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Isaac Diaz
Uoqaus - an adaptation of the Finnish word “huokaus”, meaning to sigh.
Here, the relationship between ceramics and people is explored. Both are uneven and imperfect, yet made of earth. While looking to these connections, uoqaus also reinterprets ancient stories and traditions. Uoqaus mostly finds inspiration through the old, and alive, cultures of Latin America. Uoqaus is a sigh of what can be, a desire for something else while creating that “something else.”
Uoqaus was started in 2019 by Isaac Diaz. Isaac currently lives and works in Oklahoma City.
Michelle Garcia
is a Los Angeles, California native, and has explored a plethora ofart mediums from an adolescent age under the guidance of her immigrant parents. As a child,she cultivated a personal relationship with learning through art and performance. She has dedicated her approach to life through the lens of interdisciplinary agencies. She presently hastapped into textile manipulation and mixed media as an outlet to convey her ancestral story. Her adulthood has brought a yearning to memorialize her lineage through a personal collection ofartworks, with the intent to find community through her storytelling.
Andrea Stokes
is an abstract painter, interested in the language and sensation of colour in imagined and real landscape. She holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
Miranda Vitello
is an artist based in Cambridge, MA who creates fun and lively depictions of landscapes, birds, flowers, dancers, and other subjects she enjoys. She works in a variety of mediums including oil, watercolor, gouache, and pastel. While she has taken several drawing and painting classes as an adult, she is mainly self-taught. She has degrees in art history and museum studies and love to travel to new places in search of inspiration. Her work has been exhibited at numerous galleries in New England.
Rebecca Lejić-Tiernan
is a lens-based artist currently residing in Los Angeles, CA.
She is a Serbian-Irish immigrant whose work explores the challenges of identity formation in our modern, often contradictory world. Her work regularly focuses on the effect identity has on perception, the recursive female gaze, cognitive dissonance and its social implications, and the remembrance of our natural world. Her installations and photography series have been shortlisted for the 2022 Aesthetica Art Prize and the 2022 Sunny Art Prize. Her film works have been exhibited internationally at Cannes Film Festival with Straight8, Altered Images Festival, US Super8 and Digital Video Festival, Back_Up Film Festival, and Moscow Shorts, among others.
Sophia McWhorter
is from the hills of Northern California. There she found a love for the untouched land and the exploration of different landscapes. She took up photography in her free time. Sophie majored in Strategic Communications and worked at a Safe Shelter where she worked with art as a form of expression of trauma. She now is getting her Masters in Clinical Social Work at Boston University. In her free time she loves getting in touch with creativity and practices drawing, painting, and enjoys spending time in nature doing just about anything. Sophie also ADORES all and any animals.
Alexa McWhorter
is a California native with an unwavering love for design and film. Growing up in the Bay Area, the rolling hills and lanky oak trees were her first inspirations. With a solid foundation in the fine arts, Al-e graduated UC San Diego with a BA in Visual Arts in 2018. Since graduating she has gained experience in the entertainment industry as a Studio Operations Coordinator at Industrial, Light and Magic, a freelancer in the art department and graphic design work. Most recently she is completing her MFA in design at the American Film Institute. She loves velvet furniture, stray cats and antique wallpaper.
Jes Young
is a non-binary educator and mixed media sculpture artist based in Toronto. Their practice investigates alternative uses of space inspired by infestations and repetitive natural patterns. They practice fluidity within all things.
Young received their Masters of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours, and Bachelor of Education from York University. They have held a guest artist position at York University and exhibited work in and around Toronto such as Something Creative’s Bi Bi Baby Showcases (2022), Nuit Blanche Toronto (2022) with East End Arts’ ‘In View’, The Artist Project Toronto (2023), and The Gladstone House Artist Residency (2023). Alongside continuing to develop their artistic practice they are currently working as a Fabricator for local Toronto artists such as Cybele Young and Erin Vincent.
Nina Marlene Kraus
is an art historian and curator based in Berlin. She holds an MA in art history, having studied in Berlin, Kraków (Poland) and Santa Cruz, CA.
Her current research focusses on the narratives of feminist art history, artistic utopias as political strategies as well as institutional critique. During her latest work for the three municipal galleries Neukölln in Berlin, she curated exhibitions at Galerie im Körnerpark and Galerie im Saalbau and organized a festival as part of DRAUSSENSTADT at Kunstbrücke am Wildenbruch.
