Grantees & Fellows

Discipline: Crafts

Aisha is a studio and public artist working primarily in clay and bronze. She discovered clay in a community studio, while working toward a degree in Spanish at Grinnell College in Iowa. After graduating, she spent the next two years teaching third and fourth grades in Atlanta, Georgia, and exploring clay at Callenwolde Fine Arts Center in Georgia, and Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. Aisha decided to go back to school and received a BFA from Washington State University, and an MFA from University of Nebraska- Lincoln. She is currently working on a large-scale outdoor public art commission with The University of Washington Tacoma and the Washington State Arts Commission. Her studio work is shown nationally with recent work at The Whatcom Museum, The Bascom: Center for the Visual Arts, Crocker Art Museum, Northern Clay Center, Wa Na Wari, Bainbridge Museum of Art, Jordan Schnitzer Museum at WSU, and at the Leonor R. Fuller Gallery at South Sound Community College.

Discipline: Multidisciplinary

Akilah Martinez (artist name: Glittering World Girl) is an award-winning Diné artist, creative technologist and cultural bearer who focuses on Indigenous language & culture revitalization through video art and XR technology. Akilah holds a BFA from The University of New Mexico.

Akilah’s lifelong goal to use modern media to perpetuate the Navajo language & culture began at the young age of 3, after constantly witnessing her Grandparents (unilingual Diné bizaad speakers) have to watch TV programming only offered in English.

The 2019 Crux XR Immersive Technology Fellowship enabled Akilah to travel between NYC and LA to learn from leading XR technologists, social entrepreneurs and impact investors. Akilah is a recipient of Fulcrum Fund 2022, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation LIFT 2022, The Artizen Fund 2023, 2024 New Mexico Women in Tech Emerging Leader Award, is a guest speaker at the MIT XR Reality Hackathon and a current 2024 City of Albuquerque UETF Resiliency Artist in Residence.

Discipline: Multidisciplinary

I was born and raised on the island of Guam. I’ve been an Elementary ESL teacher for 28 years. My hobby is dot painting Guam landscapes and symbols representing the indigenous Chamorro culture. I desire to promote the Chamorro culture through art and share my love of dot painting and art in general with my students.

Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts

Angelina Ramirez is a flamenco dancer, teaching artist and producer living in Tucson, Arizona.Ramirez’s artistic work explores what it means to be a queer, latina flamenca, practicing in a traditional Roma/gitano form of dance.As a teaching artist, she is interested in the intersections of arts and healing, focusing on work with elders of all abilities and integrated flamenco with autistic individuals.She is devoted to promoting accessibility and eradicating ableism, racism and bigotry by practicing and promoting dialogue, acceptance and community participation.Ramirez is an original member of Yjastros, the American Flamenco Repertory Company and has toured with world-renowned, New York-based company Noche Flamenca. Ramirez is a 2022 Dance/USA Artist Fellow.In 2021, she received the Master-Apprentice Artist through Southwest Folklife Alliance for her dedication and commitment to flamenco arts. Ramirez is a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures fellow.

Discipline: Visual Arts

April Werle is a narrative painter, whose works investigate how culture is internalized and negotiated as a mixed-race person. Influenced by her Filipino heritage and multicultural upbringing, Werle’s works explore themes of mixed-race identity, family, and belonging.

Her paintings have been exhibited at notable venues, including the Holter Museum of Art, Missoula Art Museum, and The Other Art Fair Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in publications like New Visionary Magazine and Kapwa Magazine.

Werle is an advocate for multiculturalism and intercultural dialogue. She has been invited to speak about her work, including a keynote speech at Montana State University with the Asian Student Interracial Association.

April Werle has received recognition for her contributions, including an ARPA Grant and a Strategic Investment Grant from the Montana Arts Council.

