Verónica A. Pèrez (they/them) is an artist whose work is deeply rooted in the community. Through their braiding circles workshops, they explore themes of erasure, identity, and interdependency. In 2023, Perez was awarded the St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist award and the Amelia Peabody award for sculpture excellence. Recent honors include the Maine Arts Commission’s Maine Artist Fellows for 2024 in fine arts, as well as the Ellis Beureguard 2024 Project Grant. Currently, Perez works as the Administrative Assistant at the Black-led arts and residency organization Indigo Arts Alliance in Portland, Maine; as a co-organizer in Tender Table; and on the Southern Maine Workers’ Center Board of Directors and the Policy Committee for the Opportunity Alliance. Veronica Perez resides in Westbrook, Maine, with their partner and child.

Anne Choi 

Anne Choi is a fiber artist raising a small flock of Shetland sheep in Bedminster, NJ. She teaches weaving, spinning, and dyeing with a focus on using natural, biodegradable materials and ecologically sustainable practices. Anne is the founder and executive director of NJ Fibershed, a nonprofit educational organization connecting fiber producers and growers, particularly first-generation farmers, with fiber artists within New Jersey.

Heidi Barr

Heidi Barr (she/her) is the Co-founder and CEO of the PA Flax Project, a cooperative dedicated to re-imagining the flax for linen industry in Pennsylvania. For over a decade she owned and operated  Kitchen Garden Textiles, a Philadelphia based lifestyle brand working at the intersection of food and fabric. This work led to a deep understanding of the connection between textiles and farming. In 2020, with farmer Emma De Long, Heidi took this understanding to the next level and the PA Flax Project began. Heidi is a founding board member of the North American Linen Association, a trade organization advancing bast fiber production and processing in North America. Her love for textiles and lifelong attention to environmental issues combine into her passion for bringing linen production back to Pennsylvania.

Marianne Fairbanks

The Hemp Lab was initiated by Associate Professor Marianne Fairbanks (she/her) to focus on ways to use this locally grown, carbon sequestering crop as a raw material that holds sustainable solutions for a better social, ecological, economic and cultural future. Using hemp grown by the Ellison Lab, we transform the raw material into components – long line fibers, short fibers (tow), and hurd, —refining and combining them into new forms for both utilitarian and experimental outcomes. The Hemp Lab learns from processes used in the past to inform the future. Through hands-on learning and processing of the material we will design, prototype and test new products. Through making, we work to facilitate interactions based on participation and mutuality, growing knowledge and respect for the environment, sustainable materials, and design processes in order to create a regenerative future.

Michelle Lougee & Cecily Miller

Michelle Lougee (she/her), artist and Cecily Miller (she/her), curator, came together when Cecily invited Michelle to be an artist-in-residence in Arlington, MA.  Their goal was to develop an artist-led and collectively made public art project for the busy Minuteman Bikeway that would raise awareness of plastic waste.  As a curator, Cecily was drawn to Michelle’s intricate sculptural installations, created by transforming plastic waste into paradoxical objects – at once seductive and repelling, uncanny and strangely familiar. Cecily wondered what would happen if Michelle was able to enlist community volunteers in scaling up her artwork so that it could have a visual impact in public space.  At the same time, collaborative art making would provide a platform – from formal talks to intimate conversations -- for Michelle to share her reflections and research about the impact of plastic on people and the environment. The result – Persistence – was a huge success despite the impact of the pandemic. 38 sculptures created by more than  volunteers were suspended in trees along the Bikeway. Heartened, Michelle and Cecily have gone on to organize projects with a similar philosophy and methodology: harnessing collective creation to challenge the seductive convenience of plastic.

