Frenchy Williams is an Afro-Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist and cultural organizer based in Kensington, Philadelphia. Their work explores grief, memory, identity, and survival through photography and archival practices. Currently, their work reflects on the emotional landscapes left behind by absence and the ways we continue carrying the people we love. Their practice is deeply informed by Puerto Rican culture, family histories, and the thin line between tenderness and resilience. Through intimate imagery and layered storytelling, they invite viewers to consider grief as a shared human experience.

Kathy Guo is a queer Chinese American artist working with sculpture, empathy, and your participation. Their practice investigates the complexities of our human interconnectivity: In culture, family, community, self, and between one another. Kathy is dedicated to always learning, feeling, playing, and building towards a kinder future.

David Enriquez is an emerging figurative painter, sculptor, and educator based in Philadelphia. He was born in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, and relocated to the United States at a young age. Enriquez received his BA in Art History from The City College of New York (CUNY). His works have been exhibited nationally, and are housed in private collections, as well as the Hudson River Museum’s permanent collection. Informed by his childhood memories and the cultural landscapes of his upbringing, Enriquez's work explores the complexities of identity, intersectionality, politics, and religion.

ILIANA PAGÁN-TEITELBAUM (she/ella) is a disabled Puerto Rican filmmaker, artist, writer, and educator. She has a PhD from Harvard University and teaches Latin American film at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She is a member the SIFTMedia 215 Collective of Black and Latine Women Filmmakers of Philadelphia. Iliana directed of the disability justice short films Mulberry Tree (Best Experimental Film by a Female Director in Brazil), My Crip Kin, and Maramar. Her nonfiction film Twin Tongues/Lenguas Gemelas about multilingualism in the Latinx diaspora won Best Documentary at Picallso Film Fest in India and Best Feature Documentary at Trenton Film Society Festival in NJ, Best Editing at All that Moves Film Festival in Brazil. Her book Violencia invisible (Invisible Violence) is about how Latin American culture responds to violence and inequality.

Miss Thing is a transdisciplinary drag artist based in philadelphia, PA. His/their/her work explores camp irreverence and the inextricable relation of the body/self to the art of drag. Within an art form typically known for its subversion of popular culture, her work reinterprets the mainstream and pays homage to universal references, embodying concepts such as fear, sexuality, death, decay. He dichotomizes concepts of conventional glamour & fashion with horror imagery, taboo, & ugliness, manifesting as full body transformations, achieved through costume & character design & creation, makeup artistry, live performance, collaborative photography & videography, and gallery & public installation.

Rowan Briggs is a comics witch, art teacher, and zine-making forest hag based in the Philadelphia. Their love affair with comics began in 2012 while pursuing an MFA at Dundee University, Scotland. Their most recent publications are Sycamore, a collection of short autobiographical comics, a full text comic adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, a wholly original tarot deck The New Chapter Tarot, and comic adaptation of Val McDermid's Resistance.

Chelsea (she/they) is an embodied identity coach and sexuality educator based in Philadelphia, PA. By exploring self-love and moving through limiting beliefs, she helps people grieve the death of old identities so their truest self can finally breathe and come alive with curiosity and play.

Ahyana is a licensed clinical therapist by education and a creative by birth and every breath she breathes. She has a long standing love with words, and when words elude her she finds imagery, especially photography to be her soul’s favored way to speak for her. She’s west Philadelphia native, woman of faith, daughter, sister, friend, and finds deep joy in being an auntie to her west coast nephew and her east coast nephew. If she's not writing or capturing life moments, she's eating, cooking, traveling, sharing a corny joke, people watching at a local independently owned coffee shop and finding wonder in the moments life continues to offer her.