Discipline: Dance

Ashli St. Armant is a vocalist, writer, arts educator, playwright, and composer. A professionally trained singer and actor with 25 years of experience in education and performing arts, her work includes original music, books, and theatrical productions. Her debut musical, NORTH, explores Black American life during the antebellum period and is celebrating its second national tour with rave reviews. St. Armant is also the founder of Leaping Lizards Music, an arts education program for students, and she tours with her band, Jazzy Ash and the Leaping Lizards, performing jazz for young audiences. Together they have performed at numerous venues including Lincoln Center and Sprout Network (NBC), have produced six albums, and have been featured by NPR and LA Times. Her mystery series, Viva Durant, features a teen girl who solves mysteries in New Orleans. The first book in the series, Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons, is a national best-seller with over 10,000 reviews.

Discipline: Visual Arts

A Polynesian weaver, marine scientist, and artist..born and raised in Amerika Samoa, Casidhe (Cassie) Mahuka graduated from Chaminade University of Honolulu with a Bachelors of Science degree in Environmental Studies. Casidhe currently works full-time as the Marine Invasive Species Coordinator for the Coral Reef Advisory Group (CRAG), house by the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources (DMWR). Casidhe is also the sole proprietor of Launiu Life, promoting the art and traditional skills of weaving handicrafts from coconut fronds (ig: @launiulife). “Launiu” is the Samoan word for coconut fronds, and I use the term “Life” to mean vital or to survive. Launiu Life seeks to connect people with nature and heritage by adopting traditional Samoan weaving techniques for modern-day wear, uses, and aesthetics. . Through these endeavors, I aspire to grow Launiu Life and contribute meaningfully to our cultural narrative and community resilience.

Discipline: Opera/Musical Theatre

I’m truly honored and grateful for this opportunity. My hope with this to build a better foundation for my own longevity and build connections within the artist community. It’s truly amazing how one can take a picture in a way that’s completely different than anyone else looking at the same thing. I describe my photography as sincere, intimate and artful and to be able to do what I truly enjoy just makes my heart full of gratitude.

Discipline: Dance

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is the author of the novel WINTER COUNTS (Ecco/HarperCollins), nominated for an Edgar Award, and winner of the Anthony, Thriller, Lefty, Barry, Macavity, Spur, High Plains, Electa Quinney, Tillie Olsen, and other awards. The book was also a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, the Hammett Prize, the Colorado Book Award, and the Reading the West Award for Debut Fiction. The novel was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an Indie Next pick, main selection of the Book of the Month Club, and named a Best Book of the year by NPR, Amazon, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Guardian, Financial Times, Air Mail, and other magazines. He has short stories appearing in the anthologies The Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories 2022, Denver Noir, and others. He is a Professor of Native American Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and lives in Denver, Colorado, with his family.

Discipline: Multidisciplinary

Elizabeth Denneau is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and art educator residing in the Sonoran Southwest. She obtained her teaching certificate and BFA in Art and Visual Culture Education through the University of Arizona and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a member of the Art21 Educators Institute and works with local community organizers, cultural workers, and colleges to develop practical models of social justice in art education. In her artistic practice, narratives of human perseverance, vulnerability, and power dynamics continually influence her artist. She writes about her experiences being a Black educator and her upbringing in a place where Black people represent less than 3% of the population. She co-founded the Southwest Black Artists Collective and The Projects- art space. Both organizations serve a mission to bring visibility and support to Black creatives.

Discipline: Interdisciplinary

Fawn Douglas is a Native American artivist, mother, and enrolled member of the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe. She also has roots with the Moapa Paiute, Southern Cheyenne, Creek, Pawnee, and Scottish. Fawn is the head matriarch of Nuwu Art and runs the Nuwu Art + Activism Studios along with the Nuwu Art Gallery + Community Center, located in the heart of Las Vegas, Nevada. She is dedicated to the intersections of art, activism, community, education, culture, identity, place, and sovereignty. Her art-making often remembers the past and ensures that stories of Indigenous peoples are heard in the present. Her studio practice includes drawing, painting, weaving, sculpture, and performance. Fawn currently does art and cultural consulting through Nuwu Art, organizes with the non-profit IndigenousAF, serves as an Arts Commissioner for the City of Las Vegas, and works part-time with Meow Wolf. She earned her MFA at UNLV and works on several issues that span from MMIR/MMIW to environmental protection.