Ana María Hernando 

Ana María Hernando (she/her), from Argentina, is a Colorado based multidisciplinary artist and a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellow. Ana received the 2020 Prix Henry Clews in Sculpture, awarded by La Napoule Art Foundation, with a one-year residency and solo major show at their Château, France. She has exhibited in other national and international museums. In January 2024, her solo show To Let the Sky Know / Dejar que el cielo sepa, opened at Madison Square Park in New York, inaugurating the 20th anniversary of the MSP Conservancy’s public art program. A portion of this work traveled to Aspen, where it was shown in My Longing Doesn’t Quiet / Mi añoranza no se calla along with new work at Rubey Park Transit Center and Sister Cities Plaza. Ana represented Colorado in 2024 Women to Watch exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. 

Lissy Robinson-Cole & Rudi Robinson 

Melissa (Lissy) Robinson-Cole (Ngāti Hinemaru, Ngāti Kahu) (she/her) was destined to embrace the arts, born into a world in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where creativity flowed as freely as the waters of the moana. Raised in a large, creative  and vibrant whānau where she is the pōtiki/youngest of eight wāhine, with her father Colin Cole, a renowned NZ couturier and her mother Mairehau Tui Cole, a high intellectual, Lissy’s life has been to navigate these two extremes and forge her own path. After a fulfilling journey in communications and fashion, including my 'I Love Lissy Collection', crochet found her at a time when she was exploring and experimenting. Crochet became her visual language and true calling, a way to honour her Tūpuna's memory, and a medium to express her deepest emotions.

Rudi Robinson (Waikato/Ngāti Pāoa, Ngāruahine) (he/him) hails from the forestry town of Kaingaroa. Born with a chainsaw in hand, his early years were spent in the embrace of nature and the creative sanctuary of his backyard shed. His transition from the forests to the art of crochet has been a journey of discovery and learning. Meeting Lissy was the turning point where he swapped his chainsaw for a crochet hook, combining his love for making with the intricate art of crochet.

Nicole Leth 

Nicole Leth (she/her) of My Affirmation Project is a professionally trained artist, writer, and multi-disciplinary creator living and working in Asheville, North Carolina. Deeply impacted by the loss of her father to suicide as a teenager, Nicole has spent the past decade researching the human healing process and creating spaces for people to heal with compassion and joy. Her work, experienced by over 100 million people worldwide, integrates compassionate statements into public spaces, offering moments of joy through resilience and resilience through joy, all through accessible, anonymous art forms. Nicole has a rich history as a textile designer, having single-handedly built an expansive clothing business with three store locations, selling her designs globally. Her ongoing project, My Affirmation Project, includes over 600 affirmation billboards, with a recent installation in Times Square. Nicole was awarded a Bronze OBIE for her work and is a 2024 recipient of the MOFSA Grant. Her work has been featured by The LA Times, The Washington Post, The Today Show, Daily Mail, and Daily Word, where she continues to promote mental health, emotional healing, and the joy of human connection on a global scale.

Luke Hayes 

Having received both professional architecture training and art education, artist Luke Haynes (he/him) of My Affirmation Project has spent the last two decades working full time to explore the relationship between the two. Haynes is most well known for his work as a professional quilter and is recognized as a core pillar of the "modern quilting movement" for his projects that bring quilting techniques into public art installations and community activations. Raised in poverty, Luke is incredibly passionate about sustainable making practices that utilize repurposed textiles and substrates to create his art. Haynes has collaborated with many companies, museums, and cities to integrate art into their outdoor environments, including receiving the SOMBRA! Grant to create quilted public art structures in Arizona public parks, his work creating quilted art structures in Los Angeles parks, and a quilted architectural dome for an annual event in Seattle. In addition to his acclaimed public “Quilt Architecture”, Luke’s quilts have toured the world and been shown over 150 times in museums and fine art institutions. His work has been acquired by the private collections of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Newark Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, The Asheville Art Museum, and The International Quilt Museum amongst others. Haynes values giving back and when he is not working in his studio he is traveling the globe lecturing and holding classes that equip students with the skills to recycle their old textiles into beautiful, high-utility quilt projects.