Annisia Martinez
is an artist and educator raised in Queens, NY. After graduating from Pratt Institute, she spent three years teaching Visual Arts to middle school students in the Bronx. During this time she worked on large scale oil paintings in her apartment bedroom, and published poems through a virtual residency with Arts Letter and Numbers. In 2021, she led relief printing workshops at the residency Córtex Frontal in Arraiolos, Portugal. She is currently an Education and Engagement Fellow at the Museum of the City of New York, as well as a Teaching Artist at Queens Museum. She is currently working on a series of oil paintings of sheet music (the songs that moved me).
2023
Andrea Reed-Leal
is an interdisciplinary researcher and ceramic artist/designer. Her research engages subjects such as the history of the book, female intellectuality, circulation of ideas, and diverse textual technologies, such as ceramics, codices, stone, and codices, in the context of early colonial Latin America. Working on the intersection between different times and geographies, she seeks to assess the repercussions of knowledge of the past and archive-building on the contemporary imaginary. Her current scholarly project investigates the representation of Nahua women and Aztec goddesses in the colonial archive.
Marianna Madriz
is an illustrator originally from Venezuela currently based in London, UK. Her work is characterised for its focus on colourful characters, inspired on daily observations and childhood influences. She's worked on many non-fiction books for children, including the biography series "Little Guides to Great Lives" (translated in Spanish by the editorial Blume). Aside from her freelance practice, she also delivers talks and workshops for universities and museums.
Molly Hiebert
work is a result of continued discoveries into both her individual psyche and the internal narrative she has created with the world she lives in. The space we occupy at any given moment makes us feel a certain type of way. Good design simply makes us feel good. The way she paints is dictated by her emotions at that given moment as well as the space it will soon occupy. Using soft and neutral tones, Molly aims to create work that feels heavy yet delicate, archaic yet contemporary, often in and out of her control. Using her fingers, found objects and hand tools, she attempts to blur the boundary between the contemporary and the primitive. Through this process, Molly aims to gain a better understanding of what it means to make work in the contemporary age, and deepen her understanding in the design of spaces.
Chelsea Smith
is an artist, curator and visual arts facilitator based in Kaw/Kansa Nation/Kansas City, KS. She holds a BA (Honors) in Ceramics from Camberwell College of Arts in London, UK. Past curated exhibitions include The Rim of Morning at Open Windows Cooperative in San Francisco, CA and Not Quite Fatal at Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, MO. Recent group exhibitions include Run, Run, Quiet at Plug Gallery in Kansas City, MO and Temporalis Rite at Beco Gallery in Kansas City, MO. She is the recipient of an Artists Now grant from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA and a ceramic residency grant at Sanskriti-Kendra in New Delhi, India. She currently facilitates online programming for neurodiverse and disabled artists at NIAD Art Center in Ohlone Territory/Richmond, CA. Additionally, she is a ceramics instructor at Johnson County Arts and Heritage Center in Overland Park, KS.
Annette Köhn
is a graphic designer and illustrator who founded the very cool looking publishing house Jaja (engl. "Yesyes") based in Berlin, Germany. Jaja strives to offer a platform predominately to young, unknown artists.
Nicholas Goodhue
is a Waltham-based multidisciplinary artist from Bridgewater, Massachusetts. His practice draws from personal experiences and explores boyhood in relation to American suburbia with repeating themes of privilege, toxic masculinity, and substance abuse. He received his BFA in Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2016 and his MFA in Studio Arts at Maine College of Art in 2022. Nicholas has shown work in group exhibitions in galleries around the Boston area, including Fountain Street Gallery in Boston’s SOWA Art District, and was an artist in residence at School of Visual Arts in the summer of 2022. Nicholas is both a practicing artist and art educator, where he has been teaching in Waltham’s McDevitt Middle School for the past 5 years.
Ann Trinca
is a photographer and curator living in Northern California. Her work explores themes of decay, spirituality, and human interaction. She has traveled to Indonesia, Argentina, Myanmar, Japan and Mexico in search of moments that express her fascination with light, color, and the absurd. Her images and travel writing have been featured on sites such as womentravelphotographers.com and wearetravelgirls.com.Mainly self-taught, she has been mentored by photographers Ron Zak and Norma I. Quintana and has participated in photography trips over the past ten years. She is inspired by the history of street photography and models her color work after innovators such as Steve McCurry and William Eggleston and the poetic black and white images of Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Daido Moriyama. As an independent curator and intermittent gallery owner, Trinca has produced numerous group and solo exhibitions including regional and international artists. For the past 20 years, she has been an arts administrator working with prominent organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. After coaching other visual artists in career development, she is now refocusing her passions to embrace her own talents and personal visions.