Discipline: Interdisciplinary

Gabby Langkilde is a Samoan writer, born and raised in American Samoa. In 2021, she graduated from Harvard College, where she was on The Harvard Crimson editorial board for three years. Perhaps one of her proudest undergraduate achievements is the production of her column entitled “Pasefika Presence” – the first-ever column to center Pacific Islander issues and experiences in The Harvard Crimson. She continues to be passionate about raising awareness for Pacific issues and is currently based in American Samoa, where she works as an educator and is also now using her writing experience to launch a new magazine entitled “”Pasefika Presence”” – named after her previous column. The goal of this new publication is to provide a platform for other Pasefika storytellers and artists to share their stories and work. Gabby is a firm believer in the power of storytelling, and knows that the world has much to learn from the voices of the Pacific.

Discipline: Music

Through his work, Gordon Sasaki expands the limits of disability. He creates opportunity to engage with disability that is simultaneously challenging and beautiful. Using his own wheelchair as a “”still-life”” motif he creates life-size paintings that redefine disability as a rich resource of creative energy and cultural iconography.

Discipline: Dance

Indra Arriaga Delgado is a Mexican artist, writer, filmmaker, and researcher working in Alaska. Arriaga Delgado has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. In 2019, she received a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award for her Etimologías Opacas/Opaque Etymologies project. Her recent film, Sabor Ártico: Latinos en Alaska (Arctic Flavor: Latinos in Alaska) was funded by Latino Public Broadcasting and selected to screen in September as part of the Los Angeles New Filmmakers Festival. Indra serves on the board Perseverance Theatre, is on the advisory committee for Identity, as well as an Advisor to the Center for Technology and Civic Life, a nonpartisan organization helping to strengthen electoral practices nationwide, and is currently collaborating with Out North as Artistic Director for the Out North Fringe Festival.

Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts

Jessica Harned has been fortunate to begin her career in Boise, Idaho. She first became a member of the Boise Philharmonic in 2016, and since, has performed with most local professional ensembles, including Mariachi Sol de Acapulco, who won the Governor’s Award for Musical Excellence in 2018.

To Jessica, education is of the utmost importance. In 2020, Jessica received her Masters degree from Boise State, after having won the Boise Philharmonic Graduate Quartet Fellowship. This experience emboldened her to speak up about the life and experiences of the BIPOC community within classical music. Since then, she has spent her time fostering conversation about representation in classical music, on the radio, in the classroom, and within her own work, all while participating in music in inventive and diverse spaces.

Understanding that her career is multi-faceted, and being very proud of that, Jessica believes that this diverse path has helped her become the musician and person she is today.

Discipline: Theatre

Jessyca Valdez is an aspiring photographer from Toluca, Mexico. She began pursuing photography 5 years ago when she moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and her passion is to shed light on the untold stories of the immigrant experience. She has completed advanced photography coursework through UNAVID: Escuela de Fotografía in Toluca, Mexico. Jessyca is a Community Mobilizer for Voices JH, and also works as a housekeeper.

Discipline: Photography

I am a self-taught artist drawing on early childhood memories of my grandparents and their Mexican culture and
heritage, my work becomes a whimsical and positive interpretation of various periods of my
own life. I am especially inspired by my own experiences working in animal husbandry and
ranching. Many times in Mexican folklore animals were often used to teach right from wrong
or to explain the current political events. This was one way to keep the rural population
informed since many of them were illiterate. Animals often assume human characteristics in
my work and I strive to create an open-ended narrative that allows my viewers to create
their own story. In some of my current work I am writing and illustrating children’s books.
This is a wonderful new challenge that pushes me to look at my work from a different
perspective.

