Ethan Bradford Barrett Villarreal (they/them) is a Mexican-American web developer with a strong focus on accessibility and usability, focusing specifically on education, publishing, and medical services. They also serve as the executive director of Denverarts.org, a local resource the Denver art community.

Beyond their career in web development, Ethan is also known as Bimbonita, an accomplished DJ specializing in Latin dance music genres such as cumbia and reggaeton. Their family ties to Monterrey, Nuevo León, the birthplace of cumbia rebajada, and Iztapalapa, Mexico City, where Mexican reggaetón emerged, have deeply influenced their musical style.

Instagram: @BuildingsAreHeavy

Portfolio: buildingsareheavy.com

Music: bimbonita.com

Kate M. Nicholson (she/her) is a civil rights attorney, arts activist, and the founder and Executive Director of the National Pain Advocacy Center, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the health and human rights of people with pain. She has spoken at TED, universities, and think tanks, testified in state legislatures, and briefed the U.S. Congress. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Washington Monthly, Hill, STAT, and MedPage Today. Her advocacy has been featured by the New York Times, Guardian, Washington Post, NBC, Scientific American, BBC, Newsweek, NPR, the ACLU’s At Liberty, and elsewhere.  She previously served on the collecting committee at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Advisory Board of the University of Colorado Art Museum in Boulder, and she currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Ulrich Museum. Nicholson was a founding board member of Tilt West and edits its written responses to roundtables.

Sharifa Lafon (she/her) is an artist-facilitator and community organizer. In addition to her board position with Tilt West, Sharifa is currently the executive director and curator at Denver Digerati, a 501(c)(3) that specializes in experimental practices at the intersection of art, science, and technology, and a lecturer in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Colorado Denver.

Tricia Waddell (she/her) is the textile artist behind Studio Blkbird, based in Denver, Colorado at Tank Studios. Inspired by her degree in fashion design from the Fashion Institute of Technology and a variety of surface design workshops, her work combines painting and screen-printing with reactive dyes and resists to create visual textures inspired by abstract art, ceramics, and graphic design. She creates soft sculptures and artworks that explore the visceral combination of form, color, pattern, and texture to evoke personal narratives and mental health themes. In addition to exhibiting her work in galleries, she’s a member of the Surface Design Association and an artist member of the Colorado Art Therapy Association. When she’s not in the studio, she works as an editor, writer, and storyteller creating content for artists, makers, and non-profits.

Anna Ghublikian (they/them) is a multi-disciplinary artist and documentary filmmaker. Their background is in Art History and Public Humanities, with a focus on engaging communities through collaborative curation and programming. They’ve done industry work as a development producer for streaming video content on fine art, and are involved in local activism and community organizing, serving on the Board of Directors for the Chinook Fund, and as a member of Mountain Media Arts Collective (MMAC). 

Manuel Aragon (he/him) is a Latinx writer, director, and filmmaker from Denver, CO, with nearly 20 years of experience in nonprofit work, focusing on community engagement, project management, and film/TV production. He has worked at six nonprofit organizations, building community-led programs, inclusive spaces, and art experiences.

Manuel holds a BFA in Film/TV from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He is currently working on Norteñas, a speculative fiction short story collection centered in the Northside of Denver, a Mexican and Mexican-American community. His work has been featured in ANMLY, and his short story "A Violent Noise" was nominated for the 2020 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. He is a 2021 Periplus Collective Fellow, a 2021 NYFA IAP Mentor, a 2023 Tin House Residency winner, and a Colorado Book Award finalist as editor of the anthology All The Lives We Ever Lived: Vol 2.

Manuel's film work, including writing and directing, has been showcased on MTV, Pitchfork, and Stereogum. He won the CineLatino Pitch Latino Award for Emerging Filmmakers with his web series Welcome to the Northside, a comedic take on gentrification and Latino displacement in North Denver. He lives in Denver with his wife, Sarah, and their four children.

Mary Grace Bernard (MG, she/her) is a transmedia and performance artist, educator, advocate, and crip witch. Her practice finds itself at the intersection of performance art, transmedia installation art, art scholarship, art writing, curation, and activism.

Sarah McKenzie (she/her) is a visual artist and one of the co-founders of Tilt West. She has exhibited her paintings nationally, including shows with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Yale School of Architecture, the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Her work is represented in Denver by David B. Smith Gallery. Since 2020, Sarah has been working on an extended project researching and painting the architecture of prisons. In 2021, she was awarded the Marion International Fellowship for the Visual and Performing Arts to support her research into carceral space. That same year, she also began teaching art classes inside the Colorado Department of Corrections. In 2024, Sarah co-founded Impact Arts, a non-profit that creates and supports exhibition opportunities for formerly and currently incarcerated artists.

Mindy Bray (she/her) is a painter and muralist based in Denver, CO. Her work investigates the intersection of natural and built environments through pattern, reduction, and physical space. Mindy earned her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Iowa in 2005 and has taught drawing and foundations at the University of Denver and Metropolitan State University.  Her work has been exhibited nationally at galleries including Goodwin Fine Art, Rule Gallery, Ironton, and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art. She has been featured in New American Paintings, The Denver Post, Modern in Denver magazine, art ltd., and Luxe Interiors and Design. Mindy’s public commissions include permanent works at the Westin Hotel at Denver International Airport and the Colorado Convention Center, and her private commissions can be found in commercial and residential spaces throughout Denver. Mindy is a current member of Tank Studios, a board member of Tilt West, and an instructor for the Denver Art Museum’s Creative Classes.