Contributors

  • Phil America
    Phil America (he/him) is a California-raised artist, designer, and activist. He has lived and worked in numerous locations throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa, chasing individual moments of freedom while exploring global dynamics of class, gender, and race. Phil’s creative work includes installation, sculpture, performance, photography, video, and fashion. He has created numerous artworks in public spaces, from fabricated living quarters in a suburb in Bangkok, to ‘illegal galleries’ on the US-Mexico border, in an abandoned New York City subway station, and at a Los Angeles swap meet. Phil’s recent monograph, Above The Law: Graffiti On Passenger Trains, presents his photo documentation of graffiti around the world. His work has been featured in books, newspapers, and magazines internationally, and he is a three-time TED speaker. Explore his website to learn more.
  • Sam Bodkin
    Sam Bodkin (he/him) is the founder of Groupmuse, where he's also a worker-owner and a member of the organization’s steering committee. Sam grew up outside Boston, attended college in New York City, and returned to Boston after graduation in 2012 to start Groupmuse. The idea for the organization grew out of Sam’s deep belief in the metaphysical power of music to inspire community and the power of historical music in particular to connect us with our cultural ancestors. Groupmuse now hosts events from coast to coast, earning millions of dollars for musicians and connecting hundreds of thousands of attendees with one another and with themselves. When he's not working on Groupmuse, Sam can be found building eco-spiritual community in the Mid-Atlantic, writing his own music under the name Heavy Meadow, or hiking barefoot in search of a spot with a good view where he can put up his hammock and play ukulele for the Earth until the sun goes down.
  • Jessica Brunecky
    Jessica Brunecky (she/her) received her MS in museum studies from CU Boulder in 2010, and she currently works as the divisional administrator for social sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has over ten years of museum work experience and strongly believes that the museum field is overdue for change. Jessica’s professional research interests include ethical labor standards for museums, institutional collaborations, and millennial audience trends. In 2020, she co-presented 'Pay Your Damn Interns: The Whys and Hows for Academic Museums' at the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries annual conference, building upon research conducted for her chapter ‘Professional Associations and Labor Policies’ in the book For Love or Money: Confronting the State of Museum Salaries. Jessica is president of the board of directors for the Colorado–Wyoming Association of Museums and also serves on RedLine Denver’s exhibition committee.
  • Patrisse Cullors
    Patrisse Cullors (she/her) is an artist, organizer, and freedom fighter from Los Angeles. In 2013, she co-founded the Black Lives Matter Global Network, and she served as executive director of the organization until May of 2021. Her 2018 book, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, is a New York Times best seller. Patrisse completed her MFA at the USC Roski School of Art and Design in 2019. In 2020, she designed an online MFA program in social and environmental arts practice with Prescott College. The program–which she now leads as faculty director–combines art, social justice, and community organizing. Patrisse has exhibited and performed widely throughout the world, from traditional arts institutions to public spaces, including Art Basel Miami, Hauser & Wirth, The Broad, and Frieze LA, among many others. In 2020, along with Alexandre Dorriz and noé olivas, Patrisse co-founded the Crenshaw Dairy Mart, an art studio and gallery in Inglewood, California.
  • Jessica Herring
    Jessica Herring (she/her) holds a BA from Skidmore College with a double major in dance and psychology and an MA in critical dance studies from the University of California, Riverside (UCR), where she was recognized as a Gluck teaching fellow and a dean's distinguished scholar. After completing her graduate degree, Jessica returned to her native Colorado to dance for the Hannah Kahn Dance Company and teach ballet at the Denver School of the Arts. She has since transitioned to teaching yoga, both as a yoga class instructor and as a yoga teacher trainer. Jessica has also studied acting as a Lewis Myers Scholarship recipient at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. She continues to create and perform her dance work under the moniker 'Herring Like the Fish', and she offers yoga workshops and consultations through her business, The One Beautiful You. Jessica’s goal, in all her endeavors, is to create more space to love the entirety of her being and–through that pursuit–to enable others to do the same.
  • Dulce Soledad Ibarra
    Dulce Soledad Ibarra (they/them, she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and curator who is deeply invested in community and identity. Expressing a queer Xicanx perspective, Dulce explores issues of culture and generational guilt through their videos, installations, and performances, and they often invite public participation and dialogue with the work. Currently, Dulce’s practice is centered around the Piñata/Party Supply District of Downtown Los Angeles, a community of businesses and a zone of familiar cultural commodities. Dulce has exhibited, screened, performed, and programmed their work at venues across Southern California, including Angels Gate Cultural Center, Charlie James Gallery, Consulado General de México en Los Ángeles, Craft Contemporary, Echo Park Film Center, Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University, Human Resources, ONE Gallery, and Pieter Performance Space. They hold a BFA in sculpture from California State University, Long Beach and an MFA from the University of Southern California. View more of Dulce’s work on their website.
