Matt Popke (he/him) is a software developer and designer who has been at the Denver Art Museum since 2011. Trained in computer science, he somehow became a web designer in the 90s, and he has been trying to figure out why any of this is happening ever since.
Theresa Anderson (she/her b. 1967, St. Paul, MN) lives and works in Denver, CO. Developing interdisciplinary work through performance art, sculpture, drawing and painting, she explores concepts dealing with conflict, and/ or, oppositional categories, and recitations on agency and inadequacy. She is alum of artist residencies at Redline Denver, PlatteForum, and Vermont Studio Center where she received fellowship funding for her sculpture. Anderson has received multiple commissions and stipends through organizations such as the Biennial of the Americas, Black Cube Nomadic Museum with the curator Cortney Lane Stell, as well as the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and the presentation of a master artist demonstration on drawing at the Denver Art Museum. Recent solo and notable exhibitions include everything squiggles at 808 Projects, curated by Mardee Goff, every length of a drawing at Yeah Maybe, Minneapolis curated by Nicole Soukup, Performativity at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, curated by Michol Hebron, Thief Among Thieves at Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Adam Lerner and Nora Abrams and some kind of cuddle at Gray Contemporary, Houston, where she is represented.
Donna Bryson (she/her) is housing and hunger reporter for Denverite and an author. Her 2018 book, Home of the Brave, recounts how a small American town took on the big challenge of helping military veterans reintegrate into civilian life. It won second place in the non-fiction book category of the National Federation of Press Women’s 2019 Communications Contest. Bryson is also the author of It’s a Black White Thing, which explores young South Africans’ attitudes about race.
Marina Eckler (she/her) is a painter and multidisciplinary artist based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in painting and printmaking from San Francisco State University and completed her MFA at Maine College of Art in 2013. She teaches printmaking, drawing, and two-dimensional design in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Her work has been shown at The Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico, The New York Art Book Fair, The Lab in San Francisco, California, and was the subject of a two-person exhibition at UCCS’s Gallery of Contemporary Art in 2014. Her ongoing performative slideshow and interview project, Going Home, has been staged at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, CA, Unnameable Books in Brooklyn, NY, and as part of the 2017 ArtPop Festival in Colorado Springs. From 2013–2016, she founded and operated Mountain Fold Books, a non-profit bookstore and event space for the arts in Colorado Springs. In her recent project, Fin: A Going Away Party, she orchestrated a farewell event to bid the earth, as we know it, goodbye due to climate change predictions and actualities. An exhibition of her recent work will open in February, 2020 at The Machine Shop in Colorado Springs. Her art deals with issues of time, power, gender, and other mysteries.
Nishant Upadhyay (they/them) is an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Josh Mattison (he/him) is an award winning podcast producer, engineer, host, writer and sound designer. He created, produced and edited the pop culture show The Revisitors and was a host on the comedy podcast Bad Or Not Bad. Josh also served as an associate producer of “A Daughter’s Voice” podcast for the Clyfford Still Art Museum. Last fall he released a podcast called The Order of Death, a limited podcast series exploring the murder of Denver talk radio host Alan Berg and the people and ideology responsible for his death. Denver Westword named it the best crime podcast in Denver in 2019. Currently he is the creator, editor, producer and host of Low Orbit, an audio magazine featuring voices, stories and sounds from the creative community.
The daughter of a refugee father from China and an immigrant mother from Jamaica, Jennifer Ho (she/her) is the director of the Center for Humanities & the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she also holds an appointment as Professor of Ethnic Studies. She is the president of the Association for Asian American Studies and the author of three scholarly monographs. In addition to her academic work, Ho is active in community engagement around issues of race and intersectionality, leading workshops on anti-racism and how to talk about race in our current political climate. You can follow her on Twitter @drjenho.
Miranda Lash (she/her) is the Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and a board member for the Joan Mitchell Foundation. As Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Art Museum from 2014 to 2020, Lash orchestrated the museum’s installation of its first galleries exclusively dedicated to contemporary art in its new North Building and curated exhibitions including Yinka Shonibare CBE: The American Library; Keltie Ferris: *O*P*E*N*; BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND EVER; and Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art. From 2008 to 2014, Lash was the founding curator of modern and contemporary art at the New Orleans Museum of Art. There she curated over twenty exhibitions, including the large-scale traveling retrospective exhibition Mel Chin: Rematch and the exhibitions Rashaad Newsome: King of Arms; Camille Henrot: Cities of Ys; Swoon: Thalassa; Wayne Gonzales: Light to Dark, Dark to Light; and Parallel Universe: Quintron and Miss Pussycat Live at City Park. From 2017 to 2018 Lash was a member of the Artistic Director’s Council for the international triennial Prospect.4 in New Orleans. Lash has been a Clark Fellow at the Clark Art Institute, a consultant for Creative Capital, and a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts.
Hassan Khan (he/him) is a human performance coach and founder of Limitless Humans. He works with elite performers across a number of different industries. He teaches people how to be better versions of themselves and maximise their potential, all based on science. His work is focused on helping individuals and companies build their capabilities to deliver greater results.
Hassan holds an Economics degree, a Law degree, a Research Masters degree in Innovation, and a Master of Business Administration degree, and he is an alumni and graduate of Harvard Business School and the University of Cambridge. In his spare time, he is a hobbyist magician, an avid reader, a keen cricket player and fan, and is writing a book about the power of belief and expectations.
Damon McLeese (he/him) is a speaker, trainer, activist, and community artist who works at the intersection of art and disability. Damon specializes in unlocking the creative power of people regardless of their backgrounds, beliefs, or experiences. Whether in a corporate setting or in the classroom, Damon’s collaborative approach bridges the gap between creativity and community. His projects force us to look at creativity, ability, and disability in very different ways. Examples include a photography project for people who are blind, a street art project for people with Alzheimer’s, and a program that commissions corporate art projects by people with disabilities.