560 RR Artist Residency

Catamount Arts and Vermont Studio Center are pleased to announce the second cohort of artists selected for the 560 Railroad Community Artist program. Housed in the live/work residency space at 560 Railroad Street here in St. Johnsbury, the program welcomes artists from across the United States and around the world to engage deeply with the Northeast Kingdom through creative projects, public programming, and community partnerships. The 560 Railroad Community Artist program is supported in part by grants from Northeast Vermont Regional Hospital, the Vermont Community Foundation, and private donors.

The 2026-27 cohort includes eight artists representing a broad geographic range, from Sharon, Vermont, to Seoul, South Korea, with artists also traveling from Bountiful, Utah; North Providence, Rhode Island; Seattle, Washington; Brooklyn, New York; Staten Island, New York; and New York City. During residencies ranging from four to six weeks, the artists will lead a variety of community engagement activities, including writing workshops, artist talks, open studios, collaborative visual art projects, and other opportunities for local residents to connect with the creative process.

Catamount Arts continues its partnership with the Vermont Studio Center (VSC), the internationally recognized residency program in Johnson, Vermont. Building on the success of the inaugural cohort in 2025-26, this year’s artists were selected through a competitive application process that attracted strong interest from VSC alumni artists eager to contribute to the vibrant cultural life of St. Johnsbury and the Northeast Kingdom.

“What makes the 560 Railroad Community Artist program so special is its emphasis on meaningful community engagement,” said Anne Campbell, Education Director at Catamount Arts. “These artists aren’t simply passing through. They are sharing their talents, building relationships, and creating opportunities for people of all ages to experience and participate in the arts. We’re excited to welcome this diverse group of artists and to see the connections, conversations, and creative projects that emerge during their time in St. Johnsbury.”

As the second cohort of artists arrive throughout the year, community members can look forward to a wide range of public programs and collaborative opportunities that celebrate creativity, foster connection, and strengthen the role of the arts in community life.

This year’s 560 Railroad Community Artists are as follows:

Lori Lee, Bountiful, Utah
Ellen Rogers, North Providence, RI
Ching-In Chen, Lake Forest Park, Washington
Judith Hertog, Sharon, VT
Megan Piontkowski, Brooklyn, NY
River Dandelion, Staten Island, NY
Danielle Alhassid, New York, NY
Yuli Sung, Seoul, South Korea

Lori Lee

After 25 years of traveling the state of Utah and enjoying and sharing the natural beauty of the trails and outdoor adventures in guidebooks and magazines, Lori Lee now focuses on the personal narrative.

Lori was the host and producer of the Love Your Story podcast, which ran for eight years and was dedicated to sharing candid interviews and conversations about living our best life stories on purpose. She pulled no punches in capturing interviews that shine a light on how we make it through the hard stuff – stress, anxiety, suicide, eating disorders, rape, the death of children, abuse, divorce and the real stuff we have to deal with. But, she also shared interviews with Olympians and incredible athletes, life coaches, therapists, and people who are changing the world.

Lori is a published poet, has won awards for her essays, and has an MS in Folklore–her research focusing on the structure and function of personal narrative. She is the author of six books and over 100 magazine and newspaper articles, including her latest book, L.I.F.E. – Living Intentional and Fearless Every Day. Her self-help memoir, The Messy, Divine Business of Becoming is due out in 2028.

Ellen Rogers

Ellen Rogers is a visual artist and former wildlife veterinarian whose work bridges art and science. She earned her MFA in art from the University at Buffalo and her BFA from the Maine College of Art.

Before becoming an artist, Rogers earned her BA in Mechanical Engineering at Harvard and her DVM (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine) from Tufts Veterinary School. As a veterinarian, she was actively and passionately involved in conserving free-ranging endangered species, including darting rhinos, moving lions, and capturing rogue elephants in South Africa. She developed and taught wildlife conservation medicine courses at Tufts Veterinary School, in Uganda, and in South Africa. Rogers featured in several wildlife television shows, including starring in The Great African Wildlife Rescue (Animal Planet, 13 episodes) and Animal Face-Off (Discovery Channel, 4 episodes).

Rogers’ artwork has been exhibited across the United States and internationally, including Maine, New York, Tennessee, Michigan (Frederick Meijers Sculpture Garden), Massachusetts, Wyoming, Canada, and China. Her pieces are held in the permanent collections of Paul Smith’s College, the Allan Brooks Nature Centre (BC, Canada), the Rosamond Gifford Zoo, the Central Academy of Art (Bejing, China), and numerous private collections. Rogers completed artist residencies at The Vermont Studio Center, Paul Smith’s College, the Caetani Cultural Centre in BC, Canada, and The Steel Yard. Two of her scientific illustrations were published in Gary Taubes’ “Why We Get Fat” (2010). Her drawings of the migraine experience were featured on the cover of the “Journal of Pain and Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy” in 2009 and 2010.

