STAFF

Alison Watson, Executive Director

Watson began her career directing and producing documentary films, which have won recognition and awards across the United States. She spent several years shooting and producing outdoor films. She is the chair of the Asheville Film Commission and is on the advisory board of the Asheville Film Festival. She has her Master of Business Administration from Western Carolina University and her Master of Entrepreneurship. She has a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from the University of North Carolina Asheville.

EXECUTIVE BOARD

Gillian Coates is the MAP Interim Board Chair. She is the owner of the Readers Corner in Asheville. Gillian is also an independent producer for WPVM and creates audio documentaries.

Marcelle Martin, Treasurer, is an accountant with over 25 years of experience in public accounting and small business consulting. Additionally, she develops and delivers innovative workshops in comprehensive financial and entrepreneurial business planning and implementation and teaches QuickBooks and other business development applications at A-B Tech

Pamela Myers is the executive director of the Asheville Art Museum, a position she has held since 1996. She is active throughout the community and is on the board of the Western North Carolina Historical Association, the Pack Square Conservancy and a member of the Asheville Downtown Commission and the Chamber of Commerce Governmental Affairs Task Force.

Before moving to Asheville, Myers served as administrator of exhibitions and programs for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, head of exhibitions and facility planning for the Museum of the City of New York, director of exhibits for the Strong Museum and in several other positions. She frequently lectures and juries nationally and internationally.

Ty Hallock is the MAP Secretary. As a founder and partner of TopFloorStudio, Ty has cultivated client relationships around the world that has not only exponentially grown the business of TopFloorStudio, but has also raised the profile of the region and created new permanent full-time positions as well as countless freelance assignments for creative workers in Asheville, NC. A board member of the IT council of Asheville, Asheville Film Commission and a pivotal player on the HUB tech team, Ty works tirelessly to connect local media artists and tech workers as well as to raise the national and international profile of Western North Carolina as a crossroads for creativity, technology, and economic development.

Jeff Schmitt enjoys a rich life filled with science, music, art, and family. He did his undergraduate work at Wake Forest University followed by graduate work at the University of Bath and Oxford University. Jeff holds an adjunct professorship at Wake Forest University Health Sciences. He is a founding member of a NC-based pharmaceutical company, Targacept. Jeff has published nearly 100 peer-reviewed publications, patents and abstracts, and is on the editorial advisory boards of 5 international journals. Despite a hectic career in research, Jeff has over the years collaborated with numerous American and European artists, including ex-King Crimson drummer Michael Giles and LA sound artist Rhan Small. A stint with metal sculpture led to Jeff winning the Savannah College of Art ‘Savannah 3D’ invitational in 1986. Jeff and his musical collaborators composed music for the alban elved dance company 1994-2005, leading to collaborations in England, USA and Germany. Jeff is also a founding member of the Wheel Theater Company led by Juilliard and Moscow Art Theater artist Felix Ivanov. Currently, Jeff continues to do research on with his friends at Targacept on treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases; he is working at Wake Forest University to design cancer therapeutics; and is helping to establish a new research institute in Asheville: the Bent Creek Institute.

Daniell Krawczyk works in the space where traditional community broadcasting and internet distribution meet. He is currently the PEG Product Manager for Princeton Server Group, creators of Linux-based broadcast and VOD systems. He was previously the Director of Media Technology Integration at LTC, the community media center serving Lowell, Massachusetts. While there he founded the DigitalBicycle, a collaborative project that connected stations across the country with a system for sharing broadcastable content amongst themselves. Prior to that he served as an Americorp VISTA at the Community Media Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he helped design and launch the MOLLIE project which brought laptops and digital video cameras into schools and taught video production to thousands of students. He now lives with his wife in Garner, North Carolina and is working with a number of community stations across North Carolina to build a state-wide content sharing network. Though he lives 250 miles from downtown Asheville, he's always looking for an excuse to drive west.

Lei Han is a new media artist, educator and designer. Her current work focuses on experimental video and digital animation, video art and video installation. Lei's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She received her BA in fashion design from Shenzhen University in China and worked as chief fashion design at Marisfrolg, one of the top name fashion companies in China, for few years before she came to the United States. Lei holds MFA in computer arts from Memphis College of Art in Memphis, Tennessee. She has taught at Memphis College of Art and at Mount Hood Community College in Portland, Oregon. Lei is currently Assistant Professor of Multimedia Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Scott Furr is a multimedia artist, theorist, and tinkerer. He currently resides in Asheville and reBlogs about media arts, technology, and philosophy at MonkeyPlunger.com.

ADVISORY BOARD

David McConville, the MAP's founder, works internationally with museum, theater, gallery, and research projects to develop immersive digital theaters and productions. In 2003 He co-founded the elumenati, which researches and develops custom optical system designs and media production techniques for interactive and immersive environments and exhibits. He also serves on the boards of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and the WNC Film Commission.

