Amanda spent both her undergraduate and graduate years at California Institute of the Arts and as an active participant in the art community in Los Angeles before moving to Northern Michigan. She quickly learned that art is a vital part of any community, no matter the size or cultural composition. Amanda's strong desire to contribute to the cultural community of Northern Michigan, coupled with her commitment to the development of new work, led her to create ISLAND with her husband, Brad.
The last 17 of Brad Kik’s 34 years have been a jumbled mess of media arts, graphic design, environmental activism, community organizing, carpentry, study of conservation and homesteading skills, music, ecology, permaculture and working as a volunteer coordinator/possum killer in New Zealand. The last 3 years have been a slightly more focused mess of falling in love with his partner Amanda and, with her, co-founding and directing the Institute for Sustainable Living, Art & Natural Design (ISLAND), an emerging arts and ecology residency program in Northwest Lower Michigan.
Yvonne Stephens studied plants and fungi as an undergraduate at Michigan State University, dabbling in poetry and pottery. She worked as a lab assistant in Detroit, and more recently as a Charlevoix-Emmet Intermediate School District AmeriCorps Member. Yvonne joined ISLAND as an intern this summer, organizing a beekeeping workshop, a community canning party and the Fungi and Fermentation Skill Swap. She joined us as a staff member in September, and will act as the ISLAND event coordinator.
Samantha Tengelitsch is a writer and Permaculturalist who has written extensively on the impacts of agriculture on the environment and neighboring communities. In 2007, she established ISLAND began because of Brad and Amanda Kik‘s strong and shared belief that the arts and sustainable living are intertwined and essential to an enriching community.
Amanda spent both her undergraduate and graduate years at California Institute of the Arts and as an active participant in the art community in Los Angeles before moving to Northern Michigan. She quickly learned that art is a vital part of any community, no matter the size or cultural composition. Amanda’s strong desire to contribute to the cultural community of Northern Michigan, coupled with her commitment to the development of new work, led her to the beginnings of ISLAND.
Brad worked for five years as a community organizer both during and after college at Michigan State University. Through his work organizing communities in four states around environmental and consumer rights policy, he learned two important lessons: first, that there is deep and widespread concern (amongst what many consider an apathetic public) about the state of our communities and our place in the world; and second, that policy shift battles are necessary but cannot effect real change without the cultural shift that creates them.
After leaving that work Brad spent seven months in New Zealand working with a rainforest sanctuary and sustainable living organization, and saw the power of intensive individual experience. Realizing that design is the province of everyone, not just architects and other professionals, and understanding the power of attraction of pastoral, rural living, Brad sought to combine the two.
Brad and Amanda met on the fourth of July, 2004, and realized that each was complementary to the other, not only in their vision for an energetic new non-profit organization, but in life. They began ISLAND in May and were married in August of 2005.
Aaron Allen has a background in social activism and community organizing. He holds a B.A. in Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy, as well as a Juris Doctor from Michigan State University College of Law. He is currently employed full time as a public interest attorney, and has volunteered for organizations including Refugee Services, Lansing Voters Matter, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, the American Civil Liberties Union, and others. In the little free time that he has, Aaron enjoys acting, songwriting, camping and travel.
