Bianca Mikahn (she/her) is a power-house emcee, poet, composer, cultural activist, and educator who wears many hats. She is Executive Director of Check Your Head, a non-profit focused on youth mental health, and a Partner Artist with leading creative educators, Youth On Record. Bianca’s writing style is described as experimental and thought-provoking, fearlessly addressing themes of self awareness and community engagement. Whether performing alone or with various musician collectives in Denver, her stage presence and lyrical content have earned her multiple nominations for “Best Emcee” in Denver’s Westword. Mikahn has shared stages locally at Regis University and Denver University and in Stockholm, Sweden at the historic Fylkengin Theatre. Her lyrical work has also been featured in social justice courses at Wyoming University. Currently Mikahn is honing social emotional learning and art based facilitation to encourage trauma informed care and mental health first aid (adult and youth modules) in marginalized communities.

Laura Shill (she/her) is an artist based in Denver, Colorado whose work is a collision of sculpture, installation, performance, printmaking, and photography. Her work addresses ideas of the viewer and the subject, disclosure and concealment, absence and intimacy. Her works explore the transformative potential of people and objects through early and experimental forms of image making that pair the sinister and beautiful.

Shill earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2012 and has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at the 2017 Venice Biennale at the European Cultural Center, The Gallery Of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, Redline Gallery, Denver, and Hyperlink Gallery, Chicago. Her recent solo exhibition, Phantom Touch took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver.

Adam Gildar (he/him) is currently a nomadic curator and art dealer. He founded and ran Illiterate, an art publication and project gallery, from 2005 through 2011. In 2012 he opened Gildar Gallery in Denver. Through his commercial gallery, Gildar has curated more than fifty exhibitions in Denver, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and New York, and has participated in many national and international art fairs. He has consulted with local museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, the Denver Art Museum, and Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. He has also consulted on and contributed his writing to Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia, a book and traveling exhibition organized by the Walker Art Center, in partnership with the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive and the Cranbrook Art Museum. From 2012 to 2019, Gildar also directed ArtPlant, a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to creating cross-cultural dialogue within the Rocky Mountain region. With ArtPlant, Gildar developed the Biennial Ambassadors program—an artist residency exchange between Denver and Mexico City—for the Biennial of the Americas, and he launched an annual artist-centric symposium cohosted by Black Cube Nomadic Museum. In May 2019, Gildar closed his physical gallery and put his nonprofit work on hiatus, in order to travel and research decentralized yet regionally relevant models for engaging with the “art world.”

Anthony Garcia Sr. (he/him) was born and raised in Denver. He is the co-founder and executive director of Birdseed Collective, a Denver-based nonprofit that makes a positive impact in local communities through programs and projects with innovative arts and humanities offerings. He is a painter and mural artist, a former artist-in-residence at RedLine Contemporary Art, a 2022 Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Fellow, and co-founder/co-curator of Alto Gallery in Denver.

Raymundo Muñoz (he/him) was born and raised in El Paso, TX, but has made Colorado his home since 1999. He received education at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and University of Colorado-Denver, where he received a B.S. in biology. Art was always more his thing, though, and now devotes his life to making it and promoting it. He’s a self-taught linocut printmaker, musician, writer, and photographer, but does enjoy other drawing-based media and sculpture.

Raymundo shows in various spaces around town and is the director/co-founder/co-curator at Alto Gallery. He’s an active board member of Birdseed Collective, a local 501(c)(3) non-profit organization devoted to improving the lives of surrounding communities through arts, education, and food programs. Above all, Raymundo is guided by the simple principle that art is a bridge, and that its greatest function is to connect people across time and space.