Juan Miranda
Labor and Community Organizer
Originally from Ecuador, Juan Miranda is a long-time labor and community organizer based in Greensboro NC. He is a deep believer in the magic that emerges when people come together, get curious about each other, and commit to fight together for the world we all deserve. He loves pranks, long walks in the woods with his dog Che, and good BBQ ( Eastern NC style that is).
Nia
Visual Artist
Nia is a queer, black, non-binary, self-taught visual artist living in Baltimore City. Their love of the human body, animals, and nature, has inspired their art for the past 30+ years. Nia loves to work on large and small-scale projects such as murals, original artwork, greeting cards, and pet portraits. Nia is a co-owner of Red Emma’s Bookstore and Coffee House and also works for Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy. Through their cooperative work and artwork, they hope to break the cycle of silenced emotions and create moments where the viewer’s feelings are present, raw, transformative, and valid.
My art shop: wolfandwillow.threadless.com
My art Instagram: @little.tree.art
I would also like to lift up Red Emma’s a radical worker-owned cooperative bookstore restaurant and coffee shop located in Baltimore MD.
Karen Archia
Visual Artist and Arts Administrator
Karen Archia is a visual artist and arts administrator based in North Carolina. She is the founder of the community service project Public Art Practice and a member of the Black Women’s Art Collective.
Lisa Hubbard
Labor & Community Organizer
I learned the value of solidarity growing up in a union family and have spent more than 30 years as a strategic campaigner, organizer, communicator, and movement builder with low-wage workers and communities of color across the U.S.
Join me in weaving together collective visions for liberation by re/building solidarity economies. The solidarity economy is a global movement to build a just and sustainable economy where we prioritize people and the planet over endless profit and growth. Growing out of social movements in Latin America and the Global South, the solidarity economy provides real alternatives to capitalism, where communities govern themselves through participatory democracy, cooperative and public ownership, and a culture of solidarity and respect for the earth.
Learn more via the New Economy Coalition www.neweconomy.net .
Lacy Hale
Artist, Activist, Appalachian- Lacy Hale was born in southeastern Kentucky. She is blessed to be able to continue to live and work there as a full time, professional artist.
To learn more about her and her work visit www.lacyhale.com
Jared Hamilton
Eastern Kentucky boy up to no good.
jaredhamiltonvisuals.com
Poetry by Mikaela Curry, Protest songs by Larah Helayne
Shaun Slifer
Artist & Author
Shaun Slifer is a multi-disciplinary artist and nonfiction author based in Pittsburgh. He has worked as the Creative Director at the award-winning West Virginia Mine Wars Museum since 2015. Shaun is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and an original member of the now-disbanded Howling Mob Society. In 2022, he worked as the lead designer with the community-based public memory project Courage in the Hollers, part of Monument Lab’s 2022 Re:Generation cohort. His investigative people’s history book, So Much To Be Angry About: Appalachian Movement Press 1969-79, was released on West Virginia University Press in March 2021.
Nifemi Ogunro
Designer & Sculptor Toeing the line between utility and style, Brooklyn-based artist Nifemi Ogunro approaches their design process with equal consideration for the bodies that rest on objects and the forms of the objects themselves. Wood being the medium that they primarily approach their art and furniture-making practice, Ogunro uses performance, movement, photography, and film as sources of inspiration and application for their work. They define their work as functional sculptures. One of Wallpaper Magazine’s 300 people to know, works included in various publications, a piece that lives in the permanent collection of the Denver Art Museum to groups of works that can be seen in moments of the television show Everything’s Trash, Ogunro’s practice spans across mediums and is meant to be shared.
Design is an intimate process and Ogunro uses their work as a reminder and a celebration of how much beauty the objects we associate with the mundane hold.
Micah Cash
Visual Artist
Micah Cash is a visual artist, educator, and nonprofit strategist. His projects use the visual languages of landscape and architecture to investigate narratives of culture, utilization, and economics. A second edition of his internationally acclaimed photography book, Waffle House Vistas, was published by The Bitter Southerner in 2022. Micah’s first book, Dangerous Waters: A Photo Essay on the Tennessee Valley Authority, published by the University of Tennessee Press, chronicled the contemporary cultural relevance and historical impact of TVA’s hydroelectric dams. Micah exhibits internationally, and his work is represented in private collections throughout North America and Europe. Micah received his MFA from the University of Connecticut and his bachelor’s degree from the University of South Carolina.
E. Oscar Maynard
Artist and Letterpress Printer
E. “Oscar” Maynard has a self-designed B.A. in Visual Art, Psychology, and Gender Studies from Antioch College. They have an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in Printmaking. Their work has been shown at Somarts, Mission Cultural Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and in National Queer Arts Festival shows. In 2016, they curated You Are Enough, a visual arts show looking at mental health and survival through a queer lens. They were a fellow at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in the cohort responding to the question: “Why Citizenship?” Other residencies & fellowships include: Blue Mountain Center, the Equal Justice residency at Santa Fe Art Institute, Kala Art Institute, and A Studio in the Woods.
In their spare time they nerd out about gender, feed wild animals in local parks, make paper-cuts, print letterpress posters, and carve gourd luminaries. They fell in love with letterpress in 2017 and have never looked back.
You can see more of their work at: www.countrycounterculture.com
Tender-Heart Press, their printshop https://www.countrycounterculture.com/tender-heartpress
Gabe Duggan
Artist & Educator
Gabe Duggan (b. Buffalo, NY) has had residencies at The Fish Factory (Iceland), Praxis Fiber Workshop (OH), Cooler Ranch (NY), Landfalls (NY), the Musk Ox Farm (AK), Governors Island Art Fair (NY), Ponyride (Knight Foundation Emerging Artist, MI), and Rob Dunn Lab (NCSU+NCMNS).