Luke McDonald
is an emerging artist and teacher who primarily works with fine line pen drawings but has also worked with oil paints and woodcut printmaking. He completed a Bachelors of Visual Arts and Design in 2013 at the Australian Catholic University and is currently completing a Masters of Teaching (Secondary) at the University of New South Wales, specialising in Visual Arts teaching. His artwork The Kiss won the People’s Choice Award at the artSpacific exhibition in British Columbia, Canada and other artworks have also featured in art shows in Sydney. Luke has an interest in exploring traditional styles of artmaking and using them to capture the distinct qualities of foreign landscapes, cultures and people.
Daniela Monzi
is an elopement and fine art photographer based in Philadelphia, PA. Her work centers around the human experience, our shared existence, and the quest for revealing the truest form of each person that she documents. Her passion for travel has allowed her to explore six continents and over 20 countries through her lens, producing a body of work that spans across urban and natural environments. While her photography journey began as a young child in New York, Daniela honed hercraft more thoroughly at the San Francisco Art Institute, receiving a BFA in Photography in2017. Her work has been publicly exhibited in San Francisco, CA, Denver, CO, and Philadelphia, PA.
Calli Webb
is a curator and photographer living and working in Los Angeles, CA. With an interest in impermanence and the temporality of interpersonal relationships, she uses the lens to explore memory, love, and loss. Using photo, video, and written word, moments in time are returned to again and again to glean every bit of feeling from them. Time collapses in on itself while the image remains. Calli has also curated shows in Los Angeles, the latest being a mixed media / sculpture show at These Days LA. She is working toward the next, which will hopefully be realized in fall of 2022.
Wesley Alvarado
is a Salvadoran-American artist, raised in South Central LA, residing in DC, who is trained as an architect. Alvarado raduated from Boston Architectural College in 2019 with a Bachelor in Architecture. Alvarady has worked concurrently in various firms and in a wide range of projects - from residential houses to transportation stations and restaurants. Currently works for an architecture firm in DC designing hospitality spaces. As an artist Alvarado works in a variety of media. The 3D works are rooted in found-objects that are haptic, worn, imperfect and aged; usually starting off as experiments of material joining - a tinkering curiosity - that eventually find their footing.
Brooke Adams
is an artist and educator using storytelling for social change. Experienced in visual art, photography, and writing, Brooke combines these practices with a curious mind and spirit of adventure. Originally from California, EEUU, Brooke discovered the power of storytelling while studying in South Africa. After five years working in health education in Sub-Saharan Africa, Brooke now spends her time teaching young adults the power of their own stories.
Juvana Soliven
is a visual artist and educator from Honolulu, Hawaii. Soliven’s work subverts and utilizes object languages to speak to issues regarding intimacy, labor, trauma, and women’s positionality within the patriarchal system. Soliven holds an MFA in Metalsmithing at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2016, a BFA in Sculpture at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2013, and studied Art Restoration and Conservation at Lorenzo de’ Medici International School in Florence, Italy in 2012. Soliven is a Lecturer in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Chaminade University of Honolulu. Her work is in the collections of Cranbrook Art Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, as well as in private collections. Soliven has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Netherlands, Germany, and Iceland.
Veronica Wolfgang
is a multi-hyphenate artist and designer, currently based out of Brooklyn, NY. Their work draws upon queerness, and intergenerational knowledge structures, & is heavily inspired by the architecture of nature. They are currently exploring the relationship between organic textures and primordial collective memory.
Their work utilizes integral film, preserved nature, and textile waste in conjunction with traditional sculptural techniques to create dynamic works that explore how flux and static form can come together. The contradiction between fleeting structures and tactile experience fascinates them. In their approach, unconventional mediums and traditional techniques combine to form reliquaries of experience.
While still early in their career, Wolfgang has recently completed a residency at Carrie Able Gallery in Williamsburg, NY. their work has been featured in group shows at Carrie Able Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Shockboxx Gallery (Hermosa Beach, CA), Millepaini (Rome, Italy), & PH21 (Budapest, Hungary).
