2026 Jury Members
Jeanne Stern
Jeanne Stern is an animator, artist, and filmmaker who experiments with tactile materials. She creates bizarre cinematic worlds that combine elements of playfulness with darker more complex themes. She holds an MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Studio Art from Connecticut College. Her work has been showcased internationally at venues such as the Smithsonian, Heather Henson's "Handmade Puppet Dreams," South by Southwest, PBS, the Toronto Film Festival, the Athens Video Art Festival, and the Moving Things Festival in Cape Town, South Africa. She has also animated several independent films, notably Ruth Fertig’s award-winning documentary "Yizkor," which won the CINE Gold Eagle Prize and Student Academy Award Gold Medal.
Jeanne has completed artist residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Elsewhere Artist Collaborative. Her teaching repertoire includes experimental animation at the UT Austin-Portugal Summer Institute, "Victorian Gothic Animation" at the Austin School of Film, and a workshop at the Futureplaces Digital Media Festival in Porto, Portugal, titled "Ghosts of Spaces," where artists investigated and interpreted the memories embedded in different environments. She is now Assistant Professor of Animation at St. Edward’s University.
Scott Turri
Hailing from suburban Philadelphia, where he spent his formative years, Turri now calls Pittsburgh home. Along with his art-making habit, he is also a self-taught drummer, having played, performed, and recorded with several bands during his teenage and early adult years. Highlights include opening for Snakefinger at the venerable East Side Club in Philadelphia, an improvised live on-air audience interactive performance on WYEP, and recording with Kramer at his Noise New Jersey Studio. His drummer’s sensibility permeates his experimental animation process, which relies heavily on intersecting timing patterns of multilayered imagery, resulting in hypnotic cadences that extend and compress time. It makes its presence felt in his paintings as well, where there is often an underlying sense of rhythmic syncopation between the color and form, which acts as the underlying scaffolding for the work.
His animations have been screened nationally and internationally at Millennium Film Workshop Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival, Morgantown, WV, VASTLAB Experimental Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA, Microtonal Music Festival Beyond WQED Studio A, Pittsburgh, PA, UNDER the RADAR, Vienna, Austria, Broken Screen, Ecological Transition and Conviviality, Buenos Aires, Argentina, among others. A sampling of solo exhibitions of his paintings include: the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA, Laura Mesaros Gallery, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, Estel Gallery, Nashville, TN, Xavier University Art Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA, and he has also participated in numerous group exhibitions across the country and internationally. In addition, he has written for New Art Examiner, BOMB Magazine, and Afterimage. Turri also holds a Teaching Associate Professor position in the Studio Arts Department at the University of Pittsburgh.
Vasilios Papaioannu
Vasilios Papaioannu is a filmmaker, photographer and mixed media artist currently based in Washington, DC. In his work Papaioannu explores the fleeting dreamscapes of reality using noise, movement and disturbance. He hybridizes different modes of filmmaking, unifying variegated media, primarily 16mm film, digital video and archival footage. His works have been shown in various venues around the world, such as the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Crossroads at SFMOMA, Anthology Film Archives, Athens International Film + Video Festival, Cork International Film Festival, Festifreak, Analogica, Cámara Lúcida, Engauge Film Festival, EXiS, L’ Alternativa, Antimatter [media art], Montreal Underground Film Festival, Revelation Perth Film Festival and Sharjah Film Platform. Papaioannu holds an MA in Communication, Text Semiotics and Cinema from the University of Siena in Italy and an MFA in Film from Syracuse University in New York. Papaioannu is currently an Assistant Professor at the Cathy Hughes School of Communications, Department of Media, Journalism, and Film at Howard University.
Ron Hollingshead
Ron Hollingshead is a West Virginia born artist, curator, lecturer, and educator who has taught at Sam Houston State University in Texas and West VirginiaUniversity. He exhibits internationally in the US, Ireland, Mexico, and New Zealand.
More at
www.ronhollingsheadart.com
Dana Coester
Dana Coester is a Professor and Creative Director of the West Virginia University Media Innovation Center, and editor in chief of the Edward R. Murrow award-winning outlet 100 Days in Appalachia.
Coester is part of a research team examining internet and technology studies, online and offline extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns with a trauma-informed approach. Coester’s community-engaged scholarship has long focused on the intersection of technology, media, and communities, with an emphasis on susceptibility and resilience in rural community members.
Coester directed and co-produced the documentary film Raised By Wolves, which received a 2022 JustFilms award and is sponsored by the Center for Independent Documentary. Coester has been an invited speaker on these topics at the Aspen Festival of Ideas, Newsgeist North America, the Council on Foreign Relations, Our Body Politic, among others, and her work has been cited in testimonies before two congressional committees. Coester was named a 2021-2022 Benedum Distinguished Scholar, and her work has been supported by the Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund Public Square and Just and Inclusive Society programs, the Mellon Foundation, and the Ford Foundation Creativity and Free Expression program. Coester received her Master’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
Jason Zeh
Jason Zeh (born in 1980, Ohio, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work blends influences from long-time involvement in the underground, experimental music scene with performance art and computer programming. Zeh’s work grapples with the scraps at the edge of meaning: the noise and errors that are in the margins of any message. Current performance works deal with intimacy, confession, and identity. These works employ self-designed software, machine learning algorithms, and streaming platforms to create technological systems that offer the promise of communication. However, the unpredictable behavior of these hacked tools makes communication impossible. Zeh holds an M.A. in English Literary and Textual Studies from Bowling Green State University, an M.F.A. in Expanded Media from The University of Kansas Visual Art Department and has toured extensively performing solo and collaborative works throughout the United States and abroad. www.jasonzeh.com
Lulu Williamson
Lulu Williamson worked in the film industry for over twenty years. She worked with filmmaker John Waters and on the TV show “Homicide:Life on the Street.” She was based in Baltimore and was a member of IATSE 487–mostly working in the art department.
She currently teaches in the Design Studies program at WVU and has her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. She lives in Morgantown, WV.
Kennedy Kacik
Kennedy Kacik is an MFA Candidate for Digital Art and Animation at WVU. Her work focuses on immersing the viewers in fantastical worlds that give them a refuge from the stresses, mundane, and pain from the world around them. Her work focuses on escapism, as well as letting the viewers go on a journey through the worlds she creates.
Kennedy Kacik
Timothy R. Butcher
Timothy R. Butcher is a multidisciplinary artist based out of Morgantown, WV. He received his BFA in painting/drawing in 2022 at Shepherd University, and is currently an MFA Candidate in time-based art at West Virginia University. His work exhibits in a variety of regional galleries and online spaces.
Gerald Habarth
Gerald Habarth is an artist and animator currently serving as Associate Professor of Art at West Virginia University, where he heads the Digital Art and Animation program in the School of Art and Design. He holds an MFA degree from the University of South Florida and a BFA degree from Parsons School of Design. His works have screened at numerous national and international venues and festivals, including the Tampa Museum of Art, the Huntington Museum of Art, the Festival Les Instants Vidéo, and the Stuttgarter Filmwinter - Festival for Expanded Media. In 2010, he founded the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival. In 2009, he founded Space: Atacama Chile, an adventure art course that takes students to the northern desert region of Chile to create works that focus on perception, experience, and multi-media art.
www.ghabarth.com