  • Bobby LeFebre
    Bobby LeFebre (he/him) is an award-winning writer, performer, and cultural worker fusing a non-traditional, multi-hyphenated professional identity to imagine new realities, empower communities, advance arts and culture, and serve as an agent of provocation, transformation, equity, and social change. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Guardian, American Theater Magazine, NPR, and Poets.Org. In 2019, Bobby was named Colorado’s eighth poet laureate, making him the youngest and first person of color to be appointed to the position since its establishment in 1919. He holds a BA in psychology from the Metropolitan State University of Denver and an MA in art, literature, and culture from the University of Denver. Learn more about Bobby’s creative work on his website.
  • Muna Malik
    Muna Malik (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her bold and poetic work tackles contemporary issues–particularly those concerning women of color and refugees–and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Vogue Magazine, Art Forum, and i-D Magazine. Muna has exhibited her work at Band of Vices Gallery in Los Angeles, the Annenberg Space for Photography with Photoville LA, the International Center for Photography, Soomaal House of Art in Minneapolis, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Northern Spark Arts Festival, Artworks Chicago, and the University of Minnesota/Humphrey School of Public Affairs, among other venues. In 2018, Muna was a billboard artist with For Freedoms: 50 State Initiative, and she recently contributed to their 2020 Awakening project. Find out more on her website.
  • Stacey Putka
    Stacey Putka (she/her) believes fiercely in the power of transformation and the importance of challenging perceptions. She grew up in an entrepreneurial household with a father who took full advantage of his second chance in life after recovering from addiction. This experience inspired Stacey to devote her career to facilitating transformation in the lives of others. She currently pursues this mission as executive director of Breakthrough, an organization that provides people with criminal histories with entrepreneurial education while inside prison, so that they may pursue new business ventures and careers upon release. Stacey holds a BS in psychology from Colorado State University and an MSW from the University of Denver.
  • Lynde Rosario
    Lynde Rosario (she/her) is a dramaturg and literary artist. She holds a BA in drama from Hofstra University and an MFA in dramaturgy from The American Repertory Theatre/Moscow Art Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. Originally from Brooklyn (Canarsie land), Lynde now lives in Denver (Cheyenne, Arapaho, Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ land), where she is the literary manager for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) Theatre Company. Her other affiliations include Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company, Curious Theatre Company, Athena Project, The Catamounts, Theatre Artibus, Local Theater Company, Letter of Marque Theatre Company, and The Anthropologists. Lynde is a board member and vice president of regional activity for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and also serves on the board for the National New Play Network.
  • Amy Shimshon-Santo
    Amy Shimshon-Santo (she/her) is a poet-in-residence on Earth. Her interdisciplinary work connects the arts, education, and urbanism. Her 2020 poetry collection, Even the Milky Way Is Undocumented has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rainbow Reads Award and is now available in both print and audiobook from Unsolicited Press. Amy’s writing has previously been nominated for Best of the Net in Poetry (2018) and a Pushcart Prize for Creative Nonfiction (2017), and her work has been featured in Prairie Schooner, ArtPlace America, Zócalo Public Square, Entropy, Anti-Heroin Chic, Lady Liberty Lit, Full Blede, SAGE, UC Press, SUNY Press, Imagining America, and Tiferet Journal, among others. Amy has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Singapore. Her teaching career has spanned community centers, K-12 schools, arts organizations, spaces of incarceration, and large research universities. She lives in California and has immediate family on three continents. Learn more about Amy’s work and background on her website.
  • Mike Shum
    Mike Shum (he/him) is a journalist and filmmaker who specializes in cinematography and production. In his documentary films, Mike explores the spectrum of human experience–from abuses of institutional power to individual trauma–and his work often highlights the ways in which we perceive and define home within the context of historical and cultural conflict. (Indeed, as the son of Hong Kong immigrants, he sees his work as relating to his own struggles with defining home.) In 2015, Mike was a finalist for the News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Interview with the New York Times for his work in Iraq. In 2017, he served as producer and director of photography for the Tribeca Film Festival’s Audience Award-winning film, Hondros. In 2019, he was director of photography for the film Predator on the Reservation, a finalist for the 2020 News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary. Most recently, Mike was the writer-director and producer on the Frontline | PBS post-election special collaboration, American Voices: A Nation in Turmoil.
  • Rachel Woolf
    Rachel Woolf (she/her) is an independent visual journalist and photographer, based in Denver. She specializes in storytelling through documentary photography and portraiture. Her pictures reveal intimate aspects of humanity intersecting with broader economic and social issues. Rachel holds a BA in documentary studies from Ithaca College. She has been a freelance contributor to publications such as The New York Times, Kaiser Health News, TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, and ESPN Magazine, and her work has been recognized by the National Press Photographers Association, the Michigan Press Photographers Association, and ART WORKS Projects. Explore more of Rachel’s work on her website, and follow her on Instagram.