Renee Brown is a multidisciplinary artist that is driven by direction given to her in her dream life. Over the last two decades Renee’s art praxis has been informed by her investigation into metaphoric dream analysis methodology. She delves into the metaphoric meaning of dream elements through research meditation and revelation. Currently she responds to her nocturnal life through dream journals, spontaneous drawings, abstract paintings, sculpture and video installation. A commitment to ritual, reception and direction from her personal dreamlife drives her practice.
Hadar Cohen is an Arab Jewish multimedia artist, healer and educator based in Los Angeles. She is the founder of Malchut, a mystical school teaching direct experience of God through heart centered spiritual traditions. Hadar is a Jewish mystic who works to build decolonial frameworks for worshiping God. She is an artist weaving the spiritual with the political and her artistic mediums include performance, movement, writing, weaving, sound and ritual.
Anne Livingston, a painter, writer, culinarian, and educator, holds a BA in Comparative Literature from University of Washington, a Master in Teaching from Seattle University, and an AAS in Culinary Arts from Seattle Culinary Academy. She’s an alumna of The Modern Color Atelier for painting at Gage Academy of Art.
Juliette M Ludeker is a multimedia visual artist and a professor of English, having taught undergraduate research and writing for over 20 years. She earned a BFA in Studio Arts from Kutztown University, an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language from West Chester University and completed all but dissertation of a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at Purdue University. Her background in art, along with a deep interest in art history and visual culture, informs her English teaching (and research interests), especially in assigning students to read texts or develop projects that represent a wide range of humanity and human productions of communication. Reciprocally, Juliette's career in rhetoric, language, and research, influence her art-making, particularly through an embrace of inquiry, experimentation, reflection, and revision.
Vanessa Lustig is a multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of photography, textile art, and interactive textiles. Her work explores changing psychological, cultural, and natural contexts and situations, investigating themes of human identity & culture not as separate from nature, but as interacting elements of nature. She focuses on highlighting the smaller, subtle movements of natural, cultural, and human worlds, creating works that capture these delicate yet enduring fragilities by using both delicate & sturdy materials, technologically advanced techniques & craft techniques that result in minimal, delicate, quiet, yet immersive works.
Caden Manson is an artist, curator (Contemporary Performance and Special Effects Festival), and educator. Through the company Big Art Group, their performance work creates radical queer narrative structures and embodiments to construct and aid transitory generative critical space for participants and audience. Their work is dense, fast, multi-layered, and traverses multiple genres and forms, often using interference, slippage, and disruption strategies. Manson has presented throughout 14 countries and over 50 cities in Europe, Asia, and North America.
Rene MG believes that art is an experience and is enhanced when shared with others and when it includes interactive and visceral moments. She created PIP art popup in 2016. PIP=participatory immersive/interactive performance art operates on the idea that the viewer/participant is invited into a space where they can chose to participate, facilitate or watch. PIP is site-reactive, site-specific and site-enhancing based on deep hanging out and research.
Dance artist Heidi Strauss has worked for companies and choreographers from across Canada, as well as within Europe and Asia. A multi-Dora Award winning choreographer and the Artistic Director of Toronto-based adelheid, Heidi has been a resident artist at The Duncan Centre (CZ), and in Toronto at the Factory Theatre, The Theatre Centre, Harbourfront Centre, and currently at The Citadel through their Creative Incubator program. Her installation work has recently been recognized by UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network. She has been commissioned by/choreographed for Toronto Dance Theatre, Mocean Dance, The Frankfurt Opera, The Canadian Opera Company, Volcano Theatre, the Stratford Festival, among others.
Sophia Wright Emigh (she/they) is an interdisciplinary, queer mother artist and movement filmmaker working in the emerging field of somatic ecology via performance, installation, film, photography, mark-making, social practice, writing, and action. Through camera, body, sound, and embodied ritual, she traverses and transmits the dance of life around the ineffable.
