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Lisa Diane Wedgeworth is an interdisciplinary artist whose large-scale abstract paintings are informed by memory and employ energetic mark-making to interpret psychological and emotional energies. She is a recipient of the 2020 COLA Individual Artist Fellowship and has lectured about her work at NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness, Franklin County, OH), OTIS, California State University Los Angeles, Chapman University and Los Angeles City College where she is a part-time faculty member. A cultural producer, Wedgeworth exhibited emerging artists in her studio-based project space PS 2920 between 2015 - 2016 and recently launched the public platform, Conversations About Abstraction to share the voices of abstract artists historically excluded from the Western canon.

June Edmonds is a Los Angeles-based contemporary artist who uses abstract painting to explore how color, repetition, movement, and balance can serve as conduits to spiritual contemplation and interpersonal connection to her African-American roots. Exploring the psychological construct of skin color or tone through pattern and abstract painting has proven to be a revealing gesture and these ideas are explored in her energy circle paintings and her more recent flag paintings which discuss the alignment of multiple identities such as race, nationality, gender, or political leanings. Edmonds attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and has been awarded several prizes including a 2018 City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Grant (COLA), the 2020 Aware Prize for Women at the Armory Show and a 2020 Harpo Foundation Grant.

Emily Haraldson is an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Art History Department at GCC. Her research interests include 20th-century European and American Modernism, Contemporary Art, Feminist Art, and Political Visual Culture. As an instructor, she uses her classroom to shed light on social and political issues found in historical and contemporary art alike. Emily holds a M.A. with Distinction in Art History from California State University, Northridge and a Graduate Certificate in Curatorial and Museum Studies from California State University, Long Beach.

Kristine Schomaker is a Los Angeles based multidisciplinary artist, curator, mentor, art historian and publisher. She received her BA in Art History and a MA in Studio Art from California State University Northridge. In addition to being a practicing artist Schomaker is the founder of Shoebox PR, oversees and curates a residency space, Shoebox Projects at the Brewery in Los Angeles, is the president of the CSUN Arts Alumni Association and is the founder of the online contemporary art magazine Art and Cake. Schomaker has been exhibiting her work since the late 1990’s and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally

Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III is an interdisciplinary artist with an emphasis on painting. His work is an investigation of the interactions between different value systems found throughout Los Angeles, with a focus on intelligence, legitimacy, and authority. A driving question in his practice asks, “how as artists can we make work that, on the one hand, validates the neglected experiences of the people we care about (i.e., through direct positive representation and intervention) and, on the other, be a critical reflection on those structures that created the conditions of making a people socially, politically, economically invisible?” His projects manifest as pedagogical interventions as an arts educator for marginalized youth, paintings, performance, video, documentary video, and his socially engaged art practice.

Dulce Soledad Ibarra is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and curator with investments in community and identity-emphasized arts and opportunity. As a practicing artist, Ibarra discusses issues of generational guilt and cultural identities in videos, installations, and performances, and has been inviting the public to partake in the dialogue via workshops and partici5patory work. Looking through queer Xicanx perspective, the work is fueled by emotional labor, personal research and analysis. Currently, the work is centered around the Piñata/Party Supply District of Downtown Los Angeles, engaging in the means of sustaining as a community of businesses and as a place of cultural familiarities and commodities.

Danie Cansino is an educator and resident artist at Mi Familia Tattoo Studio, where she specializes in color, and Chicanx style black and grey realism. In fall of 2019, Danie began her candidacy for Master of Fine Arts, attending the University of Southern California. In examining her own cultural history, and her experience around tattooed people, Danie Cansino is interested in the comradery - and also prejudices - that tattooed people encounter. Growing up in the greater East Los Angeles area, Cansino explores the notion that clients, peers, and her personal mentors all have stories to tell-- showing the impact a tattoo can have on lifestyle, family, education, employment, and careers. Danie Cansino shares these stories; and shines light on lineage, tradition, and the hardships of this practice.

Ara Oshagn is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator working in documentary photography, collage, public art, portraiture, and film. His work, curatorial practice, and research live at the intersection of generational displacement, identity, and marginalized communities. He has published 2 monographs, has exhibited his work internationally, and is the winner of multiple awards, most recently as a “Cultural Trailblazer” by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. He is also a curator at ReflectSpace Gallery at the Glendale Central Library.

Meldia Yesayan is a cultural producer living in Los Angeles. Born in Tehran, Iran, Yesayan is a first-generation Armenian-American immigrant raised in Glendale. Yesayan is currently the Director of Oxy Arts, the art center for Occidental College, where she oversees all aspects of the programming, public engagement, and partnerships with artists and cultural institutions. Previously, Yesayan served as the Managing Director of Machine Project, a groundbreaking Los Angeles arts collective nationally recognized for its inventive engagement based programming and partnerships with museums and academic institutions across the country. Yesayan has contributed to the publications Art Papers and the Los Angeles Review of Books. and holds a JD and BA from UCLA, and a certificate in Art Appraisal Studies from NYU.

