A Thousand Hands A Million Stars.
The artists of A Thousand Hands have taken inspiration through survivors’ experiences and stories, contributing to personal narratives of their journey in, through and out of human sex trafficking in hopes of providing visibility to the invisible victims and the power of recovery and healing.
ARTISTS
JANE MILLS ATWOOD | POETRY
CARLA CIUFFO | ART | PHOTOGRAPHY | VIDEO ART
H. GERREY NOH | MUSIC
DENISE RITTER | VOCALS
ANDREEA LEE | PIANO
REBECCA HOBACK | DANCE | BRANDY A. ROGERS | DANCE
Artist Bios
Denise Ritter
Dr. Denise Ritter Bernardini has taught Voice and Opera at the University level for over 20 years. She has taught at Radford University, Oklahoma City University, University of Oklahoma, Indiana Purdue University, Manchester University, University of Toledo, and Grace College. She has performed internationally and throughout the US with Orchestra and Symphonic Organizations as well as Opera Festivals and Companies. Denise has been a soloist in prestigious venues, such as Carnegie Hall, and a recitalist in London, England; Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia; and at the Certosa di Garegnano in Milan, Italy. She has also performed her one-woman classical cabaret in Leibniz, Austria, where she performed for the International University Global Theater to an audience representing 32 countries.
Dr. Bernardini has completed over 50 graduate hours in mental health with an emphasis on mindfulness and performance anxiety pathologies. She is a presenter on the mindfulness of singing for educators and singers. The Governor’s School of the Commonwealth of Virginia named Dr. Bernardini the Director of Vocal Studies in 2023. This is the largest fine arts program sponsored by the Department of Education in Virginia.
Denise leads a support group for music students to explore performance anxiety issues, and to develop resilience/coping mechanisms for performance success. She has written for the Journal of Singing about mental health in the applied vocal studio. Her quantitative and qualitative study, The Healthy Voice Protocol, concentrated on food as medicine, and movement to give resilience and increase stamina, for the aging singer. Denise is also a group leader for musicians in recovery from trauma and substance abuse.
Dr. Bernardini is also a sought-after clinician, teacher, presenter, and author. She has presented at The Voice Symposium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the International Congress of Voice Teachers in Stockholm, Sweden; the Great Lakes Regional Conference of College Music Society; the Indiana Music Educators Convention; and several National Association of Teachers of Singing regional and state-level clinics. Last year Denise released a book called “The Mindfulness of Singing” with co-author Toni Crowder. It has been featured on podcasts, videocasts, workshops, and clinics throughout the US. It has also been listed on the best seller list on Amazon.
Carla Ciuffo
Ciuffo is a New Yorker transplanted to Nashville and has lived in the south for the last nine years. Her work lies somewhere between illustrative narrative, photography, and collage.
Moving from 2D art into 3D, AR, and experimental animated film, her first animated short A Magic Lantern premiered at Aggregate Space Gallery's 2nd annual film festival winning Most Seductive Animation. The Human Element received Honorable Mention in the 2018 IPA’s International Photography Awards. She debuted her installation of Portals, a solo show displaying alternative modes of artwork including video and augmented reality at Tinney Contemporary in January 2019.
Ciuffo has produced a number of installations including portraiture of iconic and contemporary artists that are now a part of the permanent art collection at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame. Other select installations include a profile of Girl With a Scar at Tennessee’s Custom’s House Museum, several large format public works at Nashville’s International Airport and most recently an interactive animated alcove at Pittsburgh’s UPMC Children’s Hospital.
As a visiting artist at Harvard University Ciuffo has collaborated with the Disease and Biophysics Group, creating abstract artwork using a ground breaking nanofiber technology. The collaborative series is entitled Nano.Stasis Cosmic Garden. A recipient of the Woman Art Award 2017, for the Women’s Essence Show, Espace Cominnes, Paris, France, Ciuffo’s work can be found in collections and corporate installations throughout the United States and Europe.
Carla is responsible for creating the artwork for the A Thousand Hands project that ranging from 2D to augmented reality and a short film that tells survivor stories through poetry, dance and vocals. A Thousand Hands will be premiering at the Museum of Art and the annual Conference for Human Trafficking in Toledo in September of 2019 and a national tour will follow.
