Artifice

Daria Fedorova / Dasha Plesen is a multidisciplinary artist and photographer, based in Moscow. She's developing a unique methodology which allows her to capture the Universal Microbiome, and metaphorically visualize the Nothing. Experimenting with natural phenomena, decay processes and life and death cycles, she creates very extraterrestrial micro landscapes, full of colour and life. instagram.com/dashaplesen Behance.net/daria_ova Dashaplesen.com

Langston Collin Wilkins, PhD is folklorist, ethnomusicologist, and writer based in Madison, WI. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Folklore and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Wilkins is the author of Welcome to Houston: Hip Hop Heritage in Hustle Town, which was released through the University of Illinois Press in August of 2023. His research interests include African American folklife, African American music, urban folklore, car culture and public folklore. Dr. Wilkins is a native of Houston, Texas and received his PhD from Indiana University’s Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology in 2016. He also holds a master’s degree in African American and African Diaspora Studies from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Wilkins’ work has also appeared in the Journal of Folklore Research, The Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, and several other publications. From 2019-2022, Dr. Wilkins served as the Director of t

Maxwell is a pianist and knit portrait artist from Arizona. Ever since he can remember, Maxwell Eddington has been creating. Although his passion for creating beauty has led him to dabble in aquascaping, interior design, digital art, singing and sewing, his life’s main artistic devotions remain knitting and playing the piano. Maxwell learned to knit while living in eastern Europe, by studying a “Teach Yourself to Knit” book in Russian, and getting tips from helpful babushki. Because of this, his knitting style and technique are heavily influenced by traditional Russian, Baltic and Scandinavian knitting. During the 14 years he has been knitting, Maxwell has made countless sweaters, hats, scarves and mittens, but was always a bit underwhelmed by the lack of artistic expression inherent in knitting clothing. This led him to a new realm of knitting tapestry-style portraits using classical colorwork techniques. He hopes to show his first collection of knit portraiture later this year. As a pianist, Maxwell has

Angie Halford Re is founder and owner of award-winning Unique Mosaics, LLC, a Global, and Nationally recognized custom mosaic tile artwork studio located in South Salt Lake, UT. Her 22 years of experience in tile and design makes her a thought leader, and top consultant in the U.S. with designers, tile contractors, builders, and architects in custom mosaic designs and installations for the most demanding, intricate projects across the country. Her achievements and clients include: - 2021 two time CID award winner for special recognition- mosaics - Coverings Global Tile & Stone Featured Exhibits - NTCA national publication Tileletter “Women of Tile” Spotlight & numerous features - National Art Galleries Exhibitions & Displays across the U.S. - Commissioned work by numerous NTCA 5 Star Contractors, and NTCA members, and others on demanding special projects across the US - Featured numerous times by Ardex Americas and artwork on permanent display at U.S. Headquarters Angie has a strong formal education

Dr. Ryan Nielsen is a trumpet artist truly at home in both classical music and jazz. A devoted teacher and clinician, he has been a consultant for professionals and students alike from Los Angeles to London to Turkey. His popular YouTube channel Ryan’s Trumpet has thousands of subscribers from around the globe. He has performed and recorded with the Kobie Watkins Grouptet, Ra Kalam Bob Moses, Delfeayo Marsalis, and the Summit Brass, to international acclaim. His forthcoming book, The Classroom Guide to Jazz Improvisation, written with co-author John McNeil (Professor Emeritus, New England Conservatory of Music), will be released by Oxford University Press in early 2024. Nielsen is a LOTUS Trumpet artist.

