CAN DENIZMAN

Can Denizman received undergraduate and Master's degrees in Hydrogeological Engineering at Hacettepe University, Ankara Türkiye. At the International Center for Karst Water Resources, he participated in scientific projects in karst areas of Türkiye. He received his Ph.D. in Geology at the University of Florida. For his dissertation he utilized GIS techniques to analyze spatial distribution and morphometric parameters of karstic depressions within the Suwannee River basin in Florida. This was one of the earliest applications of GIS to karst geomorphology. He is currently on the teaching and research faculty at Valdosta State University in Georgia.

AIDAN KOCH

Aidan Koch’s work focuses on sequential narratives, drawing, and installation using fragmentary and interdisciplinary techniques. She is the author of several graphic novels including Xeric Award winning, The Blonde Woman, and more recently After Nothing Comes, published by Koyama Press. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, South Bend Museum of Art, and Queens University Belfast, among others. She is currently represented by Paul Soto gallery in Los Angeles, CA. Koch is based in Landers, CA in the Mojave Desert. 

MEL KENNE

Mel Kenne is a poet, translator and editor who lives in Eski Foça, on the Aegean coast of Türkiye. He has written six books of poetry. Take, his most recent collection, was published by Muse-Pie Press in 2012, and Galata’dan / The View from Galata, a bilingual collection in Turkish and English, was published by Yapı Kredi Publishers in 2010. That same year, he was a Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award winner. Kenne was chief editor of a collection of translations: Aeolian Visions / Versions, Modern Classics and New Writing from Türkiye (Milet 2013). He co-edited the 2016 and 2017 editions of Turkish Poetry Today.

Anna Löwdin

Anna Löwdin is a painter and sculptor living in Uppsala, Sweden. She spent a large part of her childhood in Florida and continues visiting the state and painting the Florida springs. She has been a long time participant in the Turkish springs Proje SU. Löwdin’s work has been exhibited in Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, the US, India, and Alexandria, Egypt. With colleagues in the Global Stone Workshop, she organized workshops in Sweden and Carrara, Italy where she teaches stone sculpting. Her sculpture was selected for the 2019 Mackmyra skulpturpark in Gävleborg County, Sweden.

NAZIHA Mestaoui

Naziha Mestaoui was born in Brussels, and was a Paris-based artist. Her work was informed by architecture, technology and a passion for humanity and the environment. She studied at Graz Institute of Technology and La Cambre in Brussels. Naziha visited Peru and Brazil where she met the tribe and shaman of the Huni Kuin. Based on her work with them in 2014, she created an interactive installation Corps en résonance (Echoing bodies). Visitor movements stimulated sound and light displays. This work was a prelude to her interactive project One heart, One tree. During the 2015 UN Climate Conference, images were projected onto Paris landmarks. She began working with Pam and Doug Soltis on One Tree One Planet in 2016. Naziha Mestaoui died in 2020.

Neriman Polat

Neriman Polat lives and works in Istanbul. She received her degree in Painting at Mimar Sinan University. Polat has taken part in numerous Turkish and International Contemporary Art exhibitions. Her work was exhibited in the 6th Istanbul Biennial and the 50th Venice Biennale. A member of Hafriyat, she organized and exhibited in many of their shows. Recent solo shows have included “Merciless” in 2018 at Merdiven Art Space, and “Breaking the Seal” in 2019 at Depo. Polat has identified sociopolitical concerns that impact The City, especially Istanbul, its architecture and consequently her work: patriarchy, immigration, inequality, and gender.

Jarrod Ryhal

Jarrod Ryhal is a communication designer and graphic artist living in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in Florida and graduated from the University of Florida College of Fine Arts. It was there that he met Margaret and began their longtime collaboration on various projects. Jarrod has worked in the design industry for over a decade, with several agencies including VSA Partners and the global innovation firm IDEO. He is passionate about finding the intersection between enduring brand expression and real human needs, creating completely unique visual experiences that will connect with and surprise the intended audience.

MARGARET ROSS TOLBERT

Margaret Ross Tolbert has always been interested in the lenses and points of view, especially linguistic and social, that create different realities. She first visited Türkiye in 1980, after a few years of Turkish and Balkan dance opened her eyes and heart to this fascinating country, and has been a constant visitor ever since. These travels are inspiration for her series about travel and destination in painting and sketches. 

