Molina Speaks (he/him) is an artist, musician, writer, poet, and filmmaker, a cultural futurist, living word architect, and human bridge. His first film, ROOT, is an independent venture that premiered in his home city of Denver, Colorado on March 31st, 2018. ROOT then captured the Premio Ometeotl Award for New Media at its film festival debut at Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center XicanIndie Film Fest. In addition to his own music, poetry and film work, Molina performs regularly with Chicano Afrobeat orchestra Pink Hawks and punk/hip-hop act Roots Rice and Beans (Best of Denver 2018 Best New Band). Molina was named 2017 Mastermind by Westword Magazine, and was voted top Solo Rap Artist in Westword’s 2018 Music Awards.
Offstage, Molina is a community-focused educator. He teaches cultural and media studies courses at the university level and works with young people at all age levels to develop their imaginations, creativity, and sense of wonder about their existence. Most notably, Molina coordinates Youth On Record’s Fellowship program for 18-23 year-old emerging artists. The Fellowship program was recently recognized with a Westword Best of Denver 2018 award for Best Place to Find the Future of the Music Business. This program is also the recipient of a 2018-19 Arts in Society Award, for its role in addressing race and class inequities in the creative industries.
Sheree “lovemestiza” Brown (she/her) is a writer, poet, AfroMestizaFuturist, deep creative, educator, and mother. She dances with the cosmos and writes the futures of her people in her spare time. A great deal of her writing is a blend between poetry and prose, and an amalgamation of experience and dreams. Sheree is a writing instructor with Lighthouse Writers, and she is the founder of Ancestral Herbalism—a community collective of dozens of kitchen herbalists, holistic health practitioners and healers of many traditions. Sheree has featured at Lighthouse Writer’s Annual Literary Festival, Cafe Cultura, Queenz of Hip-Hop, The Renaissance Poetry Night at the Kasbah, and has taught and led workshops at dozens of school and community events through Lighthouse Writers and other arts and literary organizations.
Sheree’s first book is titled lovemestiza, and is an ode to her mixed ancestry. A self-described “Woman of many colors,” she reflects on her journey as a Black woman and Chicana with mixed “Mestiza” and Indigenous roots. Her four-part book also traces her experiences becoming a mother, and healing from intergenerational, personal, and social traumas. In addition to poetry and prose, lovemestiza contains polaroids, quotes, and original plant-based medicinal recipes crafted by la “lovemestiza” herself. LoveMestiza is love work. What does your love work look like?
Sarah Wambold (she/her) is the executive producer and content strategist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she leads a team of editors and producers who create interpretive media, including videos, articles, essays, and podcasts. With more than 18 years in the arts and culture sector, she has also worked for the Clyfford Still Museum and the MCA Chicago, and is the co-founder of Denver-based non-profit Tilt West, an organization whose mission is to promote critical discourse on arts and culture in Denver.
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.
Conor King (he/him) is an artist based in Denver, Colorado whose work is rooted in the medium of photography. His work focuses on myth, truth, the uncanny, the fantastical, and the human condition. He investigates these concepts through photography, maquettes, optical devises, video, and digital manipulation.
King received his BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his MFA from Pratt Institute. His work has been shown nationally and internationally, and he has curated exhibitions in Colorado. King was a RedLine artist and a founding member of Tank Studios. He served on the Board of Directors at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center where he also assisted with exhibition development. King teaches courses on photography at the University of Colorado Denver and owns and operates Third Dune Productions, a video production and photo services company.
Andrea Moore (she/her) is a social artist using writing, performance, and photography to foster connection and dialogue across social and cultural lines. She is also the co-founder and Executive Director of a nonprofit organization called The Wayfaring Band, which creates opportunities to increase leadership and life skills through travel for adults with and without cognitive and developmental disabilities. As a working artist Andrea explores themes of social and cultural belonging, creating original stories that reflect her experiences and travels near and far. In her capacity as Executive Director for The Wayfaring Band, Andrea helps facilitate opportunities for independence, socialization, and adventure as part of a neurodiverse community. http://www.andreamoorearts.com/
Regan Linton (she/her), MSW, MFA, is an actor, writer, director, and Artistic Director of Denver’s disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company. As a wheelchair user leading a major US theatre company, Regan has become a nationally-recognized advocate for equity and disability inclusion in the arts, serving on numerous initiatives including the national JUBILEE, Colorado’s Community ACTS Fund, Denver’s Art of Access, and Meow Wolf’s Community Advisory Committee. Professional acting credits include Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Mixed Blood (MN), the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Pasadena Playhouse, Phamaly, and Apothetae, and writing features include New Mobility Magazine, Theatre Forum, and TCG Diversity Salons. http://www.reganlinton.com/
Kristie Soares (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Women & Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and an active performance artist. Both her research and her performance work explore queerness in Caribbean and Latinx communities. Soares’s research focuses on 19th-21st century Latinx literature and media, with a specialization in queer Caribbean cultural production. Her current book project, Salsa Epistemology, engages with salsa—a music and dance tradition—to show how embodied playfulness figures as an integral part of queer activism in the Spanish Caribbean diaspora. Her work has been published in Frontiers, Letras Femeninas, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Remezcla and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Like her research, Soares’s teaching draws heavily on queer and performance methodologies. She encourages students to “try out” intellectual concepts using their bodies, through decolonial pedagogies such as Spoken Word Poetry and Theatre of the Oppressed. She also facilitates performance poetry workshops in schools and juvenile detention facilities. Her own performance work is invested in making political statements in and through the body.
Emily Irvin (she/her) maintains a hybrid art practice that merges her experience working within ceramics, performance art, sculpture, and printmaking. In 2015, she received her B.S. in health sciences, and in 2016 she received her B.F.A. with a concentration in ceramics from the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Irvin recently completed a year of post-baccalaureate study in St. Paul, Minnesota and a study abroad program in Mexico. Additionally her practice has been supported by several artist-in-residence programs including Baltimore Clayworks. She is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in ceramics at Colorado University in Boulder.
Rafael Fajardo (he/him) is an Associate Professor in the Emergent Digital Practices department at the University of Denver. He has been exploring the expressive potential of the medium of videogames through his creative work, his research, and his teaching since 2000. He is the founder of SWEAT, a loose collaborative that pioneered the creation of socially conscious videogames. Rafael’s game projects have been featured at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Caixa Forum in Barcelona and various other museums and festivals. Fajardo has been engaging in collaborative interdisciplinary research in the field of games and education, concentrating on learning through game-making. His projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by the Colorado Council on the Arts, in excess of one million dollars. Rafael and his collaborators have conducted lectures and workshops at OCAD, Parsons, ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM SIGCSE, ISTE, and the Games for Change Festival. I.D. Magazine named Fajardo among the top fifty designers in the country in 2004. Fajardo has served on the board of AIGA Colorado, and was one of the founders of the AIGA Center for Cross Cultural Design. He has served on the Board of Advisors of the International Digital Media and Arts Association and of Games for Change. Rafael’s research focuses on design methods, design education, design pedagogy, ludology, meaningful play, and semiotics. His course areas include historical design methods, typography and book design, and emerging design methods, participatory and collaborative design, game design, and the emerging theoretical area of critical game studies. Fajardo received an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1993, a BFA and a BA in Studio Art with a concentration in Design from the University of Texas at Austin.