Kathleen Sullivan

Marguerite Kahrl, artist and permaculture designer, was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, and is currently based in Maine and Northern Italy. In her sculpture, Kahrl manipulates messages and media to instigate social engagement. Her idiosyncratic constructions highlight our complex relationship with energy and the land. For example, HotSpot (2008) is a prototype she co-developed to visualize background radiation transmitted from a mesh-networked radiation monitor, which is then graphically interpreted on a real-time video monitor. Although her Meek and Timid Action Figures resemble toys, they bear expressions of overwhelming grief, given their task of caring for ‘nuclear waste’ included in the artist’s Nuclear Cooling Tower Accessory Kit (2000). Her work has been exhibited widely in Europe and the USA. She has received numerous grants, awards and fellowships.

Kathleen Sullivan PhD. is a disarmament educator and activist who has been engaged in the nuclear issue for over 20 years. Currently, she is the program director for Hibakusha Stories, an arts based initiative that brings atomic bomb survivors into New York City High Schools to share their testimonies. Dr. Sullivan has been education consultant to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs in New York, and has produced two films about survivors from Nagasaki: ‘The Last Atomic Bomb’ (2005) and ‘The Ultimate Wish’ (2010). She lives in Brooklyn, New York.