Rogers now lives in North Providence, Rhode Island.

Ching-In Chen

Ching-in Chen is author of Shiny City, recombinant (2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry) and The Heart’s Traffic: a novel in poems as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Leslie Scalapino Finalist). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. They are a Kelsey Street Press collective member, Airlie Press editor and Nonfiction Coordinator for Best of the Net. They serve on the Governing Council of Seattle’s Cultural Space Agency, on the board of Seattle City of Literature and as the Pacific Northwest chapter co-lead for Kundiman and on the national Kundiman board. They collaborate on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation and environmental justice. They teach in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA program in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell.

Judith Hertog

Judith Hertog is a writer, storyteller, and educator who currently teaches writing at Dartmouth. She grew up in Amsterdam but, after some wandering around the world, ended up living in Vermont. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary magazines and in publications such as The New York Times, Tricycle, and The Sun Magazine. Several of her essays have received honorable mention in Best American Essays. She is currently working on an essay collection on identity, conflict, and how not to lose hope. She believes that it is a basic human need to share our stories. Her website is: www.judithhertog.com

Megan Piontkowski

Megan is an illustrator living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She specializes in making illustrations of food and recipes, portraits and how-tos. Megan makes editorial, lifestyle and book illustrations.

Her work has been included in the American Illustration online archive, recognized by Creative Quarterly and was selected for the 2018 Detroit ICON Gallery show.

Megan illustrated The German-Jewish Cookbook: Recipes and and History of a Cuisine published by Brandeis University Press. She wrote, illustrated, hand printed and bound Feminist Ships, a limited edition artist’s book published by Women’s Studio Workshop. Feminist Ships is in the collections of Yale University, Harvard University and The New York Public Library among many other institutions.

Megan is a member of Illustrators for Hire

River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

River 瑩瑩 Dandelion (he, him, keoi 佢) walks with his ancestors. He is a practitioner of ancestral medicine through writing, teaching, energy healing, and creating ceremony. As a poet, he writes to connect with the unseen and unspoken so we can feel and heal. As a shamanic arts practitioner, he guides people through transformation. Winner of the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers, River is the author of remembering (y)our light, a debut chapbook on honoring matriarchs and ancestors across generations.

A Lambda Literary fellow and Kundiman fellow, River facilitates creative writing workshops, where participants connect with their own inner and collective power. He has taught at Rutgers University-Newark, Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, Restorative Justice Initiative, Lambda Literary, Museum of the City of New York, and elsewhere. He has also been awarded residencies and fellowships from Baldwin for the Arts, Bread Loaf, Caldera Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Monson Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Ragdale, Saltonstall Foundation, Tin House, T.S. Eliot Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Ucross Foundation, and more.

Thrice-nominated for Best of the Net, River’s work is twice-published in Best New Poets, and appears in Apogee Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Bellevue Literary Review, The Margins, Mizna, The Offing, POETRY, Asian American Journal of Psychology, and anthologized in international publications. He loves to swim and does this work for queer and trans ancestors and descendants to come.

Danielle Alhassid

Danielle Alhassid is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NYC. Her works involve stop-motion animation, printmaking, installation and performance, and focus on archives, femininity, and urban experience. She received her MFA from Hunter College (2024), NYC, and her BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (2020), NL. Her work appeared, among others, at the Brooklyn Museum, Dr. Bernard Heller Museum, Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, 14stY theater, OYG projects, Voltz Clarke gallery New-York, The Holocaust Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, Ron Mandos Gallery, and Het-Ham, Amsterdam. Her work was commissioned by the Amsterdam Museum, the Tel-Aviv City Museum, and the Azrieli Gallery and sold to private collectors. She is the recipient of the Naomi Anolic Visual Arts Award (2024). She has received fellowships and grants, such as LABA NYC, Vermont Studio Center, Asylum Arts Grant, Interlude Grant, the LES Printshop Keyholder residency and the Venezia Contemporanea research fellowship.

Yuli Sung

Yuli Sung received her BFA from Hongik University in Korea and an MFA in Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in the United States. She currently lives and works between Seoul and New York.

Her recent solo exhibitions include ‘Lullaby of Dusky Light’ at Haeum Goyang Art Studio (2024) and ‘Entangled Order of Things’ at Goyang Aram Art Museum (2024), as well as ‘Echoing Monologue’ at Cheongju Art Studio (2023). She was selected as “Best of Show” in Fake News at Spiva Art Gallery, Missouri Southern State University, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Korea and the U.S., including UNDERCURRENT at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art and Vitrine at Plexus Project. Her residency experiences include Cheongju Creative Art Studio and Haeum Goyang Art Studio in Korea, as well as The Wassaic Project, Abrons Arts Center, and the Vermont Studio Center in the U.S.