Kimberly Trowbridge is a painter, an installation artist, a performer, and a lecturer on color theory. She received an MFA from the University of Washington (2006) and a BFA in Painting / BA in English Literature from Indiana University (2003). Her first solo museum show at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (2021) was developed during her time as Creative Fellow at Bloedel Reserve (2018-2020), a 150-acre garden amid an old growth forest. Recently, Trowbridge was a resident at Jentel Artist Residency, in Wyoming (2022). She is currently developing work in the PNW and the Mojave Desert. She is currently writing her first book on color. Trowbridge completed a Facebook Open Arts commission (2021), and was Artist in Residence at Oxbow, Seattle. She is a two-time Neddy Award Finalist (2014, 2016), and an Artist Trust GAP Grant recipient (2014). She is the Director of The Modern Color Atelier, a multi-year painting program at Gage Academy of Art, Seattle. She has led plein-air painting tours in Spain, Portugal, and Twisp, WA. Learn more about Kimberly here.

Catherine Alice Michaelis has been exploring what an artist book can be for over 30 years. She works with antique printing presses, moveable type, and any printable medium she finds, including: paper, fabric, film, magnets, and veneer to summon a dialog with Nature. When she isn’t printing, she’s sewing unique works on fabrics that more intimately explore gender, ageism, and memory loss. Catherine pushes her creative practice through writing, videopoetry, direct animation, and direct dyeing from plants. Collaborating and participating in community is part of Catherine’s practice. She works with scientists, writers, visual artists, and musicians to make edition print work. She’s responded to crowd sourced calls for participation, been invited by printing institutions to participate in collective works, and organized invitational print sets like Stack the Deck: 18 Artists Mark the Cards for Women’s Health & Healing. Catherine has curated national and international artist book shows in the Pacific Northwest and created programming around them, most recently at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. Bringing other artists forward and building community is something she believes in and does. She is also BIMA’s curator of the Cynthia Sears Artists’ Book collection. Learn more about Catherine here. 

Artist and educator Byron Au Yong (歐陽良仁) creates events Variety calls “intimate and existential, personal and political all at once.” He was born to Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh and raised in the Pacific Northwest. His upbringing informs an attention to the ways people gather to listen and connect with the places they call home. Examples include Activist Songbook, to counteract hate and energize movements (Asian Arts Initiative, Hopkins Center for the Arts, International Festival of Arts & Ideas), The Ones, a.k.a. (Be)longing, a.k.a. Trigger, about coming of age in an age of guns (Virginia Tech Center for the Arts, MDC Live Arts), Piano Concerto—Houston, for 11 pianists (University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts), and Turbine, for more than 80 moving singers along the water (Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and Leah Stein Dance Company). The Seattle Weekly says his “interdisciplinary works are as exquisite and imaginative as they are unclassifiable.” Honors include a Creative Capital Award and Sundance Institute/Time Warner Foundation Fellowship. Au Yong holds degrees in theater, dance, and music from NYU, UCLA, and the University of Washington. He is an Associate Professor and Director of Arts Leadership at Seattle University. Learn more about Byron here.

Esther Ervin is a contemporary visual artist and jewelry maker. She has a BS in Biology from the University of California, with credits from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. She completed her MFA thesis in medical Illustration at California State University, Long Beach. After a brief career adventure in the insurance and securities industry, Esther was awarded a residency and the Gregory M. Robinson scholarship at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, Washington, where she studied jewelry-metalsmithing and welding. Later, she had a residency at the James and Janie Washington Foundation in Seattle, where she incorporated materials found there into new work. Her wearable art has been exhibited in Washington, Oregon; Beijing, China; Vilnius and Palanga, Lithuania; and in Legnica and Gdansk, Poland. Esther consistently generates and exhibits art and jewelry. She has 18 concrete, glass, and bronze pieces installed at the Liberty Bank Building on 24th Ave. and Union St., Seattle, WA, and was the coordinator for the art plan, which included seven other artists. Esther continues exploring new techniques and works in various mediums, sometimes focusing on environmental or political subjects. She is a member of the Seattle Metals Guild and shows work at Onyx Gallery and her home studio.