2022
Jenica Heintzelman
is a Guatemalan-American photographer from Orlando, Florida. She attended Brigham Young University where she completed her BFA degree in photography and documentary film in 2010. Jenica received her MFA in photography from the Hartford Art School’s International Limited-Residency program in 2020. She has been named by the British Journal of Photography as part of the “2021 Ones to Watch: Community” and exhibited internationally at C/O Berlin and BFOTO Festival in Spain. Her project Down a Stream was shortlisted for the Fiebre Dummy Award, SELF PUBLISH RIGA 2021 and the ICP/GOST First Book Award. Currently based in Brooklyn, NY her work explores themes of vulnerability, trauma and the notion of healing.
Astrea Somarriba
is an artist completing her Master's in Art Therapy and with a background in Conflict Resolution & Mediation. She uses her love of travel, community building, and spirituality to inform her process, calling on printmaking, collage, and drawing as her main mediums. Astrea refers to herself as an intuitive artist and allows her spirit to guide her when creating her pieces.
Camille Vic-Dupont
known for her ambitious, large-scale, and explosively colorful interventions in public spaces, Camille Walala uses the man-made landscape as a platform for disseminating positivity. Her work encompasses full-facade murals, immersive 3D installations, street art, interiors, and set design – characterized by a fusion of bold colors and playful geometric patterns. Camille finds inspiration in community and collaboration, and the power of color and pattern to transform atmospheres, elevate moods, and spark positivity.
Summer Moore
became inspired to learn to weave after an influential trip to Peru in 2010. Once she returned home, she learned weaving was deep in her roots, as her grandmother had been a weaver herself. She also recently discovered her German ancestors had apprenticed with linen weavers once immigrating to the US in the 1700s, cementing that weaving is truly in her blood. Within a few years, Summer took part in a self-guided textile residency in the remote, cavernous village of İbrahimpaşa in Cappadocia, Turkey. There, within her ancient stone home and studio, she experimented with weaving jewelry pieces and hand-dyeing fabric, which she shared with the village women to use as headscarves. She fell in love with the lunar landscape of the region and simple village life. She returned to Brooklyn ready to create a studio practice at home, and LESH was born. LESH, named after her aforementioned grandmother's maiden name, is a line of hand-woven jewelry that blends traditional hand-weaving techniques with modern design. Combining unique color palettes and patterns, each piece is one-of-a-kind and uses cotton fibers, thread made from 100% recycled bottles, and hand-dyed cording.
Zhané Bradley
is a visual artist based in Columbia, South Carolina. Her work is inspired by her curiosity about the world and the stories of its people. Through various mediums like oil painting and film photography, she enjoys a hands-on approach to exploring and learning more about how people from different communities express themselves creatively.
Eliška Plechatová
is a Prague and Oslo-based artist working mainly with textile, sound, and moving images. Her work addresses cultural traditions and rituals related to nature (connected with sound and fire) as a part of coming back to the conversation with local nature. With a background in forest and tree study, she considers nature patterns a big part of her inspiration.
MaryV Benoit
(she/her) is a 23-year-old queer femme American/Guatemalan photographer and performance artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, MaryV has an immense reach on social media (183k followers) and frequently shares her experiences as an artist. She graduated from Denver School of the Arts and attended Parsons, The New School’s photography program in New York City. With a uniquely sensitive approach to her subjects, MaryV focuses on the documentation of self-identity, bodies, intimacy, compassion, relationships, family, sexuality, and self-love. MaryV has succeeded in advocating for herself through modeling, acting, performance art, and as a professional image-maker. She had her first solo show gallery at the age of 19 at Space 776 in Brooklyn, New York, displaying her Gold Series and Gold Performance. Loving You, MaryV’s second solo exhibition, was the first in her hometown of Denver. She created and directed Standing Performance in Washington Square Park. She has shot campaigns for clients such as Calvin Klein and Google, remaining true to her mission of creating mindful and inclusive representation for her community. She has collaborated with brands such as Polaroid, Glossier, Opening Ceremony, Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, and publications such as American Vogue, Vogue Italia, Interview Magazine, Them, and The New York Times.
Lot Winther
although frequently taking base in Denmark, Lot has spent most of the past year in Latin America, which has and continues to provide her with inspiration. Especially street art evolving current women's issues has caught her attention and sparked reflection. Her artworks have always centered around women and liberating the female figure. With her pieces, she aims to empower women to step into their power and shine their light.
