Erin Clark (she/her) is a member of the Denver City Planning Board, a real estate attorney and a land use consultant with a solo practice in Denver and Boulder. She is committed to seeing development of thoughtful and sustainable urban infill projects that promote walkability and community cohesion. A Denver native, Erin has worked in the fields of planning and development since 2001, starting with a role in real estate and affordable housing at the Lowry Redevelopment Authority. She later spent five years in the City of Pasadena, CA, as a planner in both long-range planning and economic development. There, she participated in the drafting and adoption of a citywide Recreation & Parks Master Plan, and she also oversaw large commercial and institutional development projects, including environmental review for renovation of the Rose Bowl stadium. Erin holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Brown University, a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Southern California, and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lydia Hooper (she/her) assists organizations in communicating about complex topics and collaborating in complex relationships. She offers services and trainings in communications strategy, data storytelling, graphic recording, and visual coaching. You can read her free ebook “Using Visuals to Support Collaboration” and learn more at www.fountainvisualcommunications.com

Gregg Deal (he/him) is a husband, father, and a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. He is a provocative contemporary artist-activist. Much of Deal’s work deals with Indigenous identity and pop culture, touching on issues of race relations, historical consideration, and stereotype. With his work — including paintings, mural work, performance art, filmmaking and spoken word — Deal critically examines issues within Indian country such as decolonization, the Native mascot issue, and appropriation.

Deal was recently showcased on PBS Arts District. He was a Native Arts Artist-in-Residence at the Denver Art Museum in 2015–2016 and an Artist-in-Residence at UC Berkeley for the 2017–2018 academic year. His art has been exhibited nationally since 2002. Deal has lectured widely at prominent educational institutions and museums including: Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Columbia University, New York City, NY; University of Maryland, College Park, MD; Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA; Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC; Creative Mornings, DC and Denver; University of Colorado, Boulder, CO; and Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO. His television appearances have included PBS, “The Daily Show,” and W. Kamau Bell’s “Totally Biased,” as well as appearances on Aljazeera, ESPN, and ABC News.

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.

Yasmeen Siddiqui (she/her) is the founder of Minerva Projects, minervaprojects.org, an incubator space in Denver, Colorado, that is tailored for artists and curators who seek to contextualize and historicize their ideas in an environment that encourages experimentation and new possibilities. Minerva Projects is committed to clarifying, by accurately describing and theorizing, the practices of artists and curators through engaging with leading thinkers and writers who animate its traveling exhibitions program and the Minerva Press book series. The project was launched in October 2017. Siddiqui is also a writer and curator; pasts subjects have included Do Ho Suh, Consuelo Castañeda, Hassan Khan, Linda Ganjian, Pia Lindman, Lara Baladi, Mary Carothers, Matt Lynch and Chris Vorhees, and Mel Charney. Her writing has appeared on Hyperallergic and in ART PAPERS, The Cairo Times, Medina Magazine, Flash Art, Modern Painters, NKA, and The Brooklyn Rail, and in books and exhibition catalogues including: Fault Lines Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes. inIVA, London, 2003; A Contingent Object of Research. Storefront Books, New York, 2010; Do Ho Suh: Home Within Home. Leeum: Samsung Museum of Art, 2012; “Do Ho Suh” in If you were to live here: The 5th Auckland Triennial, 2013; and On Architecture: Melvin Charney, a Critical Anthology. Edited by Louis Martin. Montreal: McGill — Queen’s University Press, 2013.

Steven Frost (he/him) makes visible the hidden histories of materials through collaborations, objects, and performances. A fiber-based artist, he uses the history of textiles as a window into issues of community building, queer culture, and conservation. His work includes investigations into the secret life of Liberace, collaborations with civic organizations, marketing in the firearms industry, and projects exploring fiber and masculinity. Frost holds a BFA from Alfred University and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently based in Boulder, Colorado, he has performed and exhibited his work across the country for nearly 20 years. He hosts monthly Sewing Rebellions at the Boulder Public Library. Frost recently presented his research on the history of the marketing and production of pink firearms at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles. On March 30th, he will host an evening of performances and workshops at the Denver Art Museum. Frost is also an instructor of Media Studies and Performance Art at the University of Colorado Boulder in the College of Media Communication and Information.

Kealey Boyd (she/her) is an art historian, writer and museum educator. She is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic and has published art criticism with College Art Association (CAA Reviews), ArtBeat Magazine, and Artillery Magazine. She is also a lecturer in Art History at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her research interests include methodologies for interpreting painting and other visual forms as an integral element of political and cultural discourses.

Noel Black (he/him) is poet, publisher, translator, and radio producer who was born in Tucson and grew up in Colorado Springs. He is the author of three full-length collections: Uselysses (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), La Goon (Furniture Press Books, 2014), and The Natural Football League (The New Heave-Ho, 2016). Black translated Puerto Rican poet Mara Pastor’s Llámame Láctea/Children of Another Hour (Argos Books, 2014). Pastor and Guillermo Rebollo-Gil translated Black’s long poem Prophecies for the Past/Profécias Para El Pasado (2.0.1.3. Editorial, 2015). With Julien Poirier, he is coeditor of Kevin Opstedal’s Pacific Standard Time (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016). His other chapbooks include: Lunch Poem, This is the Strange Part, Night Falls/Under Days, November to June, Vacancy, Shoplifter’s Honor, InnerVisions, and In The City of Word People. His most recent chapbook is High Noon (Blue Press Books, 2018).

Black was the coeditor of Log Magazine with Ed Berrigan in the late 1990s, and from 1998 to 2004 he ran Angry Dog Press and published the Angry Dog Midget Editions. From 2004–2006, he published and edited The Toilet Paper, a satirical monthly newspaper in Colorado Springs. After dropping out of the MA in Poetics program at the now-defunct New College of California in 1998, he will earn an MFA in poetics and creative non-fiction from the Mile-High MFA Program at Regis University in summer 2018. He lives in Manitou Springs, Colorado with his family.

Megan Gafford (she/her) received her MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2016, and her BA from the University of New Orleans in 2011. Her installations are made from materials most often associated with science, such as cybernetics and particle detectors, which Gafford uses to create environments where people may wonder at how the world works. Gafford’s work has been exhibited at galleries and museums nationally, including David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Backyard Ballroom in New Orleans. She is currently an artist-in-residence at RedLine Contemporary Art Center in Denver. For more information about Gafford’s work, visit www.megangafford.com.

Rick Griffith (he/him) is a British-born graphic designer of West-Indian origin, and the Design Director of the communication design studio MATTER in Denver, Colorado. His free graphic works are often nested in a writing practice and often produced on 19th and early 20th-century printing presses with a combination of traditional and avant-garde techniques. He is a scholar of typographic history and frequently lectures throughout North America and internationally on design history, typography, and his unique model of professional practice. He is a DJ and has been collecting (and playing) music for over 30 years.