Make a Wave

Carris Adams is a visual artist whose practice consists of drawings and paintings that reference signs and signifiers in the landscape pointing to systemic inequality and resilience. The conceptually multi-layered works seek to inform and position viewers to recognize their …

Anna Bahow (Director) is committed to the development of new work and a diversity of voices. Her productions have received Jeff Awards for new work and use of multimedia. Anna’s work has appeared on many best of the year lists, …

Renée Baker, founding music director and conductor of the internationally acclaimed Chicago Modern Orchestra Project, has composed more than 2,000 works for ensembles, including numerous commissioned pieces for the Chicago Sinfonietta and the Chicago Sinfonietta Chamber Ensemble, Berlin international Brass, …

I'm a teacher, a student of life, and an illustrator with a strong desire to positively impact communities through art. As a youth I always desired to be the "Mrs. Frizzle " of visual arts, someone that could sneak science, …

Rozalinda Borcilă (she/they) is a Romanian immigrant, artist, and activist. She develops long-term research projects that combine analytic and embodied modes of learning. Her work explores settler colonialism as a placemaking project that involves multiple and entangled violences. How do …

J. Nicole Brooks is an actor, director, and author with ties to Los Angeles and New York, but is proud to call Chicago planet home. She is an ensemble member at the Lookingglass Theatre Company. Selected directing credits include Black …

Lili-Anne Brown, a native South Side Chicagoan, works as a director, actor, and educator, and has performed in, directed, and produced many award-winning shows, both local and regional. She is the former Artistic Director of Bailiwick Chicago, where she focused …

Rachel Bunting started making dance as "The Humans" in 2002. Her work uses objects, masks, video, and voice to create visual worlds and theatrical happenings. Her interest in poetic and episodic forms allows her dances to sometimes misbehave as film …

Devin Cain is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator. He received his Bachelor of Art in Cinema Art + Science from Columbia College Chicago and has training in theater and performance. He is a Teaching Artist for the School of …

Rinska Carrasco is a Dominican-American who is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA, Gray Talent Group, Halcyon, Teatro Vista, and Collaboraction. She has worked alongside companies such as Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Silk Road Rising, Victory Gardens Theatre, …

Rae Chardonnay Taylor is a DJ and arts administrator with a background in events management and production. She began DJing in 2010 and has since held residencies at Chicago venues including Underground Wonder Bar and The Promontory and has circulated …

Kurt Chiang is a theater artist, writer, and performer. He is Artistic Director Emeritus & Ensemble Member of The Neo-Futurist Theater, where he wrote/performed more than 300 very short plays in the prolific weekly show, The Infinite Wrench. …

Keyierra Collins, is an Afro-interdisciplinary dancer and choreographer based in Chicago, but recognized internationally. In 2020, she received the 3Arts/Walder Foundation Awardee grant, and she has also been honored with grants from organizations like Chicago Dancemakers Forum and …

Bethany Collins (she/her) was born in Montgomery, AL and lives and works in Chicago, IL. Bethany is a multidisciplinary artist whose conceptual practice examines the relationship between race and language. Centering language—its biases, contradictions, and ability to simultaneously forge connections and …

Richard Costes is a deaf actor of color who has also worked as a director, playwright, and accessibility consultant. Richard grew up near Youngstown, Ohio where he graduated from Kent State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Studies. …

Sarah Cullen Fuller is an educator, dancer, and choreographer who is dedicated to the transformative power of dance. A graduate of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Sarah began her career in dance performance working with the Joffrey and Boston Ballets, …

Lauren was born in Chicago in 1956 and raised on Chicago’s south side. She ended her formal training in the mid 70s and became an autodidact, beginning a body of work investigating creative improvised music and documenting its community of …

Ivelisse “Bombera de Corazón” Diaz was born and raised in Humboldt Park, the heart of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community. At the young age of five, she began studying Bomba under the mentorship of her beloved uncle Eli S. Rodriguez, a …

Leina`ala Dietmeyer has been a performance artist for most of her life. She began with ancient and modern hula dance at the age of four. Trying to blend a little more with the culture around her growing up, she took …

Anita Fillmore Kenney has been a dance educator, choreographer, and performer in the Chicago area for over 20 years. She is the Associate Executive Director of MOMENTA and has been influential in MOMENTA’s physically integrated dance programming. Her work there …

Jessie Fisher is a Chicago-based actress, musician, improviser, and teacher. Her Broadway credits include Once and the upcoming Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Local credits include productions at Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Gift Theatre, TimeLine Theatre …