Awards include the Juror’s Prize at Art on the Trails (Sarah Montross of deCordova), the Integrated Coastal Programs Coastal Fellowship (Coastal Studies Institute), and a fellowship at Sculpture Space Inc. (NY). Associate Professor at East Carolina University they have also taught at the University of North Texas, Georgia State University, and Penland School of Craft amongst others.
Upcoming exhibitions include ArtFields 2024 (SC), TBA/solo at Frostburg University (MD), and a public landwork at Mother In Law’s Gallery by Field Projects for Upstate Art Weekend (NY).
Julie Rae Powers
Photographer & Writer
Julie Rae Powers is from West Virginia and Virginia. They come from a working-class family of homemakers, teachers, coal miners, and railroad laborers. They received their MFA in Photography from The Ohio State University and their BFA in Photography from James Madison University. Their photographic and written work has focused on family history, coal, Appalachia, and queerness.
Their work is collected by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan, have been awarded the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2016 and 2020 and was selected in Photo Lucida Critical Mass’ Top 200 for 2021. Recently, they were named as part of Silver Eye Center for Photography’s Silver List for 2023. Julie Rae is a part of “Y’all Means All: Queering Appalachian Voices” edited by Z. Zane McNeil. Soft Lightning Studio, an inclusive photo book publisher created and ran by Julie Rae published “The Home We Know” by Ben Willis which was featured in the Washington Post and is collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library. Additionally, they are the author and editor of a forthcoming collection of Queer Appalachian photographers. For their day job, they work as an Instructional Designer.
Instagram: @julieraepowes
Headshot by: Kate Sweeney
Ellen O’Grady
Visual Artist
Ellen O’Grady is a visual artist and the author of Outside the Ark: An Artists Journey in Occupied Palestine (2005). She spends much of her time making comics and is currently working on her second book about Palestine. The book will give people a better understanding of the occupation and how it exemplifies settler colonialism. It will offer information on Hamas, the PLO, the current war on Gaza, how we got here, and how we can be part of a liberation struggle to end war and colonization and be part of a future where we love each other better.
Instagram: @ellenogradyart
ellenogrady.com (coming soon)
Analysis
Poet, Radical Left Minister and Bookseller, Worker Collective Member in Baltimore, Maryland
Analysis, is a spoken-word poet, radical Left minister and bookseller, educator, and lover of justice and human rights! A native of Baltimore, the worker/co-owner of Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse studied Public Communication at the American University and holds a Master of Divinity degree from Howard University, from which he graduated with highest honors. He is the past Minister for Youth and Young Adult Empowerment, Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ, where he helped young people develop their sense of faith and justice action as well as served on international anti-racism teams, and is a former staff member of the Center for New Community and Bread for the World.
Analysis has featured at venues across New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and during the pandemic, the world, challenging listeners with poetry rooted in the call for liberation from oppression. He is the host of Red Emma’s Mother Earth Poetry Vibe, a quarterly open mic and feature venue of the theme “Peace, Justice, Poetry!” A member of Simply Poetic Entertainment and of Restoration Village Arts, Analysis is the author of Somewhere Through the Haze—a short collection of poems on a variety of justice issues—and the poetry album, A Couple Thousand Years Later. These and more information are available through www.liberationandpoetry.com.
Among many important labor causes that deserve attention and support, I invite you to learn about the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers at www.ciw-online.org and consider how you might support them in their efforts for justice for farmworkers. Thank you!
Photo credit: Phil Glaser
Elizabeth Catte
Writer & Public Historian
Elizabeth Catte is the author of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia and Pure America. She lives in Staunton, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., where she does applied history work with the firm Passel.
Peter Cizmadia
Artist and Designer
Peter is an artist and designer that is driven by uncovering hidden histories, exploring remote landscapes, and reconciling the sublime with the banal. At the core of his work is a commitment to exploring the interplay between human and natural systems, delving into the rich tapestry of American landscapes, by they human, natural, or built.
Jay Katelansky
Interdisciplinary Artist
Jay Katelansky is an interdisciplinary artist who is currently living and working in Oakland, CA. Katelansky earned their BFA from Moore College of Art and Design and an MA and MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Katelansky’s work questions how Black bodies, including their own, navigate space in the United States.
A. DeStefano
Community Organizer
DeStefano is an organizer living with their spouse, their dogs Sidney and Echo, and a foster cat with 6 kittens in Baltimore, MD. She is currently organizing with Listen to Maryland, growing pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza & an end to US military aid to Israel. They also organize with Housing Our Neighbors, a human rights group committed to ending homelessness in Baltimore by changing public policy to prioritize housing as a human right. A. has previously worked on campaigns to establish & fund Baltimore’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and to support the creation of community land trusts in disinvested neighborhoods.
Lorena Crowe Park
Visual Artist
Lorena Crowe Park (b.1973, Chattanooga, TN) is a southern-born artist that creates work that explores her dark worldview while celebrating humor and beauty. She received her BFA in sculpture at VCU(2000) and is finishing her MFA in sculpture at RISD. She thinks maybe she should have chosen a cheaper mid-life crisis.
Fahiym Hanna
Teacher and Community Organizer
Fahiym was born in Queens NY and spent his childhood in Atlanta GA. He Moved to Greensboro NC in 2006 because he believed a mid-size city might have more potential for the kind of change he wanted to create in the world. Investing some of his own profits from his perfumery and doing freelance work for non-profits Fahiym has been a integral collaborator in such efforts as creating a community center, a community garden, collective housing, mutual aid networks and writing political policies. many of these efforts were based in the Glenwood Neighborhood and included teaching components.
Far Ali
Far Ali is a Reset Doula working on the edges and intersections of caring and creative futures.