June Sekiguchi was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Studio Art from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She works primarily with scroll-cut wood in her studio practice making sculptures and site-specific installations. Her current work is in the public art realm. Sekiguchi is an arts activist and advocate, co-founding and participating in several non-profit and artist-run spaces in the Seattle area. Sekiguchi’s interests involve social justice issues, cultural exchange, mental health, and elder communities. She is currently an independent art curator for Era Living and curates for the gallery at Asia Pacific Cultural Center in Tacoma, WA, where she serves on the board. Sekiguchi is a recipient of a GAP grant and Fellowship from Artist Trust and five 4Culture grants. She has participated in residencies in the Pacific Northwest, including Willapa Bay AiR, Vashon Artist Residency, and the James and Janie Washington residency, as well as abroad in Cambodia and Laos. She has exhibited extensively in the Salish Sea area, including the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, the Vashon Center for the Arts, the Wing Luke Asian Museum, and Bellevue Arts Museum. She lives in Tacoma and is represented by ArtX Contemporary in Seattle.

Stewart Wong is a mixed-media artist whose work spans fiber arts, sculpture, and public installations. Drawing inspiration from both natural and built environments, he blends craft and technology to explore structure, identity, and cultural memory. A descendant of Native Hawaiian and Chinese immigrants, his heritage informs much of his work, which often highlights underrepresented AAPI and BIPOC histories. Wong’s public artworks include installations at the Wing Luke Museum, Sammamish Park & Ride, and Bernalillo County Courthouse. He earned a BFA in Design from Cornish College and has served as a mentor to youth through programs like Wing Luke’s YouthCAN and Mercer Island schools. His art reflects his understanding of displacement, labor, and equity—shaped by personal family history and broader systemic challenges. A member of Northwest Designer Craftartists and the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, Wong continues to create pieces that offer social insight and encourage cultural reflection through layered, material-rich forms.

Anna Bálint is a London-born, Seattle-based poet, writer, editor, and cultural activist of East European descent. Her many years of editorial work for Raven Chronicles Press include the Take a Stand, Art Against Hate Anthology, which won the 2021 Washington State Book Award for poetry, and Words From the Café, an anthology of writing by people in recovery. Her short fiction collection, Horse Thief (Curbstone Press, 2004), spans cultures and continents and was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award. A longtime teacher of creative writing, Anna currently teaches adults in recovery from trauma, addiction, mental illness, and homelessness at Seattle’s Recovery Café, where she founded Safe Place Writing Circle.

Susan Noyes Platt, PhD, is a freelance art historian and art critic based in Seattle. Her most recent book is Around the World in 25 Years: Provocative Art from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas: Collected Writings (Ingram 2025). After many years as a tenured professor of art history, Susan Noyes Platt is an independent art historian and freelance art critic and curator, based in Seattle, Washington. Her books include Modernism in the 1920s (UMI Research Press, 1985), Art and Politics in the 1930s, Modernism, Marxism, Americanism (Midmarch Arts Press, 1999), and Art and Politics Now, Cultural Activism in a Time of Crisis (Midmarch Arts Press, 2011), Setting Our Hearts on Fire, Collected Writings Volume 2: Essays on Artists from 1982 to the Present (2022).

Through poetry, artist books, installations, and mixed-media works, Carletta Carrington Wilson discovers answers to questions she did not know to ask. This artist finds each artistic endeavor to be an act of excavation and a revelation. Her work, described as “decorative with a message,” has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and libraries in the Seattle area and beyond. Her poems continue to appear in local and national publications. Carletta Carrington Wilson created Poem of Stone & Bone, a work of memory, on the property of James W. Washington Jr. in 2011. Four installations revived key aspects of the sculptor’s artistic lineage, melding geography, spirituality, nature, and intellect. The culminating event led visitors on a journey across the Washington landscape and into his studio after the artist’s month-long residency. Raven Chronicles Press published, in 2023, Poem of Stone & Bone: The Iconography of James. W. Washington Jr. in Fourteen Stanzas and Thirty-One Days. The book documents Wilson’s series of site-specific installations created on the property of the noted sculptor. Journal entries chart her journey and visceral responses to objects found on the grounds, in the house, and studio of the artist. The artist engaged with objects, land, and literature to create a nuanced perspective on the life and work of James W. Washington Jr.