Kirsten Fitzgerald is a proud member of the Artistic Ensemble at A Red Orchid Theatre and its Artistic Director since 2008. She is on stage there now in Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talkhouse. With a love for nurturing …

Stephen Flemister is an interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, print media, and new media, with practices invested in the intersections of portraiture and influences of digital culture. Through objects, installations, and experimental studies, Stephen explores methods of visibility and fabricated …

Kenyatta Forbes is a multidisciplinary artist who uses her own experiences as a Black woman to open a dialogue about the construction of "blackness." Using humor, gamification, and her experience as an educator, Kenyatta fuses together a safe space for …

Hell-bent on creating a repertoire that sparked conversations regarding notions of gender, sexual prowess, and race, Jenn Freeman made her debut as burlesque artist Po’Chop in 2010. With over a decade of dance training, including studying at Columbia College Chicago, …

Lional 'Brother El' Freeman is a spontaneous composer, multidisciplinary creative, and educator who uses music and visual arts to express ideas while connecting people to a higher plane of consciousness. Raised in the hip hop aesthetic and DIY movement, he …

Sydney Chatman is an educator, director, producer, writer, and founder of the Tofu Chitlin’ Circuit. She was accepted into the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF) Observership Program for the Broadway Revival and Tony-nominated play The Trip to Bountiful starring …

Ricardo Gamboa is an award-winning artist, activist, and academic working in their native Chicago and New York City, creating radically politicized work. In Chicago, Ricardo is a member of the Free Street Theater, the Goodman Theater Playwrights Unit, a resident …

Eric J. Garcia blends history, culture, contemporary themes, and a graphic style to create politically charged art that reaches beyond aesthetics. Using his comic books, mixed media installations, murals, and hand-printed posters, he aims to educate and challenge. Being a …

Emjoy Gavino is an actor, casting director, teaching artist, and producer proud to call Chicago her home. The eldest child of Filipino immigrants, Emjoy grew up in the Pacific Northwest, falling in love with the Seattle theater scene.

In 2006, …

Isaac Gomez is a Chicago-based playwright, dramaturg, and educator. His plays include La Ruta (developed at Primary Stages, Steppenwolf Theater Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Goodman Theatre, and Pivot Arts); Wally World (Sideshow Theater Company Commission); PerKup Elkhorn (developed at Northlight …

Cameron Harvey is an artist currently living and working in Chicago. She graduated cum laude from Wellesley College in 1999 with a BA in Studio Art and moved to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, …

Sonja Henderson is an award-winning, Chicago-based sculptor, educator, and community organizer. She embraces restorative justice practices to create communal placemaking and safe spaces for healing, rest, and play.

A premiere memorial artist, Sonja received Congressional Recognition for the life-size cast-bronze …

J’Sun Howard is a Chicago-based dancemaker and poet. He creates intimate performances that express generous, loving, and compassionate play between Black and Brown men.​ He was awarded an inaugural 2020 Esteemed Artist Award from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs …

Deidre Huckabay is a Chicago-based performer, composer, writer, photographer, and record producer. Her work reflects a solitary, interior world, drawing on a musical life that requires long hours alone and listening. She tends to make work that undermines authorship by …

Kevin Iega Jeff is an award-winning choreographer, accomplished dancer, renowned director, and respected and devoted dance educator. Iega creates transcendent works while inspiring those around him to foster extraordinary lives through dance. "The foundation of my practice is to examine …

Erin Kilmurray is a performer, choreographer, and teaching artist whose work is strongly influenced by dance and performance places acting as creative and social centers. Drawing upon a contemporary dance practice, space-making, and a long-standing relationship with theater and nightlife …

Sam Kirk is a multidisciplinary artist and curator, who explores culture and identity politics. Utilizing art as a communication tool, her work uncovers years of qualitative research which often leaves the viewer with a question, or unspoken request to walk …

Daniel Kyri is a Jeff Award-nominated actor, singer, writer, and curator native to Chicago. He is featured in Stephen Cone’s Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, streaming on Netflix, and has starred in productions at Lookingglass Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare …

Blake Lenoir is well-known for his finely detailed, colored-pencil drawings of lush, natural landscapes teeming with wildlife. He renders the flora and fauna of his native Illinois with the same intense passion he uses to depict endangered species in the …