She earned her BFA and MFA in painting at the University of Florida, and soon after had her first underwater explorations in the springs heartland of the Floridan aquifer. She discovered that in certain ideal circumstances, the lens of water is not only a metaphorical construct but an actual physical space we can enter and become transformed. Her work has since been about communicating the experience of immersion through painting and installation, writing and film. Since the 1980s, Tolbert’s springs paintings have featured in exhibits and collections in the US, Europe and Türkiye. In 2010 the book AQUIFERious, with art and science combining as a guidebook to springs and the Floridan aquifer, was released. It received a gold and silver medal in the Florida Book Awards, and the accompanying AQUIFERious exhibit was shown in New Orleans, the University of Virginia, and in numerous museums and art centers in Florida through 2019. Tolbert was a producer of Lost Springs (2017), a plea for restoration of a historic river and springs with her art as a starting point, with a premiere exhibition at the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art. Public art installations include the Orlando Springs installation (2011) at Orlando International Airport, and Connected Worlds of forest and springs at the Austin Cary Memorial Forest (2015) in Gainesville, FL. She is based in Gainesville, FL.

Gökhan Türe

Gökhan Türe was born in Tekirdağ, Türkiye in 1962, and had a lifelong love of water, springs and the sea. He studied material science at Mideast Technical University in Ankara and lived in Türkiye and the US as an engineer. His father Erdinç Türe was a General, and Gökhan was a trained Turkish Seal. He moved to Kaş and began to formulate his visionary ideas for nature, ecology and cultural research and expeditions with his partners at Dragoman Ecotourism. He proposed and sponsored innovative research with numerous groups he founded. He imagined and carried out projects and expeditions that created paradigm shifts in ecological consciousness. In 1998, he and a team of other kayakers travelled rivers from the North Atlantic to the Black Sea, bringing attention to this riverine connection and alerting many to the pollution in these areas. In 1995, for his historic project Karst Dive 95, cave divers from the United States and Türkiye explored and mapped the deepest and longest aquifer caves in Asia, among a number of underwater caves exposed in Lycia. In 2013, he became the lead collaborator for Proje SU and was instrumental in suggesting important sites and some key players for the project. Shortly after this, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer and passed away in 2014.

YUSUF YAVUZ

Yusuf Yavuz is a journalist-author, born in Darıbükü in the Köprüçay area of Türkiye and now lives in Antalya. He started writing essays and reviews in the early 1990s. His essays, reviews, interviews, prose, news and comments have been published in magazines and newspapers such as Cumhuriyet Akdeniz, OdaTV, Yeni Harman, Literature and Criticism, Yolculuk, Evrensel, Atlas, Magma, Aydınlık, Birgün, Turizm News and Açık Gazete. He produced television programs about nature and culture “Two Trees” and “Wet Sandals.” For Proje SU: Water Project, Yavuz wrote texts on the past and present water culture of Western Anatolian geography. 

Yeşim Ağaoğlu

Yeşim Ağaoğlu was born in Istanbul. She studied at the University of Istanbul, Department of Archaeology and Art History and received her MA degree from the University of Istanbul, Faculty of Communications, Department of Radio-TV-Cinema. She took super 8 film classes at the New York School of Visual Arts. Agaoglu is the author of seven poetry books published in Türkiye and two in Azerbaijan. In 2016 and 2017 two of her poetry books were published in New York. Her poems have been translated into English, German, Spanish and Russian. Since 1996, she has combined disciplines — language (poetry, etc.) photography, video and installation. 

Sidney Wade

Sidney Wade’s eighth collection of poems, Deep Gossip: New & Selected Poems, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2020. She taught workshops in Poetry and Translation at the University of Florida for 23 years. Wade has served as President of AWP and Secretary/Treasurer of ALTA. Her translation with Efe Murad of Melih Cevdet Anday’s selected poems won the Meral Divitci Prize and was published by Talisman House in 2017. For years, she served as poetry editor for the literary journal Subtropics. Her poems and translations have appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, Grand Street, The Paris Review and many other literary publications.