Discipline: Literature

Kit Julianto, Yooti, is an enrolled member of the Shoshone Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation and a descendent of the Navajo Nation. He holds a BFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts of Santa Fe, New Mexico (2010) and a MFA in Secondary Education from the Grand Canyon University (2018). He is an Art teacher for grades Pre-K to 12th at the Owyhee Combined School in the Elko County School District. Kit is a powwow singer and Native American Flute player, and works in different mediums and techniques that include pottery, drawing, sculpting, carving, and is mostly known for painting with acrylics. His works reflect upon Native American culture, music, tradition, and storytelling, through various mediums, vibrant colors, and texture.
I am very honored and humbled to receive the WESTAF BIPOC Award. I look forward to creating more art and sharing with my community and expanding my connections.
Thank you very much, this is a great blessing.
-Kit

Discipline: Visual Arts

Lauren Benetua (she/they) is an American-born Filipina of Illonggo, Batangueña, Bikolana, and Ilokana heritage residing in Huichin Ohlone territory. They are a dedicated cultural practitioner and weaving apprentice with Kalingafornia Laga, a weaving collective of Pilipino American women who preserve, promote, and maintain the indigenous backstrap weaving traditions from Kalinga in the Philippines. Lauren brings with them 10 years of textile weaving experience, including facilitating cultural educational workshops and weaving demonstrations alongside their mentor and teacher, Jenny Bawer Young. She now explores the responsibility of teaching traditional backstrap loom weaving to new learners in the same tradition taught to her that has been passed down by the hands of indigenous women for generations and is eager to continue cultivating a community of Pilipinx weavers in the diaspora.

Discipline: Visual Arts

Roux Haile is a transdisciplinary artist whose work and social practice centers creativity as the driving force for personal and collective liberation. Through tattooing, dance, circus, protest and community organizing they explore the relationship between individual, interpersonal and communal freedom.

Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts

Loida Maritza Pérez is the Founder and Executive Director of AfroMundo. A native of the Dominican Republic, she is an independent scholar, cultural activist and author of Geographies of Home, a novel published in the United States and abroad. Her upcoming book, Beyond the Pale, won a PEN America 2019 Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History. Her work has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Latina, MaComere, Meridians, Edinburgh Review, Bomb, Callaloo and Best of Callaloo. A 2022-2023 National Leaders of Color Fellow, she has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts in collaboration with University of New Mexico and Rutgers University, IC3-Institute for Communities, Creativity and Consciousness, Djerassi’s Henry Louis Gates Fellowship, Ragdale Foundation for the Arts U.S.–Africa Writer’s Project, MacDowell Arts Colony, Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, Millay Arts Colony, Ucross Foundation and Villa Montalvo.

Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts

Maria “”Lia”” Barcinas is an indigenous Chamorro fiber artist from the Mariana Islands. Her art seeks to celebrate the Oceanic legacies of utilizing the environment for both sustainability and art.

Discipline: Interdisciplinary

Mary Zhang is an accomplished artist and cultural enthusiast residing in Spokane, Washington. Over the past eight years, she has served as Director of the Spokane Chinese Dance Group (SCDG), where she has exhibited exceptional artistic skills in Chinese dancing, as well as leadership and organizational abilities in community service. She has organized and coordinated over 48 cultural exchange events with various local organizations, including senior centers, schools, libraries, cultural fairs, and holiday celebrations. Under her guidance, the SCDG has performed over 150 diverse dance performances, including Classical Han Dynasty dance, Qipao Dance, Tibetan dance, and Mongolian dance. Mary has been a Vice President of the Spokane Chinese Association since 2014, contributing significantly to the organization and the Spokane Chinese community at large. In recognition of her artistic talents, Mary was awarded the Spokane Arts grantee of Mary’s Chinese Dance Studio for the year 2022-2023.

Discipline: Literature

Mestre Jamaika (Mauro Romualdo) is an internationally recognized practitioner of the Afro-Brazilian art form of capoeira, and has engaged and positively impacted students and audiences of all ages and backgrounds for over 30 years. Born in the heart of capoeira’s birthplace and his ancestral land, he discovered his passion for capoeira as a young child. His exceptional skill and explosive acrobatic talent put him on the world stage, and he was invited to live and teach in Israel in 1998, followed by an invitation to teach in the United States where he has lived since 1999. He’s a three-time Brazilian Capoeira Confederation Champion, and director of Salt Lake Capoeira since 2005. Additionally, he has inspired video game characters, lectured at universities, and participated in documentaries, music videos, and podcasts. He lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, Amanda, and will continue honoring his roots by sharing his culture and strengthening the community through these arts.