Jeff Cunningham is a Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary artist whose work spans graphic design, painting, and illustration. Drawing inspiration from surrealists like Remedios Varo and René Magritte, as well as illustrators Norman Rockwell and J. C. Leyendecker, Cunningham creates dreamlike imagery that explores alienation, liminality, and modern existential anxiety. His work blends surrealism with narrative illustration through bold lines, atmospheric color palettes, and uncanny reinterpretations of familiar scenes. Influenced by comic artists Jamie Hewlett and Bill Watterson, Cunningham encourages viewers to question their perceptions of everyday life. A graduate of the Creative and Performing Arts High School and the University of the Arts, Cunningham’s pieces have been featured in numerous group exhibitions across Philadelphia, inviting dialogue and introspection through their evocative imagery.

I’m Jenay, a multidisciplinary artist working with mixed media and ceramics. My work explores anxiety, consciousness, and the experience of being acutely aware of inhabiting a human body. Through process and texture, I use art as a grounding practices to create a way to persist and exist within uncertainty.

Jake Heller is a local Philadelphia cheesemaker, cheesemonger and cheese enthusiast who utilizes the culinary arts as a form self expression. His passion and creativity have earned him notable achievements such as winning 1st place in the 2024 Cheesemonger Invitationals, 2nd place in the international 2023 Young Cheesemonger Of The Year Competition, and his winning of the inaugural 2024 Scrapple Carving Contest held at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia.

Pilot is an intersex and disabled multimedia artist who reflects on embodiment. They work in fiber, metal, photo, and video art, and like to paint with thread. Pilot is inspired by nostalgia, loss, and dreams. They want to know what having a body is like for you.

Nancy K. Frazier is a Philadelphia-area mixed media artist working in assemblage and installation. With a background in graphic design and studies in painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture at Moore College of Art & Design and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she creates sculptural works using found and hand-altered objects, textiles, paint, and text. Her recent work shown here explores memory, grief, and emotional connection through the transformation and reassembly of everyday materials.

Jadiss Chea-Nguyen is an artist from South Philadelphia whose work draws from her Asian-American identity. Currently studying for a BFA at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, her body of work encompasses themes of self-reflection, family, and cultural identity. Through surreal reinterpretations of Cambodian, Buddhist, and American imagery, she explores how ancestral knowledge and contemporary experiences with cultural disconnect, assimilation, and rediscovery inform her spirituality, bridging the gap between western vs. eastern worldview.

A fundamental part of my existence has been nomadic, moving from Vienna to Vancouver to Des Moines during my childhood and Philadelphia as an adult. My earliest memories of hand embroidery stem from my mother embroidering little flowers on the collars of my shirts, but it took decades for me to eventually pick up a needle. I began to learn bookbinding in 2021, decorating the covers with embroidered moths, which led to me branching out to full, independent embroidery pieces. As a self-taught artist, I visually study classical and contemporary embroidery and merge them into my own style. I’ve only recently started exhibiting my work and taking commissions, with two of my pieces in the collection of the Ministry of Awe.

Jo is a queer multi-disclinary artist who spent most of their life believing they were a "creative dabbler" until they finally came out as an artist in 2023. They are always drawing from what they're emotionally processing and integrating to make art, particularly the topics that are marginalized in social conversation - like grief. Around Philadelphia you may find them selling their painted clothing @j.alterlier. doing burlesque @mistressminaka, singing at protests, or evolving into a more somatically-attuned being.

Bonny Lipschutz explores emotional memory by creating imagery drawn from landscape, plants, spirituality, and the human form. Her works render worlds that bend where memory ceases and the fantastical begin. She graduated from Tyler School of Art in 2014 and implements painting, drawing, and printmaking in her artistic practice. She lives with her husband and two cats in Philadelphia.