Rika Lin (aka Yoshinojo Fujima) (she/her) is a shin-nisei, a part of postwar Japanese American diaspora, and an interdisciplinary performing artist, dancemaker, and Grandmaster in Fujima style Japanese classical dance. An active member of Asian Improv aRts Midwest, she is …

BrittneyLove Smith is currently playing the role of Prix in Eclipse Theatre's production of Breath Boom. BrittneyLove was Jane Eyre in both the original and remounted production of The Hypocrites production of You On The Moors Now. She …

How does one know when life’s journey to purpose begins?  Like many, at first it wasn’t obvious to Nicole Malcolm, a.k.a. the Madd Painter, a name later inspired by an artist who instructed the painter to go home and …

Ramah Jihan Malebranche is a Haitian immigrant with interdisciplinary talents spanning music, visual arts, education, and the accompanying project management skillsets. His music is a lush yet austere brand of chamber pop; honest and sentimental while set in a mature …

Nicole Marroquin is a teacher, educator, and artist whose work explores belonging and spatial justice. She has been researching student uprisings in Chicago Public Schools dating between 1967-74. In 2018 she participated in a Project Development Innovation Lab at the Magnum …

Yvette Mayorga is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist known for her Rococo-inspired reliefs that merge confectionary labor with found images to explore themes of belonging. Dominated by the color pink, Mayorga celebrates femme power while questioning the allure of consumer culture …

Alexandra Olsavsky, a "beautifully voiced" soprano (Herald-Times, Bloomington Early Music), is a collaborative musical artist who actively performs with a diverse array of artistic ensembles, including those specialized in Renaissance and Baroque era music, world music, chamber …

Christian Ortiz was born in Mexico but has lived in Chicago for most of his life, where he now works as an artist and educator. Christian received his BFA in fiber studies and his BSED in art education from Northern …

My love for music started when I was very young at seven years old. We had a small marimba at home and I was curious to know how it worked. I was amazed by the sound this instrument made. My …

Kelly O’Sullivan’s theatrical credits include BLKS, This is Modern Art, The Internationalist, Honest, Good Boys and True, The Crucible, and 100 Saints You Should Know (Steppenwolf Theatre); Men on Boats, Bruise Easy, The Humans, Columbinus, and The Dark at …

Susannah Papish is a native Southside Chicago-based artist, curator and writer.  She has been an active part of the Chicago visual arts community through her studio practice and is also known through her artist-run space boundary, founded in 2017 …

Christine Pascual is a costume designer based in Chicago since 1994. She was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island in Dix Hills, New York. She is the oldest of seven children whose parents immigrated to …

Featured in The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Reader, on WBEZ, WTTW, FoxSoul, and on international television and radio, Nikki Patin has been writing, performing, educating, and advocating for over two decades. She has …

Steph Paul is a first-gen Haitian-American director/choreographer who clears space for uninhibited physical truth. What comes up must come out. Her work includes: How to Defend Yourself (NYTW, Victory Gardens, Humana Festival), Where the Mountain Meets the Sea (MTC, Humana …

Amaniyea Payne, Artistic Director of Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago for three decades and Adjunct Faculty at Columbia College School of Dance for three years, is an artistic force in global dance communities around the world. She is recognized for …

Originally hailing from Baltimore, Ericka Ratcliff has performed regionally and locally in A Red Line Runs Through It and We Are All In This Room Together (Second City); Marie Antoinette (Steppenwolf Theatre); You Can't Take It With You (Northlight Theatre); …

David Richards was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1952 and currently lives and works in Chicago. His work has been shown at: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Chicago Cultural Center; the Illinois State Museum, Springfield; The International Museum of …

Josh Rios is an educator, media artist, and writer whose projects deal with the histories, archives, and futurities of Latinx subjectivity and US/Mexico relations as understood through the intersections of modernity, postmodernity, and neocoloniality. Josh’s projects highlight moments of intercultural …

Karen Rodriguez is a Chicago-based actor hailing from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. She recently appeared onstage at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in The Rembrandt with ensemble members John Mahoney and Francis Guinan. Most notably, she starred in the critically-acclaimed solo show The …

Evaristo "Tito" Rodriguez was born in Chicago of Puerto Rican parents. At age six, he moved with his mother to the town of Dorado in Puerto Rico, where he attended grammar and middle schools. At age 14, Tito returned to …

Kellie Romany is an abstract artist interested in bodies and systems. Using a color palette of skin tones, Romany creates objects that act as a catalyst for discussion about human connections, race, and the systems surrounding these themes. She received …