Nica Aquino (b. 1990, Los Angeles) is a practicing visual artist and curator. She received her BFA in Photo from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR) and her MA in Contemporary Visual Culture from the School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University (United Kingdom). Her work has been shown locally, nationally and internationally. In her artwork, she primarily experiments with 35mm analogue photography, just documenting life as she sees it. No fancy bells and whistles, no manipulations, just a cheap point and shoot camera (the exact same model from her childhood), cheap film and what's in front of her at the time. She believes art making should be accessible, and that you don't always need the newest fanciest toys to create something impactful.

Diane Williams is a Filipinx-American artist, researcher, and organizer based in Los Angeles, CA. In her work, she examines colonial legacies and the roles people play in systems and institutions of power. Williams explores this idea by drawing her audience into a deconstructed and hybrid space, real and imagined, familiar and unfamiliar, creating a counter-narrative based on her diasporic positionality. Her work has been featured in select publications and radio interviews including Artforum, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Magazine, LA Weekly, Artillery, Eastsider LA, Art and Cake, and KPFK. Williams has also exhibited in several solo and group shows at the Armory Center for the Arts, 18th Street Art Center, Walter Maciel Gallery, Museum of Art and History MOAH, PØST, Cerritos College Gallery, Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art RAFFMA, California State University San Diego, Children's Museum of the Arts New York, Berkeley Art Center, San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries SFAC and Grafiska Sällskapet Stockholm, Sweden among others.

Carmen Cebreros Urzaiz is a curator and scholar based in Mexico City, who specializes in museum studies and institutional history. She received her PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA and her MA in Curating from Goldsmiths College-University of London. Her dissertation, entitled History, Locality, and Art Worlds: A Case Study of the Center for the Arts at San Agustín Etla (CASA), Oaxaca, México, examines the transformation of a regenerated 19th century textile mill into an arts center in a semi-rural town in Southern Mexico by the turn of the millennium. Dr. Urzaiz has won several awards including, the Fulbright-García Robles Scholarship (2012-15) and the Phi Beta Kappa Scholarship for International Students of Southern California (2017). She has recently curated A Trilogy of Caves, a solo show by Naomi Rincón Gallardo (MACO, Oaxaca, 2020) and Iconografika: Contemporary Prints, Photos and Works on Paper (Rubin Art Center, University of Texas at El Paso, 2018).

Steph Littlebird is an artist, writer, curator and registered member of Oregon’s Grand Ronde Confederated Tribes. Steph earned her B.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking from the Pacific Northwest College in Portland, Oregon, she currently lives and works in Las Vegas. Littlebird is known for her graphic and vibrant imagery that combines the traditional totem styles of her Indigenous ancestors with contemporary illustration aesthetics. Her work frequently touches upon issues of contemporary tribal identity, cultural survivance, and responsible land stewardship. Steph has received three creative grants from the Art + Science Initiative and is the 2020 N.O.A.A. National Artist Fellow. She is also the recent recipient of a writing grant from the Oregon Cultural Trust, and her work has been featured by brands like Luna Bar, U.S.P.S. the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, and Wells Fargo.

Amber Starks (aka Melanin Mvskoke) is an Afro Indigenous (African-American and Native American) activist, organizer, cultural critic, decolonial theorist, and abolitionist. She is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and is also of Shawnee, Yuchi, Quapaw, and Cherokee descent.

Her passion is the intersection of Black and Native American identity. Her activism seeks to normalize, affirm, and uplift the multidimensional identities of Black and Native peoples through discourse and advocacy around anti-Blackness, abolishing blood quantum, Black liberation, and Indigenous sovereignty. She hopes to encourage Black and Indigenous peoples to prioritize one another and divest from compartmentalizing struggles. She ultimately believes the partnerships between Black and Indigenous peoples (and all POC) will aid in the dismantling of anti-blackness, white supremacy, and settler colonialism, globally.

Aandrea Stang is the University Art Gallery Director and Assistant Professor of Art at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Stang has diverse professional experience including education, curatorial, and management roles at museums, galleries, and academic institutions with additional experience in non-profit galleries and government agencies. She has developed and launched contemporary art and arts education programs for a variety of audiences at major cultural organizations including Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, Occidental College, and MOCA, Los Angeles. Stang is best known for her innovative programs and strong cross-institutional collaborations. She holds a Master's Degree from USC and a Bachelor's Degree from Oberlin College.

Paul Pescador (they/them) is an artist, filmmaker, performer, and writer discussing social interactions and intimacy as they pertain to their own personal identity and history. Select exhibitions and screenings include Biquini Wax, Mexico City; Deslave, Tijuana;  LADRÓNgalería, Mexico City; UV Estudios, Buenos Aires; 5 Car Garage; 18th Street Art Center; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro; Human Resources; Institute Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Main Museum; The Pit; LAND at The Gamble House; Park View;  X-tra Online; all within Los Angeles County. Select performances include Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University, Orange; LADRÓNgalería, Mexico City; Performa New York; University of California, BerkeleyDurham Studio Theater; Los Angeles Contemporary Archives; Machine Projects; PAM Residencies; Hammer Museum (with KCHUNG TV); REDCAT; and ForYourArt at 6020 Wilshire Blvd. Their first collection of writing, CRUSHES: A NOVELLA, was published by Econo Textual Objects in Spring 2017. They received a BA from the University of Southern California and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine.