Discipline: Visual Arts

Micah BlackLight can perhaps be described as a defiant, volcanic force of Nature’s creation, wearing the body of a brown-skinned catalyst and bursting with perpetual enthusiasm. A multi-media, multi-platform, multi-dimensional artist, writer, orator, coach, mentor, and fashion designer proficient in a myriad of mediums: visual, graphic, audible and otherwise. He is determined to create as many different works of art in as many mediums as possible while detonating spirits along the way and leaving trails of empowering, inspiring experiences in his wake like a spirit boat on the lake of existence.

Discipline: Visual Arts

Dr. Miriam Padilla, Executive Director of Bomba Marilé, is a proud LGBTQ Puerto Rican woman, a registered Taino tribal member, a doctor, and a community organizer. Dr. Padilla is board certified in Endocrinology, Obesity Medicine, and Lifestyle Medicine. She currently is the Medical Director of the LiveWell Center at Utah Valley Hospital. When Miriam is not seeing patients, she is the Executive Director of Bomba Marilé which is a non profit organization that shares Afro-Puerto Rican bomba music and dance with the community in Utah. Dr. Padilla has received multiple awards for her community involvement including the “30 Women to Watch” award from Utah Business Magazine, the “Mujeres Destacadas” award from La Opinion Newspaper, and the Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from the United States Congress. Miriam is grateful for the WESTAF support and hopes to continue lifting up brown, black, and indigenous voices through her work as a cultural artist in the state of Utah.

Discipline: Interdisciplinary

Monique N. Michel is a bilingual educator, dancer, teacher, and the Artistic Director of her company, the the Ballet Folklorico Mexico Lindo, located in Southwest Idaho. The group was established in 2003 in Nampa, Idaho. They have over twenty Mexican states in their folklorico repertoire that they perform regularly. Monique and the Ballet Folklorico Mexico Lindo have performed in five states in the Pacific Northwest, and recently celebrated twenty-one years of existence in March 2024.
Monique is a former Diversity Equity and Inclusion director, WESTAF Emerging Leaders of Colour Alumni, and a WESTAF Fellow. She active in both the Ada and Canyon County area arts communities. As a result, Monique has danced, traveled and performed both in and around the United States. She has received accolades for her work in the Latino community as well. Recently she was awarded the Orgullo Migrante Award from Radio International in Chicago. Monique believes that everyone has the ability to dance!

Discipline: Media Arts

Waqaa, wiinga Quluuqaugua. Mamterrillermiungunga taugaam Soldotna-mi uitatuunga. Hello, my Yup’ik name is Quluqaaq. I was born and raised in Bethel, Alaska, but I now reside in Soldotna. My English name is Nikki, and I am the proud owner of Sew Yup’ik. I come from a long line of remarkable skin sewers and talented women who have been creating garments for generations. My grandmothers are my inspiration and my driving force, motivating me to continually learn and embrace my traditional Yup’ik ways of living.I have been teaching sewing workshops since the summer of 2015, but my sewing journey began much earlier, back in elementary school. My very first skin sewing project was a fur hat, crafted with the guidance of my Yup’ik teachers. Skin sewing and sewing are integral parts of my life and Yup’ik culture, and I am dedicated to continuing the legacies of my three grandmothers. Creating traditional Yup’ik regalia has been a lifelong dream of mine, and I am thrilled to embark on this path.

Discipline: Photography

Noelani Montas (she/her) is a proud Kanaka Maoli and Dominicana from Southern California. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Hawaiian Theatre Program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and received her BFA in Theatre Design & Technology from University of the Arts. Recent credits include: Glitter in the Paʻakai (ʻĀnela) – UHM, Haku Wale (Scenic, Lighting, and Projection Design; Hula) – UHM, Kaisara (Emma Nāwahī) – UHM, Primero Sueño (Scenic & Lighting Design) – Repertorio Español, and La Extinción de los Dinosaurios (Scenic & Lighting Design) – Repertorio Español. She is a recipient of the 2022 Brind School Award for Storytelling in Design, the 2021 Pat Mackay Diversity in Design Award, and was a lighting design mentee in the 2021-2022 Wingspace Mentorship Program Cohort. Upon her graduation from the Hawaiian Theatre Program in December 2024, she will be moving to Seattle, WA, to continue her work with Indigenous arts and performance. E holomua, sigue pa’ lante.

Discipline: Crafts

Lopez is a prominent painter and muralist whose acrylic paintings are driven by color and convey a multi-faceted array of symbolic, cultural and feminine imagery infused with spiritual vision and incendiary composition, establishing her as a key artist in the Latina/Hispana/Chicana/Mestiza genre. Born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, she identifies as an artist of mixed Jicarilla Apache and European heritage.

An active and fulltime artist, she operated studio galleries in Las Vegas, Taos and in Santa Fe, exhibited in Contemporary Spanish Market and had the honor to represent New Mexico as the “official portrait artist, at the White House, in Washington D. C., in 2006, when NM provided the People’s Christmas Tree.

Relocating in 2003 to California, she maintained a public studio/exhibit space in Los Angeles. As a muralist, she produced individual, community and student-assisted murals as a teaching artist. She returned home to New Mexico in September 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Discipline: Visual Arts

Pete “”Pedru”” Perez has been a cultural leader and practitioner in the movement to restore canoe culture in the Mariana Islands for nearly 20 years. He and his wife Emma co-founded the nonprofit 500 Sails where he was its Executive Director and lead canoe builder until retiring in April 2024. The canoes he builds are based on the historic record that describes the Chamorro sailing canoes that were banned and lost during two centuries of Spanish colonial occupation of the Mariana Islands. Canoe building is an art that has its origins over 3500 years ago when the Chamorros settled in the remote Pacific, and they are decorated today using Oceanic motifs and traditional designs that come from Chamorro cave art and jewelry found in ancient graves.

Since 500 Sails completed its first Chamorro “”Flying Proa”” in 2016, Pedru has sailed by canoe between the nearby islands and as far south as as Guam and Yap. His experiences on ocean inform both the design and decoration of the canoes he builds.

Discipline: Visual Arts

Peter manifests safe and creative spaces for ‘Brown Dance’ culture and the arts to thrive and grow equally in the traditional and contemporary expressions. Centering focus on Indigenous identities and voices in a moving dialogue addressing current local issues of urbanization and globalization. Through a NEA – Challenge America grant, Peter continues his journey towards articulating Pōhuli, reindiginization through the creation of his own movement modality and vocabulary reformed into the foundation of a new movement language paradigm for his dance company, Tau Dance Theater, the only professional dance company based in Honolulu directed by a Native Hawaiian. Peter is a 2022 recipient of the Western Arts Alliance, Advancing Indigenous Performances – Native Launchpad, was awarded a three-week Intercultural International Choreographer’s Creation Lab residency at Banff Center for the Creative Arts in Canada, and is round 2 Dance/USA Fellowship to Artists recipient.

Discipline: Multidisciplinary

Stella Nall “Bisháakinnesh” (Rode Buffalo) is a multimedia artist and poet from Bozeman, Montana. A first descendant of the Crow tribe, her work is informed by her experiences navigating the world and often centers current issues pertaining to Indigenous identity, visibility and representation.

She graduated from the University of Montana in 2020 with a BFA in Printmaking, a BA in Psychology and a minor in Art History and Criticism. She now lives in Missoula, where she is represented by Radius Gallery.

Her work may be seen as murals across the western states, and has been acquired to permanent collections at Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, DC), The Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM), The Montana Museum of Art and Culture (Missoula, MT), and Montana State University (Bozeman, MT).

