Cryptic Divination

kgmr is a composer, songwriter, keyboardist, field recorder, sampler, and noise maker. kgmr writes for solo piano, rock trio, larger ensembles, and electronic instrumentation. Her music has been used in films, theater, and radio. She appears elsewhere as a guest keyboardist.kgmr started writing and recording music in elementary school using a Casio keyboard, a Magnus organ, and a tape recorder. Her first compositions were imagined as soundtracks for horror films. Early sampling projects using prank phone calls and the tape recorder were unfortunately stopped by the police. As a child, she formally trained under Mlle. Yvonne Combe at the French School of Music.The kgmr band is a Portland-based duo made up of kgmr (keyboards, samples, field recordings, noise, vocals) and Bobby Read (guitar, bass, drums, violin, samples, field recordings, noise, vocals). They invite collaborators on projects locally, nationally, and internationally.​​discography: Backlash of the Hunter (Live EP), kgmr, 2025 St. Roch (LP), kgmr, 2025 Keep Going Mystical Rider (EP), kgmr, 2022Spin Down Night (EP), kgmr, 2021 this happened (LP), Half Ass West Studio Band, 2009evening with fallen tree (LP), kgmr, 2008 migrate to carnivora (LP), kgmr, 2007i nstant confidante (LP), kgmr, 2005body language (EP), kgmr, 2003​​​k.g.m.r. 

Influenced by bands like Opeth and Cynic, Cryptic Divination is a unique "second generation" of sounds from '90s death metal to '70s prog rock. Utilizing heavy riffs, clean sections and screams, they embody a new wave of pacific-northwest progressive death metal.

April Fox has been teaching yoga in Portland OR since 2014, and running classes to doom metal since 2016. 🌒Deep Dark Yoga 🌘 is slow, gentle flow to the sludgiest, heaviest tunes you can test your amps to. Great for beginners and “not into yoga” people — perfect for anyone interested in tuning on their mat with an epic soundtrack

Introduction to Lee Upton: I am a multi-genre author, not because I’m polygamous when it comes to genre, but because each genre is addictive and possibly a bit contagious. Along with The Withers and Tabitha, Get Up, I’ve written seven collections of poetry, two short story collections, a novella, four books of literary criticism, and an essay collection. My poetry has appeared widely, including in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Southern Review, as well as three editions of Best American Poetry. I am the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, Poetry Society of America awards, the Miami University Novella Prize, the Saturnalia Book Prize, and other honors. For over three decades I taught at Lafayette College, where I assumed the title Francis A. March Professor Emerita of English and Writer in Residence when I stepped away from teaching to write full time.

Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is a contemporary artist and filmmaker recognized around the world for her pioneering vision of public artwork. Through intimate portraits, immersive installations, and multi-year community based projects, she has spent over 20 years exploring the depths of human complexity, and asking how art can fundamentally re-envision the communities we live in towards a more just and equitable world.She is best known as one of the first women Street Artists to gain international recognition in a male-dominated field, pushing its conceptual limits and paving the way for a generation of women Street Artists. As a classically trained printmaker, she has innovated new approaches to create large-scale relief prints and intricate papercut works. The deep consideration of form is inseparable from Curry’s vision of the transformative role of public art in communities. Her critical engagement with issues of social and environmental justice have positioned her at the forefront of the emergent discourse around socially-engaged art practices. Her commitment to expanding the possibilities of art to repair trauma and foster personal and collective healing continues to drive her substantial contributions to contemporary art through her work with portraiture, sculpture, installation and most recently, stop-motion animation.This is Something Rather Than Nothing

Darrin Doyle was born in Saginaw, Michigan. He has worked as a paperboy, a janitor, a mover, a telemarketer, a door-to-door salesman, a Kinko's Copy Consultant, a porn store clerk, a pizza delivery guy, a prep cook, a magazine store clerk, a technical writer, a freelance newspaper writer, an English teacher in Japan, and finally, a professor and an author.​Darrin has a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do and wishes he had stuck with it a little longer to get the danged black belt.Darrin hoards and plays lots of musical instruments: guitar, piano, drums, mandolin, banjo, bass, ukelele, and a diatonic 4-string stick dulcimer.He lives in Mount Pleasant, Michigan and teaches at Central Michigan University.He knows what skeletons do.This is something rather than nothing

Art Bar is a thick, coffee table Art Magazine, printed in the U.S. on high quality paper stock.The features are about the lived human experiences of creatives and how they shape our artwork. We are aiming to fill a space in the art world, inspiring both established and emerging artists.