Salt Trails Collective is a Leeway Foundation Award-winning interdisciplinary group of healers, artists, ministers, and activists united by a shared commitment to honoring grief as a vital and sacred part of the human experience. Founded in 2021 in Philadelphia, Salt Trails has offered community-based grief rituals that blend art, ancestral practice, and collective care. Through gatherings, storytelling, ritual, and creative expression, the collective invites people to move through sorrow in community—offering spaces where grief is not pathologized or hidden, but witnessed and held with reverence. Rooted in a belief that grief work is community work, Salt Trails exists to help dismantle the isolation that so often accompanies loss. By creating accessible, welcoming spaces for people to be with their grief, Salt Trails helps reweave the social fabric that loss can fray. Their events make space for both personal and collective mourning in ways that nourish resilience, connection, and healing.

David E. Williams has unleashed his noir chamber pop music upon an international audience for over 40 years. He has also collaborated with many other artists from the realms of goth, industrial and experimental noise. He is currently working on his 10th solo album, and his songs have been the subject of two tribute compilations, The Appeal of Discarded Orthodoxy and Women Sing Williams. Video director Jon F. Allen is an artist who explores horror, social realism, surrealism, satire, fantasy and psychedelia in drawings and paintings. He is also the founder and editor of Pop Wasteland zine.

Marie Elcin is an artist and art educator with a BFA in 2D Fine Arts from Moore College of Art and Design and a Masters of Art Education from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She is currently working towards an MFA in Interdisciplinary visual arts at Maine College of Art and Design. She teaches at Fleisher Art Memorial and at Abington Senior High School. She uses meditative processes like stitching and drawing to convey poignancy, ephemerality, and spirit as she explores themes around life, nature, loneliness, memory and dying with an intention to provoke an emotional response in the viewer.

Ms. Michaud was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, and has lived on the East Coast, West Coast, and Midwest throughout her life. She is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), where she earned a Certificate in Fine Arts. Ms. Michaud was awarded the Women's Board Travel Scholarship from PAFA, and used this award to study abroad in Europe in 2011. Her work has been exhibited in the U.S. and London, including at the Woodmere Art Museum, Every Woman Biennial (NY and London), ArtExpo (NY), Art on Paper Fair (NY), and Red Dot Miami (FL). Additional recent awards include the Maurice Freed Memorial Prize and Harry Harris Award from the Woodmere Art Museum. Ms. Michaud has been profiled in multiple print and online publications including Root Quarterly and Mezzo Cammin, and is represented through Stanek Gallery.

Healing Music for the Soul, The Ayahumans is a group of musicians based in Philadelphia. Our music comes from native ancestral cultures with roots in Africa and south America traditions. The Ayahumans bring amazonic music which cultures have used as prayers for the sacred world. The journey started in 2019, after traveling to South America in our necessity to find other alternatives to heal ourselves from past traumas, in the process we discovered this ancestral music mainly used for healing and praying. Since then we have performed this healing music with the intention of overcoming what separates us, to bringing us together again.

Desiree Norwood is a self-taught acrylic artist based in Philadelphia whose work explores portraiture as a vehicle for storytelling, remembrance, and emotional connection. Rooted in themes of love, healing, and community, her paintings examine the lived experiences of young Black youth while reflecting both the beauty and vulnerability within their stories. Desiree’s recent body of work investigates the intersection of youth and gun violence, using symbolic imagery and intimate portraiture to confront themes of innocence, grief, and resilience. Through layered visual narratives, she creates space for reflection on the emotional impact of violence within Black communities while honoring the humanity of those affected. Her work seeks to foster dialogue, preserve memory, and encourage collective healing through art.

Morgan Phillippi is a multi-disciplinary artist who graduated from Moore College of Art & Design with a BFA in Illustration in 2011. They have yet to meet an art form they turn their nose up at, having tackled everything from painting to puppets, pastels to printmaking, and pottery to performance art. Morgan is a longtime resident of Philadelphia, and currently resides in the Fishtown/Kensington area of the city. They work part-time at Freehand Supply, a woman-owned art store on Girard Avenue that offers classes, workshops, and that has its own resource exchange available to the community. Aside from creating art non-stop, Morgan owns a houseplant company with their best friend named Sylvan Mountain Apothecary, and is again entering the world of drag performance at the Miss Sobriety drag pageant taking place on Saturday, June 20th at The Church of The Holy Trinity in Rittenhouse Square.