Ricky Ruiz grew up in Miami, Florida where he began dancing at age six. He attended the University of South Florida and graduated with a degree in Modern Dance Performance. Upon graduation, Ricky relocated to Chicago where he began dancing …

Violinist James Sanders confidently crosses stylistic borders but stays true to both the jazz violin legacy and his rigorous classical training to create music that transcends categories yet remains faithful to its multiple inspirations, which include his Caribbean heritage. He …

Anna Soltys and the Familiar is a modern folk rock band with an entrancing new sound. Anna spent the first part of her childhood in Poland followed by six years in Paris before moving to her self-proclaimed home, Chicago. It …

Edra Soto is a Puerto-Rican born artist, curator, educator, and co-director of the outdoor project space, The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Growing …

Allison Marie Spicer is a practicing visual artist and educator in Chicago. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally with art works delving into themes of nature, the human condition, cycles/patterns of relationships, space + time, the built environment, cultural …

Darling is a Chicago native who has roots in Atlanta where Darling started dance training. Darling attended North Springs Charter School of the Performing Arts where Darling was trained in ballet, modern, jazz, and African performance. Darling began dancing professionally …

In memoriam (March 27, 1972 - March 8, 2019):

"I was born in 1972 in Chicago, Illinois. My father was the great Eddie Taylor Sr., who played with Blues greats such as Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Sunnyland …

Violinist Arianne Urban is a Chicago-based freelance musician and an active solo, chamber, and orchestral player. Over the past two years, Arianne has been working on a personal project revolving around the collaboration of mindfulness meditation and music making and …

Vanessa Valliere is a performer who uses elements of clown and puppetry to create original work. She has toured nationally as a solo performer and she was part of a clown ensemble for Tour De Fat from 2011-2016. She has …

Eric Von Haynes is an artist, designer, and curator whose work synthesizes old and new printing methods and aesthetics. While design and printmaking are his passions, he is energized by collaborations and the ideas and challenges that come from working …

Michael Covenant Watson has been one of the judges of the Annual Haiku Festival since its inception. Prior to that, and for ten years, he leveraged his experiences as an itinerant poet and event organizer into highlighting the works of …

A.J. Wester is a stage director and teaching artist. As a teaching artist, A.J. has been the stage director/vocal coach for the Opera Music Theatre Ensemble at Merit School of Music since its inception in 2010. She created and led …

Rhonda Wheatley is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist, energy worker, and educator whose installations and interactive projects are grounded in the speculative and metaphysical. Her recent projects include a solo show at Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC); group shows at the …

Meghann Wilkinson has been an ensemble member with Lucky Plush Productions since 2004. A former company member of Mordine and Company, she has performed in The Arrow with The Neo-Futurists as well as in works by Lisa Wymore and Peter …

Mary Williamson is an actor, writer, and visual artist who is proud to call Chicago home. Her work often focuses on themes of gender, sexuality, body, horror, and humor. She is a founding member and former Creative Director of The …

Danièle Wilmouth is fascinated by the unconscious choreography of ordinary life and how cinema can reveal the miraculous spectacle of the everyday. She creates hybrid forms of film, video, installation, and live art that explore ritual, pattern, monotony, and impermanence. …

Sadie Woods is an award winning post-disciplinary artist, independent curator, and deejay. Her work focuses primarily on social movements, liberatory practices, cultural memory, and producing collaborations within communities of difference. She also deejays under the moniker Afrodjia, focusing on diasporic …

Ayanna Woods is a composer, performer, and bandleader from Chicago. Her music explores the spaces between acoustic and electronic, traditional and esoteric, wildly improvisational and mathematically rigorous. A collaborator across genres and forms, her work spans new music, theater, film …

A proud ensemble member at The Gift Theatre, Jay has appeared in the world premiere of A Life Extra Ordinary, The Grapes of Wrath, Richard III, the world premiere of David Rabe’s Good for Otto, the …

Debra Yepa-Pappan is a Korean and Jemez Pueblo artist who utilizes digital imagery to share her story about being mixed race. Her earlier works consisted of traditional black and white photography and examined issues of Native American stereotypes. This path …

Sara Zalek is a visual artist, choreographer, and curator rooted in Butoh, the avant-garde, and investigations of personal identity. She is obsessed with time travel, experimental science, hybrid animals, permaculture, and the intentional act of transformation. Through Butoh Chicago, Zalek …