Discipline: Visual Arts

Steven Young Lee is an artist in Helena, Montana. He was the Director of the Archie Bray Foundation for 16 years until 2022. In 2004-05, he lectured and taught at universities throughout China as part of an educational exchange and spent time in Seoul, South Korea studying ceramic tradition and history. In 2005-6 he was a visiting professor at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C.

Lee has lectured extensively in North America and Asia. In the Fall of 2016 he was one of four artists featured as part of the Renwick Invitational at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2019, he had a solo exhibition at the Portland Art Museum and in 2021, his work was included in “Crafting America”, at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

His work has been collected by the Smithsonian Museum, LACMA, the Portland Art Museum, the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, Korea, and many private and public collections.

Lee earned his BFA and MFA from Alfred University

Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts

As much of their work focuses on reclaiming their identity as a natural being, Syon is largely inspired by biomimicry – they experience plants, animals (including humans), arthropods, & fungi as mirrors and opportunities for reflection. Syon’s oeuvre is made up of artifacts from their decolonization process – an intentional practice of shifting away from anti-black, patriarchal, cis-heteronormative, & human-supremacist ways of being and moving towards behaviors and patterns rooted in pleasure, balance, acceptance, interdependence & reciprocity. Syon is a neurodivergent artist for which sticking with any one medium sounds tedious and impossible. In their current iteration, they are exploring the aforementioned ideas through film, movement, collage, textiles, & the written word and at the intersections of those things. Syon was raised in Pomona, CA and currently resides in Portland, OR.

Discipline: Visual Arts

Tony A. Diego
Losfaz50@gmail.com

I am a local artist that has live and worked in Colorado for nearly 50 years. I have facilitated and directed youth Art and restitution programs in Denver and rural Colorado. My passions are art, travel, culture, and long hours listening to amazing music while working in my studio. I practice, and live a life that promotes connections and respect of our mother earth and the ancestors who have come before us and left a loving and healing legacy.

I am also passionate about facilitating art classes with youth and their families. Witnessing how art can literally brighten a room and experiencing firsthand the connection art inspires has been incredibly uplifting and rewarding to me in so many ways. Over the years I have curated art exhibits at several galleries in Colorado, organized and developed City Beautification projects in small rural towns such as Trinidad Colorado all while feeling the connection to community these projects promote. Colora

Discipline: Multidisciplinary

Yumi Janairo Roth’s research-based practice includes projects built around social engagement and site-specific installation. She has produced and exhibited works in the US, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Philippines. She has engaged Manila-based artists, call center agents, jeepney drivers, and artisans in projects that explore labor, creative exchange, and cultural translation. Since 2017, she has worked closely with professional sign spinners in southern California, Las Vegas, and Denver and developed collaborations between sign spinners and professional dancers, conversations between sign spinners and contemporary art curators, engagements with audiences, and participation in professional sign spinning competitions. More recently, she and Emmanuel David have developed, “”We Are Coming,”” which unearths the stories of a group of Filipinos, known as the Filipino Rough Riders, who performed with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in the 19th century.

Discipline: Interdisciplinary

Yvonne Onakeme Etaghene is an Ijaw Urhobo Nigerian dyke poet, performer, author, dancer, playwright, visual artist and fashion designer. Etaghene is the author of For Sizakele, a novel that addresses African lesbian/bisexual identity, love, intimate partner violence, and gender. Yvonne’s writing is published in five poetry chapbooks; and her poems, essays and fiction featured in various journals/anthologies.

Etaghene has shared her visual art in five solo art exhibitions. Etaghene created Ankara Queen by Yv. Etaghene, a fashion line exploring the nexus between Nigerian aesthetics, gender expression and self-acceptance. Yvonne hosts the NIGERIAN DYKE REALNESS Podcast.

Yvonne received a B.A. from Oberlin College, a Master’s degree from New York University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Antioch University. Etaghene is a Svane Family Foundation Inaugural Artist in Headlands Center for the Arts’ Bay Area Fellowship. www.myloveisaverb.com, www.nigeriandykerealness.com