Autumn Marie Cazier, has spent the last ten years working with various non-profits, communities and survivors, after losing two friends due to gun violence in Las Vegas, Nevada (Diana and Jojo Hawatmeh). Within grief, Cazier created ‘4/20/99: A Story of Columbine.’ An artistic representation of the impact of school shootings and the legacies left behind. Cazier currently participates with Moms Demand Action, The Christina Grimmie Foundation, Everytown for Gun Safety, and makes monthly donations to The Columbine Memorial Foundation.

Eden Sakal is a multidisciplinary artist who uses organic materials and historic practices to represent themes of decay, death, and rebirth.

Tori is an artist from West Chester, PA. She has a BFA from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in Animated Arts. Tori likes exploring story through visual media and trying all different forms of art having experience in many mediums such as painting, illustration, sculpture, digital art, and SFX makeup.

Rachel Hetrick is a visual artist and mental health advocate who is always looking for ways to make others feel seen and heard. Her work draws inspiration from a childhood spent outdoors, surrounded by plants. Drawing from impressionist ideas and cubist forms, her acrylic works begin with bright colors that illuminate the subject. Rachel is passionate about the intersection of art and mental health advocacy. She works with NAMI Bucks County facilitating mental health support groups and sharing her story with middle and high school students through a program called Ending the Silence. Rachel’s work has been featured in Beyond the Prints: Art as Social Discourse at the Brandywine Workshop and Archives.

Zsa Zsa is a multi-hyphenate artist whose work spans photography, costuming, hair and makeup, illustration, and poetry. Their practice draws from surrealism and a melancholic outlook. Through layered visual and written work, they explore the deconstruction of ideas, emotions, and cultural notions, rebuilding them into new forms and perspectives. Their art blends intimacy, absurdity, and transformation while being grounded in personal reflection.

Sara is a writer and editor who took the adage “write what you know” to heart, centering much of her creative work around grief, loss, and the complicated ways people carry both, an interest shaped in part by documenting her mother’s 18-year journey with early-onset Alzheimer’s and later training as a death doula. She now explores these themes primarily through Bury Me in New Jersey, a community-centered arts collective of writers, artists, and musicians making work about grief, joy, resistance, and New Jersey. You can follow BMNJ on Instagram at @bury_me_in_nj, or explore the podcast and blog at burymeinnj.com.

Marissa Both is a Philadelphia-based photographer & video artist whose work explores intimacy, identity, and self-reclamation. She specializes in portraiture, experimental video rituals, music videos, and immersive visual storytelling. Her art often blends exploratory techniques, including projector-based photography and surreal video sequences, evoking visceral and intentional imagery. In addition to her personal and commissioned work, Marissa is committed to using art as a means of healing and dialogue, particularly around topics of trauma, survival, and empowerment. Through all of her endeavors, Marissa aims to create visuals that invite reflection, connection, and transformation.

Candi Warhol is performance artist whose work blends virtuosic acrobatics (pole, handbalancing, trapeze), physical theater, clowning and often, pop culture. She is best known for her multimedia Gritty comedy burlesque act.

Abigail Synnestvedt’s paintings explore the concepts of time, perception, memory, mortality, grief, and beauty. Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Synnestvedt graduated from Vermont State University’s MFA program in December of 2023. She received a BFA and Certificate in painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2015. Her solo 2023 Thesis Exhibition Devotions, held at the Julian Scott Memorial Gallery at VTSU, centered around the recent death of her husband from a terminal cancer diagnosis. These paintings examined objects from their life together as artifacts viewed through the lens of love, grief, and nostalgia. Synnestvedt participated in OHO Project’s Guston Response Takeover at the MFA Boston on August 20th, 2022, which resulted in the museum collecting her contributing piece. She was a 2025 fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a resident at the Vermont Studio Center three times, and is a two-time winner of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. Synnestvedt lives and works in Philadelphia.