Jane Mills Atwood
Inspired by her father Dr. Lloyd Mills, professor emeritus at Kent State University and poet, Ms. Mills Atwood is a published poet and continues to creatively write. Her works thematically focus on the self as other, loss, otherworldliness, nature, the human condition, separation and unity. As an artist, Ms. Mills Atwood believes in the unisection of disciplines and experiences, where apophenia, synesthesia, and a single voice that may never be heard intimately combine to touch, stir, and motivate others to understand, contribute, and express something unique within themselves.
An artist and singer, she often incorporates musical aspects of words in her writing. Ms. Mills Atwood holds degrees from Kent State University, including a Masters in Vocal Performance. She currently serves as adjunct faculty at The University of Toledo, maintaining a private voice studio.
Andreea Lee
Andreea performed a variety of chamber music and solo recitals in churches, concert halls and private venues in Paris, Venice, Rome, Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Liege, Brussels, Nagoya and Boston, with a repertoire that ranged from Baroque era to Contemporary. She performed live and recorded on several occasions for National Television and Broadcast Radio of Romania, Arte Belgique, and WGTE in Toledo.
Rebecca Hoback
A Wisconsin native, Becca trained at the Milwaukee Ballet School and the UNC School of the Arts. She worked as an apprentice with the Montgomery Ballet before moving to Nashville to work as a second company member at Nashville Ballet. There, she began work with Banning Bouldin and joined New Dialect in June 2013.
Becca has participated in the Netherlands Dance Theatre summer intensive, the Gaga intensive, the chuthis Movement Intensive, and Springboard Danse Montreal. She works as an assistant to choreographer Banning Bouldin, and has performed in works by Roy Assaf, Peter Chu, Bryan Arias, Fernando Melo, Léon & Lightfoot, Marco Goecke, Rebecca Steinberg, Yin Yue, Erin Kouwe, Alex Ketley, Idan Sharabi, David Flores, and Belinda McGuire.
PHOTO Martin O’Connor Photography
Brandy A. Rogers
Brandy A. Rogers has studied various forms of dance since the age of 3. From Ballet to House, she loves to learn is constantly evolving in her own movement language. She is currently dancing second season with Blue Moves Modern Dance company of Nashville, TN.
Her love for “movement” extends across her love for the next generation. Her work with youth fuels her desire to grow as an artist. Her love for collaboration and connection her focus of her current project “Project 24” as she will dig deep into the exploration the human need for relationships. As a multi-disciplinary artist and choreographer, the stage is her second home. Follow her at @brandyaartistry on Instagram.
H. Gerrey Noh
H. Gerrey Noh is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Hugh A Glauser School of Music, Kent State University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in aural skills, music theory, music theory pedagogy, and special topics courses that explore diverse aspects of music analysis.
Her Ph.D. degree in music theory and composition is from Kent State University, where she studied with Thomas Janson, Richard Devore, and Ralph Lorenz. She also holds a and M.A. in music theory and M.M in piano performance from Kent State University and B.M. in piano performance from The Harid Conservatory where she studied piano with Roberta Rust and Thomas McKinley. Dr. Noh also has taught courses in music theory, composition, piano, chamber music, and eurhythmics at various institutions including Cleveland Institute of Music, Youngstown State University, Piano Institute at Kent State University.
Andreea Lee holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance from the National University of Music from Bucharest, Romania and a Master’s degree in Music Performance from the University of Toledo. There, she also completed a graduate assistantship in the Department of Music as a regular accompanist for The University of Toledo Opera Ensemble Productions.
She competed in international piano competitions, winning awards such as “Maryse Cheilan” in Hyeres, France, “Konzerteum International Competition” in Athens, Greece. In Salerno, Italy, she received the “Cava di Tirreni” trophy and a special award for the best Mozart performance.
As an active collaborative pianist, Andreea accompanied singers and instrumentalists in competitions and recitals in the last 15 years in Europe and the United States. Being versed in several languages, she has assisted opera students in the subtleties of foreign expressions and accents. Currently she accompanies the Toledo Choral Society, Terra State Choral Society and she is on the faculty of Defiance College.