A proud powwow dancer, cultural educator, and fashion visionary, Keeli Littleleaf continues to blaze trails wherever she goes. Known for her signature high-step jingle and fringe style, she embodies power, healing, and movement through every step and every stitch.As the founder of the Northwest/West Coast Indigenous Fashion show & Market and creator of AYAYAT, a fashion line inspired by her Indian name Ayayat Washasha — meaning “beautiful dancing” — Keeli weaves ancestral teachings into breathtaking couture that celebrates body positivity, inclusivity, and Indigenous elegance.From walking NYC Fashion Week to designing for MMIP awareness with her powerful Medicine Ledger Dress, Keeli’s artistry moves with purpose and passion. She is the heartbeat of a new generation — where fashion becomes ceremony and storytelling becomes medicine. Something Rather than Nothing Podcast is an international show focuses on art, philosophy and liberation

Stefan Diethelm is a Swiss and German artist, originally from Uzwil, Switzerland. He fell in love with performing at a young age, was trained in classical voice throughout his teens, and studied musical theatre in Hamburg, Germany. He moved to New York City to further his craft, and studied at the HB Studio under instructors like Lonny Price, Peter Francis James and Theresa McElwee. HB Studio is also where he met Eduardo Machado and started writing plays while in his class. Since graduating from the studio, he has been a working playwright, actor, producer, and director here in the city.He has acted on various stages, from Off- and Off-Off-Broadway to Switzerland and Germany, and his plays have been performed in a variety of theaters and festivals in New York and beyond, garnering positive national and international reviews.His biggest influences as a playwright include Sarah Kane, Samuel Beckett, Adrienne Kennedy and the European classics. He aims to create original, human art for our commercialized times.Bradly Valenzuela is a New York City based director, playwright and producer. He is originally from Rocklin, California and attended university in Southern California at California State University, Fullerton. He graduated with a BA in Theatre with an Emphasis in Directing. Bradly is a recipient of the Honorable Mention Directing Award for Region 8 of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. For the past 5 years, he has worked within many theater companies such as Bated Breath Theatre Company, Mabou Mines and Theatre for the New City. He also has worked in multiple festivals, including the Rogue Theater Festival and the New York Theater Festival.Along with collaborating in these given spaces, Bradly shows continued commitment to workshopping and developing new works, both as a director, playwright and as a producer, being responsible for 6 debuts in the last 2 years.This is Something Rather Than Nothing

Crystal Skillman is an internationally award-winning playwright, fictional podcast writer, and comic book author who has written for Stories Podcast (Wondery Kids), Girl Tales, Adventure Time comics, as well as Marvel comics. In addition to Open and The Rocket Men, Crystal is the dramatist of RAIN AND ZOE SAVE THE WORLD (premiered in the UK in 2022) and the NYTimes Critics’ Pick plays GEEK, CUT, and KING KIRBY which you can listen to on Broadway Podcast Network.We talk about the big issues of history, war, justice and art. We focus on her new play 'The Rocket Men.' The Rocket Men is a unique theatrical experience that carries us through time in a blink of an eye to present the story of the German "Rocket Men" who used their scientific skills to flee Nazi Germany and settle in the most unlikely of places...North Alabama. These men form the backbone of NASA’s rocketry program.In this modern play, women (employees at Space Camp), step into roles playing the men focusing on Heinz- Hermann Koelle, a lesser-known young German rocketeer, who joined this "Operation Paperclip" team years later; Rocket Men explores the dynamic relationship of Wernher von Braun and Koelle as these two have set their sights on getting us to the Moon and beyond.But as the play counts down to the launch of Apollo 11, Koelle is befriended by a Jewish engineer hell-bent on exposing the truth: the Germans' technology is based on the V-2 rockets built by slave labor.Played by six female-identifying women who force us to theatrically re-examine this explosive story - still widely not known in America - “The Rocket Men” asks who gets to be remembered in the history books, and why?