual dance, including the founding and management of the ironic Broadway-style ensemble The Cheese Puffs and professional performance with punk-burlesque group The Bombshells, bicycle dancers the Derailleurs, and zombie dance troupe Living Dead Girlz. Molly studied Creative Writing at Reed College and has spent the past 10 years as an Arts and Culture Journalist, having written for such publications as the L.A. Times, L.A. Weekly, Bust Magazine, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Santa Barbara Independent. At the Art Monastery, Molly sings alto in the choir, plays keyboards in the rock band, and applies her dancing and acting skills to a variety of performances. She is also Director of Public Relations, Communications, and the Web.

Executive Director of Art Monastery SF: Nathan Rosquist – Writer, Composer - San Francisco

A writer and composer from Boulder, Colorado, Nathan studied Mandarin Chinese and Linguistics at the University of Colorado, and eventually moved to Seattle to get and MBA in Sustainable Business from Bainbridge Graduate Institute. As a graphic and web designer, he has focused on clients involved in arts, activism, socially responsible investment, sustainable food systems, grassroots economics and social justice. Nathan is currently based in San Francisco and directs Art Monastery programs and workshops in and around the Bay Area.

Programming Consultant: Julia Pond – Dancer/Choreographer - London

Julia holds a BFA in Dance from The Boston Conservatory and an MA in International Relations from St. John’s University in Rome. From 2001 to 2005, she was a member of Lori Belilove’s Isadora Duncan Dance Company of New York, with whom she performed and taught the repertory of Isadora Duncan in the U.S. and Europe. She continues to be an International Affiliate of the Company, teaching when she is in New York. Julia also worked at the Glocal Forum in Rome, an international NGO dedicated to city networking and peace-building. She’s currently in London developing a new dance and baroque music piece for cloisters and studying yoga while continuing to lend her efforts to programming and partnerships at the Art Monastery.