Sarah Jane Timmons is a Philadelphia-based graphic designer and visual artist who pulls o heartstrings by illustrating the world in a whimsical and nostalgic way. She primarily focuses on cityscapes, landscapes, and wildlife inspired by the Philadelphia area and the trails that surround it. She is no stranger to grief, having lost both of her parents by 18 years old and a sibling a few years later. Sarah’s work in this show balances the sadness of stories that ended too soon with a nod to the hope and healing work that falls on those who carry their memories forward.

M'ris is a product of 4 years of ceramics at The Baldwin School, and a recent member of Blue Skies Pottery in Bryn Mawr, PA. She is surprised at how much muscle memory she has maintained after 25 years away from clay. She is a proud graduate of Beloit College in Beloit, WI (BA: Theatre Arts: Communications; Indie Rock), and a proud dropout of CU Boulder (no MA in Navigating Collapsing Institutions).

Philly artist, mixed media maniac, adventurer of the subconscious, regular at Fleisher Art Memorial.

I’m a pole artist drawn to movement that explores emotion, and vulnerability. I blend sensuality, and raw expression to create intimate performances. For this piece, I explore the grief that follows a dying relationship, using pole as a physical expression of mourning, and memory.

A self taught artist with a focus in Oil painting centered around themes of dissociation, body autonomy, grief. The work is an attempt to both release & express what can’t be said, for myself and others. This pain exists in everyone.

Alicia Sheridan is a multi-media creative living in West Philadelphia. A terminally ill 5x cancer survivor, she was first sick with cancer at 13 years old. Currently she lives with over 20 brain tumors. Her work is an exploration of time, grief, and corporeal entropy. She is inspired by artist Eva Hesse, bioarchitecture, and her own lived experience as a sick & disabled person. Papier-mâché has been Alicia’s primary medium for 5 years. She chose papier-mâché because the paper undergoes visible changes as it ages. Alicia hopes her work serves as a reminder that aging is a precious process. Nothing lasts forever.

Phoebe Murer is an artist born and raised in Philadelphia. She went to PAFA for fine arts and Arcadia for Pre Art Therapy. She raised rats as pets for 27 years. She started out purchasing rats from pet stores. When she graduated Arcadia in 2006, she started rescued a few rats from their psychology lab. Around that time, she got involved with a rat rescue and started fostering and taking in rats that needed to be rehomed. When her rats die, she does still lives of them to remember them.

Meredith Tenney-Free (b.1996) is a painter, sculptor, and installation artist investigating grief through personal, communal, and ecological perspectives. She works with recycled paper, copper, carbon, found detritus, and foraged plant materials to create portraits of environments and communities experiencing loss. She received her MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture and her BA from Gordon College. Her work has been exhibited in Philadelphia, Columbus, Boston, Washington D.C., New York, and Orvieto, Italy. Meredith has made a home with many locations, including rural Ohio, Jersey City and Princeton, NJ, and the Boston Metro area. She is currently based in Bensalem, PA, with her spouse Wesley.

Elaine lives and works in Philadelphia.

August Cameron Davis is an artist and illustrator from West Philadelphia. Known for creating bold, visually striking artwork that celebrates creativity, individuality, and cultural expression. His work combines strong composition, and stylized imagery to produce pieces that are both contemporary and expressive. Drawing inspiration from urban culture, music, and everyday life. August illustrations are created not only as visual statements but also as pieces meant to energize a space and spark conversation.

Lemon (Emily) Foster is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator living in South Philadelphia. Her recent work has focused on quietly representing the miracles and sensations of being alive in a body. She is the Manager of Gallery Interpretation at the Barnes Foundation and Calder Gardens, where she gets to talk to people about art all day.