Marty has committed the past ten years of his life to building sustainable, community-based food systems in Michigan. A product of a traditional farming community in southeast Michigan, Marty broke away from his agrarian roots to pursue a BS in chemical engineering from Michigan State and a PhD, also in chemical engineering, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Disillusioned by the pharmaceutical biotechnology industry he was trained to join, he traveled to India in 1998 and used some of that biotechnology training to support campaigns against genetic engineering in agriculture. He has worked as a researcher with the 
Michelle Ferrarese is originally from the Great Lakes State; though she has lived on the east and west coasts and in between, she always returns to Michigan - she loves the lakes! Michelle studied botany and ecology in college and worked in outdoor and environmental education for several years. In 1998 she had the good fortune of volunteering at the Community Farm of Ann Arbor (the first CSA farm in Michigan) where she got hooked on CSA. Michelle went on to intern at farms in Massachusetts and Michigan, and helped to start and manage the 
Susan Fawcett works full-time as an artist and musician. She is a member of
the 
John Lindenmayer is a Lansing-based environmental activist and multi-media artist. After receiving a BFA in photography from the University of Michigan, John moved to Lansing where he spent several years as a community organizer with Clean Water Action (CWA). In addition to fundraising for CWA, John worked to educate and engage citizens on water quality campaigns, organized volunteers and developed campaign materials. John has also spent time as a community organizer with the Michigan Consumer Federation and Texas Campaign for the Environment.
Born in New York City and raised in Traverse City, Lillie Wolff earned a BA in Human Development and Social Relations from Kalamazoo College. Lillie brings with her experience in community organizing and coalition building around both environmental and social justice issues. She is bilingual in English and Spanish and worked with Michigan’s migrant and seasonal farmworker population from 2005-2008. Lillie is a registered yoga teacher and recently spent four months studying and practicing yoga in India. She currently teaches yoga in Traverse City and designs jewelry for her company Lillie Wolff Designs. In her spare time enjoys live music, dance, community gardening, and playing the mandolin.
Stephanie Mills is an author, lecturer and longtime bioregionalist. Her books include Tough Little Beauties, Epicurean Simplicity, and In Service of the Wild.
Caitlin Strokosch has 10 years of arts management experience in marketing,
development, communications, and program management. Most notably, she
served as General Manager of Bella Voce, one of the country’s premiere
professional chamber choirs, and as Executive Director of CUBE, a new
music ensemble based in Chicago. Strokosch has lectured at Columbia
College Chicago, Roosevelt University, Brown University, Roger Williams
University, and the Rhode Island School of Design on a range of topics,
from grantwriting to contemporary music to intersections of art and
architecture. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in music performance from
Columbia College Chicago and a Master’s in musicology from Roosevelt
University, where her research focused on music as a tool for building
communities of resistance and social dissent. She moved to Rhode Island
in 2002 as a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at Brown University. She
continues her creative work as a songwriter, poet and writer, and in
2005 she was an artist-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation.
Holly Wren Spaulding received degrees from the University of Michigan and from Trinity College (Dublin) where she was a fellow at the Oscar Wilde Center for Irish Writing. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The Ecologist, Clamor, Earth First! Journal, Z Magazine, 
Corie Pierce was born in New Hampshire and began vegetable farming as a teenager. On this farm she developed and deepened her reverence for the land and our environment and where our healthy food comes from. She fell in love with growing food and teaching others how to grow food. After attending Middlebury College in Vermont where she studied Biology and Environmental Education, she moved to California where she worked teaching and developing curriculum. In the meantime, she maintained her connection to growing food and farming and worked on various farms and gardens and completed the farming and gardening apprenticeship in Agroecology at the UC Santa Cruz. In 2005 she became the co-Farm manager at the Student Organic Farm at Michigan State University and laundhed a new year-long farmer training program – the Organic Farming Certificate Program at MSU. Now she is the Garden Manager and Sustainable Agriculture faculty at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vermont.
The production of art is more than taking brush to canvas, pen to paper, back of hand to forehead, or bow to string. Given the time and space, Art will bubble up from depths in the earth, and forms pools that benefit us all. Without art production, our communities are culturally crippled. It is ISLAND’s desire to support the work of artists and art in all its forms.
Art provides us with an alternative way of exploring ideas — of not simply seeing in new ways, but seeing in ways that are impossible to otherwise achieve. Dialogs are sparked and ideas are reshaped. Art does not stand alone, but is interdisciplinary in nature. In an experimental environment like ISLAND, it is imperative that ideas are fully and deeply explored; art is one tool with which this task is undertaken.