Michelle Angela Ortiz is a Philadelphia-based artist, muralist, community arts educator, and filmmaker who uses art to uplift overlooked communities. For 25 years, she’s created 50+ large-scale public works globally and won the 2016 Public Art Year in Review Award from Americans for the Arts.

Identical twin brothers Kelly and Kyle Phelps are Ohio-based professors and artists who lead sculpture and ceramics programs at Xavier and University of Dayton. Their collaborative ceramic work focuses on blue-collar life, race, and everyday struggles, created from their shared studio in Centerville, OH.

Seth Gould is a Massachusetts-based metalsmith who creates utilitarian objects that range from simple tools to highly embellished locks. He has been a Core Fellow and a Resident Artist at the Penland School of Craft and has taught, demonstrated, and lectured at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Center for Metal Arts, Southern Illinois Metalsmithing Society, and the Society of North American Goldsmiths.

Phoenix S. Brown is a Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist and musician. Originally from Cincinnati, she earned her BFA from MIAD with a minor in art history. Her work has been featured in solo shows at Hawthorn Contemporary, Wright Museum of Art, and Trout Museum of Art.

Interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator Jeff Zimpel composes site-specific installations, inviting creative participation from those who encounter his Living Studio. Zimpel taught art and design at the secondary level and now engages college students throughout the Midwest. Currently, he works with Arts @ Large as Artist in Residence Curator, and just completed his second book, Feed the Muse (September 2025).

Geo Rutherford is a Wisconsin-based artist known for her work on the Great Lakes. Her “Spooky Lakes” TikTok series, launched in 2020, gained viral popularity. With over 1.8 million followers, she’s praised by educators and parents for inspiring kids to explore science, history, and the environment.

Sarah Ballard is a filmmaker and educator who’s practice fuses personal narratives with historical research to address broader structural inequalities based on gender and class. Ballard teaches at 51���� and is a recipient of the 2025 Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists.

Ceci Tejeda’s family roots are from Michoacán, Mexico, which is why she has Purepecha blood in her veins. Ever since she was a young girl, she’s admired her culture. She creates Alebrijes made of “cartoneria,” a unique and traditional papier-mâché technique from Mexico City. Tejeda also creates large-sized pieces that support various social justice movements and activism using the same method.

Dan Grzeca is a Chicago-based artist and printmaker known for thousands of illustrations, hand-silkscreened prints and posters for bands like The Black Keys, Iron and Wine, Built to Spill, Ween and The Decemberists. His studio and shop is called Ground Up Press.

Michelle Grabner is an artist, writer, and curator, and Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is in major museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago and Walker Art Center. She co-runs The Suburban (Milwaukee) and The Poor Farm (Little Wolf, WI), and is a 2025 Mary L. Nohl Fellow.

Xuan Ye blends art, music, and technology through improvisation and computation to create software, installations, and performances that explore dissonance and meaning. Their work has appeared at MOCA Toronto, Venice Architecture Biennale, UCCA Shanghai, MUTEK Montreal, and more.