Cupid is a pole performer and movement artist who transforms emotion into physical expression, creating performances that are both deeply intimate and visually captivating. Rooted in self-awareness, vulnerability, and emotional storytelling, Cupid uses movement as a language to explore themes of love, desire, healing, power, and personal transformation. Every performance blends strength with softness, inviting audiences into a space where emotion and embodiment exist together seamlessly. With a magnetic stage presence and fluid, intentional choreography, Cupid creates experiences that feel raw and emotionally honest. Their artistry is inspired by the connection between body and feeling, turning each performance into a reflection of lived experience and inner truth. Through pole, dance, and expressive movement, Cupid challenges the idea that vulnerability is weakness, instead presenting it as a source of power and beauty. More than entertainment, Cupid’s performances are emotional experiences designed to leave audiences feeling connected, seen, and fully immersed in the moment.

I’m a Philadelphia based artist, specializing in pop culture and odd things. I’m a story teller first and foremost and adore symbolism and imagery that expands on perception and hidden gems of life.

Black. Queer. Fem. Philly Native.

Nova (they/them) lives in Philly with their cat Clover and loves poetry, art and spending time in nature.

Cara Anderson is a multimedia artist whose practice includes painting, graphic design, and illustration. Influenced by difficult women and the expectations placed on them, her work explores intimacy and individuality, drawing inspiration from nature, technology, and motherhood.A graduate of Temple University, she lives and works in Delaware County.

Veronica Cianfrano is a curator, multimedia artist, teacher, the youngest of three daughters, and a first-generation American. In 2010, she received her MFA in Painting from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she discovered the need for better access to the arts. There she started CHER, a collaborative pop-up gallery; the mission of which was to bring thematically relevant contemporary art exhibitions to communities that don’t normally experience them by organizing temporary events, happenings, and exhibitions in alternative spaces. She is an educator with over eight years of experience teaching studio art and art theory courses to pre-college, undergraduate, and graduate students nationally and internationally. Veronica has over ten years of experience curating exhibitions and managing galleries. Her professional practice is led by the governing principle that diverse perspectives and collaboration can lead to the best opportunities for public engagement and meaningful connections to the arts.

Juli Wert is a film-maker currently working in Philadelphia PA. She went to Montgomery County Community college and graduated with an Associates degree in Mass Media Production, went to Savannah College of Art and Design for a year and dropped out, and then went to Temple University for a month and then dropped out. Juli creates an unusually magical and playful blend of documentary and reality by blurring the lines between what is real and what isn't. Juli is currently streaming her debut feature “Like A Fire That Consumes All Of It,” on NoBudge. Host of the Variety Show, Juli has programmed three multimedia, yearly events in Philadelphia with hopes of expanding.

Nova (they/them) lives in Philly and loves making art, poetry, and spending time with their beloved cat, Clover.

Joy Feasley lives and works in Fishtown. She is represented by Fleisher Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia , PA and Adams and Ollman Gallery in Portland, OR.

Soli is a 22 year old graduate of the Tyler School of Art Painting program, who creates works primarily out of oil paint, and fat queer spite.

Nancy Hill is a multi-discipline maker from Philadelphia. While primarily educated in painting and illustration, a general interest in craft has prompted exploration in other mediums and skill based work. Exploring themes of anatomy, illness, and form vs function, quilting has presented itself as a vast thematic scaffold.

RESUME Kristof Znyk Education MFA City University of New York BFA Hunter College NYC Group Exhibitions 1996 - PS122 Gallery NYC 1999 - Iona College, New Rochelle, NY 2001 The Elizabeth Foundation, NYC 2003 Cynthia Von Buhlen Gallery, NYC 2003 - 2020 Alumni Shows City University of New York 2004 Pride Show , Gulfport Gallery, St. Petersburg, FL 2025 The Jane Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2025 The Resource Exchange Gallery, Philadelphia PA

Ariel E Monroe is a Philadelphia-based artist, alternative wellness practitioner, founder of Delta E.M. Wellness, published poet, speaker, model and cat mom. They love nature, world music & cuisine, enjoy traveling and believe that expression and connection are tantamount to the human experience. They are inexhaustibly curious, dedicated to cultivating inner peace, lifelong learning and community service. They find contentment and happiness walking, cleaning the earth and channeling Holy Fire Reiki while creating works of art solo and in groups. Recently, they began dancing with fire palm torches and sharing in unison physical and spoken flow while utilizing headstand assistance equipment for core strength and to continue expanding healthy habits.

