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.
Rushaan Kumar (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Feminist and Gender Studies at Colorado College. He holds a PhD in Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Literary and Cultural Studies from EFLU, India. He teaches and researches transnational gender and sexuality, critical trans/masculinity studies, postcolonial media, public culture, and queer social movements in India and the South Asian diaspora. His current book project, Apprehending Female Masculinity in India, is an examination of the simultaneous impact of globalization and the rise of Hindu supremacist nationalism on female- and trans-masculine people in India, specifically in and through media representation.
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.”
Rebecca Vaughan (she/her) was born and raised in Denver, CO and currently resides in Kansas City, MO. She has lived in the Netherlands and Canada. She received a BFA cum laude in sculpture at the University of Colorado, Boulder and completed her MFA at Carnegie Mellon University. Vaughan previously served as the artistic director of PlatteForum, a non-profit which hosts artists-in-residence from all over the world and pairs them with under-resourced youth to create artworks addressing topics of social justice and community. Vaughan has also served as the program director for the Art Students League of Denver, and she was the former chair of fine arts and head of sculpture at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. She held a residency as a resource artist at Redline Contemporary Art Center from 2011 to 2013. In 2019, in order to more fully pursue her art career, Vaughan gave up her work in non-profits and moved to Kansas City, where she is a part-time instructor for the Kansas City Art Institute and UMKC. She originally began baking as a hobby, but Vaughan now bakes professionally, supplying sourdough and traditional baguettes to Northwest Missouri restaurants.
Westword Magazine has called composer and artist Nathan Hall (he/him) “a try-anything aural dreamer with the skills and programming genius to mount ideas both intriguing and outrageous.” Nathan uses music as an artistic medium to explore a variety of fields including science, nature, the fine arts, history, and sexuality. There is an emotional resonance present in all of his works, from his traditional classical pieces for chamber ensembles, to experimental electronic pieces, sound sculptures, and multimedia projects. Nathan’s drive for making site-specific work is tied to his passion for travel and cultural exchange, while other works are inspired by his sexuality and experiences as a gay man, creating a special intimacy between performer, place, and audience.
Nathan Hall is a former Fulbright fellow to Iceland and a McKnight visiting composer. He holds his doctorate in musical arts (DMA) from CU Boulder, an MM from Carnegie Mellon, and a BA from Vassar College. His works have been performed and exhibited in 14 countries and 12 US States, by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, Buntport Theater, Tenth Intervention, GALA Choruses, Playground Ensemble, the Gay/Lesbian Chorus of San Francisco, Icelandic choirs, pianist Adam Tendler, a convention of roller coaster enthusiasts, and porn star Dirk Caber, among others. Recent residencies have included the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, PA) and Skaftfell Art Center (Seyðisfjörður, Iceland). Nathan was also the Denver Art Museum’s first creative in residence. He is currently an adjunct faculty member in music composition at the University of Denver.
Brenton Weyi (he/him) uses the power of words to cultivate humanity. He is a writer, thinker, creative polymath, and the son of Congolese immigrants. Informed by travel to nearly seventy nations, his work blends narrative, philosophy, and history to examine questions of ethics and the human social fabric. At Whitman College, he co-founded an award-winning poetry collective and founded an award-winning dance troupe. Currently, Brenton is an inaugural playwright fellow at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and his poem “Multiplicity” is one of the official poems of the City of Denver. His work has appeared in Boulevard Magazine, American Theatre Magazine, INC, Daily Stoic, and Head Room Sessions on RMPBS, among others. He was an inaugural fellow in the Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop Writing-in-Color retreat, and he is a finalist at SPACE on Ryder Farm. Brenton is the former campaign architect of a groundbreaking Congolese presidential campaign that appeared in the BBC, LA Times, and more. He also spent time living at a meditation and martial arts school in Asia before working with disenfranchised populations in the region. He collaborated with Union Hall on their nationally curated exhibits of writers and visual artists, Poems for Our Country and Words for Our Country, he has worked with the NFL, Airbnb, and others, and he serves on the board of Tilt West. Brenton is a Moth story slam champion, a proud member of Playback Theatre West & Storytellers Acapella, and a TEDx speaker and lead organizer. He believes truth can be found at the intersection of disciplines and stories.
Jane Burke (she/her) obtained a bachelor’s in fine art with an emphasis on painting from the University of Colorado at Boulder and received an interdisciplinary master’s degree in Asian art history and Chinese language from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She held curatorial and collections management positions at the Honolulu Museum of Art, The Contemporary Museum, and The East West Center Gallery in Honolulu from 2006 to 2013. Burke was the Textile Art & Fashion Curatorial Fellow at the Denver Art Museum and has worked on numerous textile and fashion exhibitions since 2014 including: First Glance—Second Look, Creative Crossroads, Shock Wave: Japanese Fashion Design 1980s-90s, Drawn to Glamour: Fashion Illustrations by Jim Howard, Dior: From Paris to the World, Paris to Hollywood, and Suited: Empowered Feminine Fashion. She has also recently guest curated Colorado Asians at Artworks Center for Contemporary Art in Loveland, Imminent Archive for RULE gallery in Marfa, and Another Angle for the University of Denver Museum of Anthropology.
Allison Parrish (she/her) is a computer programmer, poet, and game designer whose teaching and practice address the unusual phenomena that blossom when language and computers meet. She is an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Allison was named “Best Maker of Poetry Bots” by the Village Voice in 2016, and her zine of computer-generated poems called “Compasses” received an honorary mention in the 2021 Prix Ars Electronica. Allison is the co-creator of the board game Rewordable (Clarkson Potter, 2017) and author of several books, including @Everyword: The Book(Instar, 2015) and Articulations (Counterpath, 2018). Her poetry has recently appeared in BOMB Magazine and Strange Horizons. Allison is originally from West Bountiful, Utah and currently lives in Brooklyn
Chris Coleman (he/him) was born in West Virginia and he received his MFA from SUNY Buffalo in New York. His work includes sculptures, videos, creative coding and interactive installations. Coleman has had his work in exhibitions and festivals in more than 25 countries including Brazil, Argentina, Singapore, Finland, the U.A.E., Italy, Germany, France, China, the UK, Latvia, and across North America. He currently resides in Denver, CO and is a Professor of Emergent Digital Practices and the Director of the Clinic for Open Source Arts at the University of Denver.