Claudia Brncic Becker
5 years ago she started working as a self-taught textile artist. she opened an experimental studio/workshop, which fuses macramé, loom, weaving, and barrement techniques, among others, to create textile pieces as decorative and artistic elements. The pieces that she designs and creates are mostly signature pieces, reflecting her love and passion for yarns, wool, ropes, pigments, and natural elements. She likes to intervene in each piece to create unique, original, and timeless works that stand out in any space and give harmony and balance to the environment. She works with artisans from Guatemala and other parts of the world, always looking for sustainable and handmade raw materials.
Sarah Umles
is an interdisciplinary and socially-engaged artist whose creative practice spans sculpture and digital media, participatory performance and interactive installation, experimental storytelling, and curatorial practice. Sarah holds a Master’s in Arts Administration & Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Film & Visual Culture from the University of California Riverside. Her solo and collaborative work have been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, California Museum of Photography, BoldPas, CalArts, and in numerous site-specific and non-traditional contexts.
Michelle Dussault
is a painter turned writer. All her work, visual or prose, contains references to the wild and the domesticated world. She combines the uncanny with the familiar to depict the mystical undercurrents of embodied lives. She uses psychedelic undertones, references to the Buddhist Bardo, conscious cannabis, and shamanic plant ceremonies to convey supernatural elements and depict otherworldly sojourns.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied
is a Sudanese-Australian writer, broadcaster, and award-winning social advocate with a background in mechanical engineering. Yassmin has published three books with Penguin Random House, a best-selling memoir, Yassmin's Story, at age 24, and two novels for younger readers, You Must Be Layla, and Listen Layla, in 2019 and 2021 respectively. Both books have been optioned for screen by Goalpost Productions, with Yassmin as lead writer. Yassmin’s upcoming essay collection, Talking About a Revolution, is scheduled for release in June 2022. In 2020, Yassmin co-write the sold-out immersive theatre production at Kensington Palace, United Queendom, selected for the London Soho Theatre Writer’s Lab and was awarded the prestigious Australia Council Keesing Studio Residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Beyond her fiction work, Yassmin’s social commentary has appeared in TIME magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, Teen Vogue, The Independent, Huffpost, London’s Evening Standard, and more, with her work on the Sudanese Revolutions of particular note. Her critically acclaimed essays have also been published widely, including in the best-selling It’s Not About The Burqa and The New Daughters of Africa. One of the 2020 LinkedIn Changemakers, Yassmin is a globally sought-after advisor on issues of social justice, focused on the intersections of race, gender, and faith. Yassmin founded Youth Without Borders at the age of 16, then started Mumtaza a decade later, focusing on women of color. She has traveled to over 24 countries across five continents, speaking to governments, civil society, and corporates on anti-racism and achieving substantive change. Yassmin’s internationally acclaimed TED talk, What does my headscarf mean to you, has been viewed over two million times and was chosen as one of TED’s top ten ideas of 2015. She has been awarded numerous awards for her advocacy, including the 2018 Young Voltaire Award for Free Speech.
Kristen Bulger
is a writer whose poetry has appeared in Salamander, Superstition Review, Houseguest, Yes, Poetry, On the Seawall, and elsewhere. She holds a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Suffolk University and an M.F.A in Creative Writing from the University of New Hampshire. She has worked for art nonprofits, in higher education, and has taught creative writing, English, and social studies at high schools and universities. She is the co-host and creator of the Life Backstage podcast for The Music Hall, an arts and cultural organization. Originally from New Hampshire, Kristen has lived in Madrid, Spain, Prague, Czech Republic, and currently resides in San Francisco, California.
2021
Morena Barra
born in Naples in 1991, grew up in Eastern Switzerland, where she lives until now. Since 2012 she has been travelling with her cameras in the documentary and artistic field. She deals with socio-cultural and socio-political, feminist, erotic as well as existential themes. The focus of her artistic work is the contrasts in our social structures and human existence. Norm and abnormal, real and surreal, pleasure and pain, life and death. She is interested in letting seemingly ambivalent things flow into each other and finding out where the boundaries are, whether there are any at all and what lies in between.
Sami Cutrona
is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, photography, and related media. Based in San Francisco, with an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Cutrona’s work is shaped by the locus and limits of their queer experience.
Andrew Boylan
is a songwriter based in Boston, MA. In 2018 he toured the US selling merch for WHY?. In 2019 he played guitar for singer-songwriter Tomberlin, performing at festivals such as Primavera Sound and appearing on NPR’s Tiny Desk. He investigates musical practices that operate outside of commercial consolidation, and explores how musical forms are shaped by quotidian social fabrics.