M. L. Winowiak was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. She was an only child and was orphaned as an adult when her parents burnt the bridge of communication. The fire was set with the scorn of righteousness and there are currently no plans to rebuild. Her extended family is peppered up and down the east coast from New York to Florida. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona with her partner of 16 years and their beautiful 2 years old toddler. M. L. Winowiak is currently in her third and final year in the Master of Fine Arts program at the School of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona. As an artist over the past ten years she has journeyed from creating art as object to becoming the art object. A sculptor and photographer she has created art installations that consisted of crafted objects to appropriated objects. She gave birth to her inner performance artist two years ago when working on a book arts project. The pages were unable to hold the art and she discovered herself becoming the book that needed to be read out loud. We as a community are excited to see what her creative perspective will show us next.

ODYSSEY STORYTELLING PHOTOS and BIOS

NOVEMBER 6 2007- "More Secrets"

Told in the University of Arizona's Union Gallery along with the show PostSecret.

Lucy Patterson was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Some people pronounce it Misery, but she does not appreciate this. Lucy left her sweet St. Louis for college and is currently a junior at the University of Arizona, where she studies the most delicious subjects she knows, art and elementary education. She enjoys eating, reading, dancing, sleeping, writing, and crying. She also has curly hair.

Bruce Blackstone has lived in Tucson for 15 years. He owns and operates Blackstone Design Custom Cabinetry. (Blackstonedes.com) He is also a member of Tucson's notorious GLBT Rock and Roll band, Too Much Information.(TMI-band.com) Bruce is a bi-sexual, gender-queer individual, this means that though he presents as male, he's preferred mode of dress is female. Bruce is on the Governing Council of Desert Dominion, (DesertDominion.org) where he volunteers much of his time. Bruce's mission in life is helping people become fully self expressed in their, gender, sexuality and their spirituality. Bruce is currently putting on workshops entitled Primal Transformational Breathing. For more information on any of the above, contact Bruce at Switch81@aol.com.  

Simon Donovan is a local visual artist known for his shameless self promotion. Neurotic, impulsive, opinionated, he is notorious amongst intimates for dominating dinner conversation. He has unquenchable thirst for attention and affirmation. Occasionally he is humorous.

Jay Shiro Tashiro is a storyteller and dreamer. Born in Akron, Ohio, he grew up with West Virginia hillbillies on one side of the family and Japanese academics on the other. So, he heard the hard tales of coal miners and eating possum as well as the stories of Samurai and the Japanese version of the Peach Boy. Not quite fitting in anywhere, Tashiro preferred dreaming to working, which made it difficult to get through college and find meaningful employment. After all, who hires dreamers at a livable wage? His most recent works include two screen plays that are currently being shopped around. One examines the life of a Nisei soldier in World War II. The other is a horror story about a Buddhist monk and a shapeshifter. Jay Shiro is able to tell stories, as well as buy food and feed the cats, by working as a faculty member at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and as a software developer in Tucson. His partner, Ellen Sullins is a poet and psychotherapist.

Cyndi Garrison lives in Tucson with her partner, Michael Woodward. She is a budding social justice activist, volunteers at Wingspan--southern Arizona's LGBT community center, and also advocates for animal welfare. Cyndi is very active in the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society, and she enjoys her pets, gardening and spoiling Michael in her spare time. She once spent 6 months living in her teepee in Montana.