Carolyn Chernoff is an artist, educator, and cultural worker. She has worked as a performance artist, puppeteer, and professor, among other things. Mostly interested in ephemera and everyday culture, her preferred modalities are zines and stickers. A longtime member of the board of directors of the Leeway Foundation and other Philly cultural organizations, Carolyn has taught in the socially-engaged art graduate program at Moore College of Art, works with the Tiny Little Collective on an annual dollhouse and diorama hands-on workshop, and has received grants from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation, and Art Is Essential.

My name is Alec Ullman and I grew up in Chester County. The art I make is typically painting-based but implements found objects, woodworking, drawing, printmaking, and other processes. There is a focus on light, place, atmosphere, texture, and subject. I love making art but I also yearn to make things that are human and invite conversation or contemplation. In such, I have a broad aim but some ideas that I embed in my work are that of coping, framing, emptiness, interconnectivity, and reflection.

Luke is a Philadelphia-based mixed-media artist and social work graduate student seeking to bridge community-engaged research and activism. His works investigate the intersection of community care, togetherness, and loneliness shaped by capitalistic destruction. He believes art is a powerful tool to make these stories accessible to the general public, hoping they can be a means to inspire, affirm, and spur social change.

Miranda is located in South Philadelphia, where she resides with her daughter, Ivy, and cat, Mochi. She works in the nonprofit world, facilitating connection with women across continents. Poetry has always been her emotional outlet, and when her wife died in September 2025 from suicide, it was a welcome refuge and comfort.

Veronica Rose Snead is an emerging abstract artist from Philadelphia. In 2025, she received her BFA in painting at Arcadia University and has been working continuously on her "Dot Series" since 2024 show casing in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey.

Charles Black is the organizer of the Grief Across the Rainbow Storytelling show on June 9th. He is an educator, organizer, and proud person who stutters. Charles is passionate about building and nurturing “third spaces” that center queer storytellers and empower people to find their voices. He has shared his work at The Moth, the inaugural Philly Queer Storytellers show, with the Human Rights Campaign, and at Story District’s 2025 Out/Spoken during World Pride. A former organizer of four TEDx events, Charles has found a meaningful new calling in the world of storytelling. He lives in Center City with his cat, Delilah.

Jess Noon (she/her) grew up as an ardent writer of journals, poetry and even a few short stories, but had not picked up her pen in many years, until the sudden death of her fiancé in 2021. When she’s not writing, creating or otherwise living, Jess works on behalf of sustainability and climate resilience in Philadelphia.

Ember Johnston (1999-2018) was a multidisciplinary, queer artist. Born and raised in Seattle, WA, Ember moved to Philadelphia to pursue a BFA in Directing, Playwriting, and Producing from The University of the Arts. Although they were predominately a theatre artist, Ember never limited themself or their art and chose to embrace many mediums. Never grow up, never give in. Print by Erin Hamilton (she/her).

Born and raised in the City of Brotherly Love, I’m the son of Jamaican immigrants whose stories, resilience, and culture continue to shape me as a person and a writer. I began writing at a young age, but only recently decided to share my work more publicly. Art has always been a space of connection for me — a way to build community, reflect emotion, and create honest conversations with others. Through poetry, I explore the experiences that connect us all: love, identity, struggle, growth, and healing. I write to connect not to confuse. Poetry should be a shared experience between the writer, reader and listener. Every poem I write is my perspective of all our shared stories told in my own font.