Lorraine Walsh is Director and Assistant Professor of Multimedia Arts and Sciences at UNC Asheville. Walsh’s art, inspired by the sciences and nature, is exhibited internationally in venues that include the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, and the José Martí National Library in Havana, Cuba. Additionally, she has exhibited work in a broad cross-section of galleries and museums, and her work belongs to several collections. She has lectured internationally, and is a recipient of numerous awards and grants. Walsh recently worked with multimedia and physics students on a collaborative astronomy grant from the National Science Foundation for the visualization of the radio sky. As a designer, she has developed graphics and interactive media for the Petrosains Discovery Center and Science Museum in Malaysia, The National Geographic Society and The Smithsonian Institution. As an artist and a teacher, she believes in combining digital technologies with traditional techniques. Her interdisciplinary work in animation, print, and installation merges time-honored practices in art alongside digital methodologies.

Former Visiting Assistant Professor in Digital Design and Interactive Media at Pratt Institute in N.Y., Walsh received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Other academic appointments and guest artist positions have included Lafayette College, Rutgers University, Vassar College and Wellesley College.

Katie Kasben is a creative gypsy, besides being the Video Programming and Production Coordinator for the Biltmore Estate and has been a MAP groupie since 2004. She went to undergrad at UNC-Chapel Hill and graduate school at Macquarie University in Australia and most recently produced and directed the musical HAIR at the Diana Wortham Theatre. Katie was also the local producer for the 48 Hour Film Project in 2005 and works with the Asheville Film Festival and Commission. She finds humor in the minutiae of daily life...and also the word minutiae.

Greg Lucas sold his telecommunications consulting firm in 2003, and moved to Asheville to promote global media art and local media artists. Greg is Vice President of the Asheville based firm Music + Art Management and runs the company's New York office. Together with Steve Cohen, Greg manages a roster of six internationally touring transmedia performers ranging from DJ Spooky to King Britt. He is a graduate of Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service

Mary Trimarco is the Director of the WNC Film Commission, a program of Advantage West. The mission of the film commission is to promote WNC for filmmaking and to cultivate indigenous filmmaking in the region. Mary serves on the board of the Asheville Film Commission, the Highlands Film Festival and is an ex-officio member of the NC Film Council. Prior to moving to WNC, Mary produced national commercials in New York and the Baltimore/D.C. area.

Thomas A. Beckett lives with his family in Hendersonville, North Carolina. He is an attorney, MBA and entrepreneur. Through his business law practice, Beckett offers guidance to small and startup businesses ranging from software and technology ventures to agricultural enterprises. He is intensely interested in creative, sustainable business, grassroots economic development, and authentic experience. An original organizer of Meet the Geeks, Beckett also co-founded the InterNetWorker community in the Research Triangle area. He is legal advisor to the Media Arts Project. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Asheville Slow Food Convivium and the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project..

G. Craig Hobbs is a multimedia developer and video artist and currently in graduate school at University of California in Santa Cruz. He completed undergraduate studies in fine art and digital synthesis at the California Institute of the Arts. A founding member of the Asheville-based multimedia collective Black Box Studio, Mr. Hobbs client list includes Volvo, Moog Music, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, NC Arts Council, Asheville Global Report, and the National Percussion Ensemble of Guinea. Mr. Hobbs specializes in live video mixing and large-scale projection for theater and live music. As a projectionist he has worked with artists including Thomas Dolby, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Deep Sky, LTJ Bukem, Robot, Afromotive, Ahleuchatistas, and Terpsicorps Theater of Dance. Mr. Hobbs is currently in production on the independent science fiction film Moon Europa where he serves as Executive Producer.

Steve Cohen is the MAP Treasurer. Steve Cohen’s music business career evolved over what in hindsight looks like a very natural course - from bass player to band leader to Vice President of Original Artists to founder and President of Music + Art Management. His current client roster includes turntable polymath DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid; poet/writer/singer Carl Hancock Rux; pianist/composer/band leader Vijay Iyer; former Digible Planets DJ and house music legend King Britt; tabla player Suphala; and singer/songwriter Haale.. Cohen is a consultant for a variety of musicians and producers, and has done music supervision for film. He teaches a course about the music business at at both UNCA and Western Carolina University, having forrmerly taught music management at NYU, and has been a guest lecturer at Harvard College and Northeastern Universities.

Cohen's solid music education and his years as a working musician, combined with the traditional skill set that most managers develop over the course of their work, gives him a perspective that enables him to genuinely appreciate the ideas and goals of artists and to help bring those ideas and goals to fruition. During the course of his nearly ten years at Original Artists, Cohen represented Laurie Anderson and Bobby McFerrin, acting as administrator, event producer, ersatz lawyer, and diplomat, and negotiating and interacting with a wide cast of sometimes unexpected characters. In addition to working with those artists, Cohen was involved in the careers of The Story, David Byrne, Dianne Reeves, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Raffi, and others.