I am an artist, composer, academic, and vocalist specializing in new media and traditional music and ritual song from the Republic of Georgia, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Eastern Europe, and America. Working at the crossroads of ancient traditions, experimental new music, and new technologies, I explore traditional arts, ritual, and folklore as they are preserved, disseminated, and practiced in the age of social media and unprecedented global cultural exchange. Balanced between conservation and experimentation, I act as monk and medium: striving to honor, preserve, and represent the traditional arts mediums and practices themselves, while concurrently allowing the work to be alive in present bodies and technologies, reflecting the shape of the living. Hailing from a long line of folk and classical farmer musicians from the American Midwest, Ireland, and Sweden; I see myself as a link in a continuum of tradition keepers whose lived experiences have shaped, preserved, and imbued the living art forms with the narratives of those living at the periphery of wealth and power: women, laborers, the poor, farmers, the displaced, colonialized, and invaded. Ritual and song become the keepers of invisible histories and hidden lives intimately connected with the spaces and landscapes they inhabit: from Irish keening to Swedish kulning; work songs and deathing rituals of the Caucasus mountains to Serbian song forms for the love of mountains, hills, and rivers. Mastering a variety of vocal techniques and song forms, studying with song masters steeped in ancient traditions, immersing myself in the cultures and geographies of origin, contextualizing my visual and aural art lineage, and deeply internalizing while simultaneously using new technologies to compose and arrange, I create visual and aural composites: from digitally manipulated photographs of California coastline inspired by 18th century Dutch landscape paintings to new music operettas consisting of ritual song from the Republic of Georgia layered with electronically manipulated sonic compositions derived from field recordings, harmoniums, organs, piano, prepared instruments, and voice. Each piece unfolds as a series of maps interlacing various histories, geographies, lexicons, and traditions, exploring hidden intersections and unusual relationships. Although a thorough intellectual understanding is central to my process, I ultimately strive to articulate the more ephemeral and intuitive qualities within a space, landscape, a piece of music, a photograph, a ritual; one that intimately captures the feel and soul of place and song. The result is work that, on the one hand, reveals the essential shape and quality of place and song, and on the other, a vast and wondrous inner connection