Session 1: Alison McCrary

www.instagram.com/alison_neworleans

An experienced social justice movement lawyer, artivist, campaign strategist, gardener, community mediator, writer, transformative justice practitioner, and an internationally sought-after speaker on social justice, spirituality, and liberation, Alison McCrary has spent her career at the intersections of justice and spirituality.  She is a creative systems thinker, a go-to strategist for organizations experiencing transitions or challenges, a team builder, and an expert networker who nurtures values-based leadership in others and community-led social change.  

Alison was a Catholic nun for twelve years and enjoys creating meaningful and creative rituals to help others experience the divine and sacred in their lives. Alison is an enrolled citizen of the Ani-Yun-Wiya Cherokee Nation and is active with the Bvlbancha Intertribal Community in New Orleans. 

Alison works on issues related to restorative justice, transformative social change, carceral system abolition, criminal justice reform, environmental justice, immigrant rights, international human rights, cultural preservation, voting rights, disaster recovery, housing rights, and provides support to various social justice movements and organizations locally, nationally, and internationally. 

Session 1: Julia Walters

www.juliawalters.org

Julia Walters is a multimedia artist born and raised in Northern California, with a primary focus in figurative works utilizing oil paints and charcoal. She graduated from the University of California, Davis with a Bachelor’s degree in both Studio Art and Design in the Spring of 2022. Upon graduating she was awarded the Manetti Shrem Artist Residency Scholarship and practiced at the Royal Drawing School in London. Subsequently, she attended the Dumfries House as an artist in residence in Scotland. Both of these residency experiences were incredibly formative for her artistic practice and for her personal growth. Julia’s work employs a saturated and bright color palette that is often reflective of the West landscape. It explores her personal relationship to the everyday moments that seem to exemplify humanity. Her work frequently captures moments where time feels elastic, portraying scenes where something has yet to or is about to occur, creating a tantalizing sense of anticipation. These moments are often rendered in a high-feverish, phantasmagoric manner where the real and imagined co-exist. Currently, Julia is a first year MFA Painting and Drawing candidate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 

Session 2: Anna Pillot

 www.annapillot.com

Anna is a dance and aerial artist, educator, technical director, lighting designer, and adventurer. Her research embraces gender studies, biology, physiology, psychology, and more, exploring their intersections and divergences. Anna constructs containers to surpass limitations, aiming for a heightened self while being honest about her humanity. Often present is a fusion of dance, running, technology, aerial apparatus work, humor, grit, and vulnerability brought to you by misdirection and the refusal to give up. 

As an educator, she empowers her students to embrace risks in their educational journey, fostering a willingness to grapple with failure and a receptivity to being vulnerable while learning.

In production, Anna excels as a technical director, production manager, and lighting designer, delving into projection mapping, video editing, and emergent technology.

Sometimes the best ideas involve a hot dog suit.

Session 2: Ashni Dave

 www.ashnimusic.com

My work is a genre-bending blend of jazz, R&B, South Asian traditional music, and western folk. I reimagine what it means to be a “singer-songwriter”, challenging convention by intuitively interweaving threads from the traditions I was raised in and around. Thematically, I make meaning of my diasporic upbringing and inherited patterns as a first-generation Indian American, queer woman.
“Honey” rhythmically draws from Garba, the Gujarati folk dance/music I grew up with. Garba, meaning womb in Sanskrit, honors the feminine divine and cyclical nature of time. My lyrics mirror these themes: shame women in my family inherit, lack of choice, relationship to our bodies, and healing from intergenerational trauma. “How Much Is Your Silence Worth” meditates on feminine rage and power.
Pouring my cultural and emotional worlds into my compositions, I offer something distinct, yet viscerally familiar. My music is reflective and aspirational, processing and questioning, release and hopeful.

Session 3: Ash Pales

 www.instagram.com/ash.pales

Ash Pales creates sculptures and functional works in wood. 

At Yale University (2020) and the Royal College of Art (2023) she completed Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in architecture, which guided her towards an interest in the physical crafting of objects and spaces. Alongside her studies, she has worked with artists and architects in the US, Europe, and Japan, exploring traditional and contemporary methods of craft at a variety of scales. Originally from Nebraska, she now lives and works in London, transforming salvaged timber into forms which highlight the spirit of the material and encourage a connection with the natural world. 

Session 3: Jessica Rodriguez

 jessierodriguezart.com

I have always thought of making art as a tool to communicate and connect with people.The strange, creative happenings in my head are able to find a home in my art. It is for this reason that I love sharing what I create with others. It is because I am sharing a piece of myself with the world, and it is through this that I am seen.

I create animations by hand carving the images from rubber to create a stamp, which I use to make prints on paper with ink. I then cut out each piece and move them by hand, photographing each shot to create a stop motion film. One minute of animation is composed of hundreds of photographs. I view my films as a kind of visual language and the elements and techniques I have are my tools.

My animations express a range of ideas, from very personal experiences exploring grief, loss and trauma to playful absurdism with fantastical creations. I invite the viewer into an escape from the ordinary and to find their own interpretations when viewing my work.

Session 4: Christina Hughes

 www.hughesdanceprojects.com

Christina is a dance artist and experimental filmmaker. Her movement based films examine our relational ties with place and its influences on the human experience. Her choreographic and dance film works have been accepted into numerous festivals such as Rethink Dance Film Festival (WI), Loko Arts Festival (Potsdam, New York), Dance Bloc NYC Festival, Inspired Dance Film Festival (Australia), Spark Theatre Festival (NYC), and Performing Media Festival (IN). She is a current company member with Andiamo Dance Company, and is the founder of the Ketchikan Dance Film Festival. Sharing movement on the stage and on-screen is her favorite creative practice

Session 4: Dance Doyle

 www.dancedoyle.com

Dance Doyle is an Oakland-based artist. Born and bred there during the ’80s and ’90s, they witnessed a gritty beauty that emerged from the city. That beautiful heavy environment has informed Dance’s work. They’ve never used a cartoon to aid her process. Dance just draws a tiny picture, pins it to the castle of their loom, and works the rest out.   

  Dance has participated in several artist-in-resident programs including, the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE, OSR at Haystack Mountain School in Deer Isle, Maine, and was a Meantime Resident this last summer at the Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco, CA. While earning an MFA from California College of the Arts from 2021-2023, Dance was awarded the Barclay Simpson, Murphy Cadogan, and the All-College Honors Awards. Dance was also a Kay Sekimachi Scholarship recipient.

After completing a year-long Graduate Fellowship at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA, Dance started teaching Extension courses at California College of the Arts and continues to create work out of their space in Oakland, CA.