Hello! My name is McKenna and I live on a farm by the river. I have goats, pigs, a jersey cow, chickens, quail, rabbits, dogs, and lizards! I love all my animals and the opportunities they give my children to learn how to work hard and get dirty. I enjoy gardening and learning how to better homestead our land. I love making beautiful soaps with my goats wonderful milk and providing my products to anyone who is interested. I made my first batch of goat milk soap the summer of 2016. I didn't know what a stick blender was so I tried to mix my first batch using a hand drill. Needless to say we made a late night run to the store to get a stick blender! I have had many failed batches over the years but through that I have learned so much. I started selling my soaps in 2017 and have expanded a little to include solid shampoo and conditioner bars, solid lotion bars, body butter, bubble bath bombs, soy wax candles and more. I love making these products and sharing them with ya'll. Thank you so much for any support

Tito Livas is an actor, husband, father, and advocate for inclusion and representation on stage and screen. When he's not on set or on stage you can find him tending to his chickens, caring for his garden, or most likely, cleaning up after his two boys, both of whom are under six and full of more energy than any single human should have. https://www.instagram.com/livastito/

Joan Steinmann earned a Bachelor of Music from The University of Utah in Vocal Performance. Since 2006 she has taught both Choir and German at Paradigm Charter High School in South Jordan. Under her direction, Paradigm High Choirs have won various musical awards and performed extensive through Utah. Recently Joan Steinmann's choirs were featured guests on several concerts of the world renowned Salt Lake Vocal Artists. Mrs. Steinmann's hobbies include reading, cycling, and hiking in Utah's beautiful mountains with her husband and little girl. Solve for X, an original musical created by Joan Riddle Steinmann. solveforxmusical.com Synopsis: Two sisters, one autistic, and one neurotypical, are navigating their freshman and senior years of high school. Elle Richards has been eagerly anticipating her senior year, but is wary that her little sister, West, will negatively affect her social standing. When the siblings were younger, Elle drew Treasure Map versions of the dentists’ office, grocery store, and friends

David A. Martinez Dave Martinez is an eclectic human. With influences and inspirations from Bob Dylan to Lon Chaney to the back of old TIME magazines found on some dusty shelf at the old antique store down the road, you never know what the man’s discovering. He loves going on tangents on just about anything; stares the uncomfortable bits of life in the face and muses over them, and listening to his kids talk about rocks, tissue boxes, or whatever is important at the moment. It should also be noted that Martinez is stark raving mad about his lady and soon-to-be wife, Eve. She’s the embodiment of beauty in body and soul. As for the official bits: Martinez holds a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Acting (The British Tradition) from Royal Birmingham Conservatory in the UK, and has been working as an actor for about a decade. He has learned from such institutions as Shakespeare’s Globe, The RSC, and more. Plus, he’s not too bad at improv. Martinez is also gaining notoriety for his music, which you can listen to

Charlotte Bell has been practicing yoga since 1982, and began teaching in 1986. She has established and taught regular classes along Utah’s Wasatch Front, and in California and Hawaii. She also teaches workshops, teacher trainings, and yoga for cancer patients and their families at Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City. She has taught at national yoga conferences and international yoga teacher trainings and on women’s river trips on the Green and Colorado rivers. Certified by B.K.S. Iyengar in 1989, she enjoys learning from teachers of many different yogic perspectives. Charlotte’s asana teaching has been most influenced by her two guiding teachers, Donna Farhi and Judith Hanson Lasater. She received her 500-hour certification from Yoga Alliance in 2000, and is currently registered at the organization's highest level, E-RYT-500. Vipassana meditation practice has had the most profound influence on Charlotte's work. She began her practice in 1986, and has attended many 10-and 30-day meditation r

Jeff Britman has been working with aquariums since he was 8 or 9 years old, starting with a 10-gallon freshwater tank. He began working with his first saltwater tank (a 75-gallon mixed-reef tank) at age 14, with help from his father and older brother. Currently, he curates and maintains a 120-gallon mixed-reef tank, which he started late in 2017. Jeff and his husband Jarod have embarked on many artful projects on their property, including brewing kombucha (among other fermentation projects), gardening, keeping chickens and quail, and countless interior and exterior design projects. For more information on starting a tank of your own: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/120g-mixed-reef-build.329215/

Olga Assayah was born in Kiev Ukraine and moved to the United States at the age of 5. She always had a love and appreciation for art and its expression and learned to sew as a little girl. She graduated from SLCC fashion institute and decided to start Zaiya Collection to create beautiful designs that are innovative yet practical for everyday life. She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and 2 daughters. Business Links: Instagram: @ZaiyaCollection Website: www.ZaiyaCollection.com Facebook.com/ZaiyaCollection

Bryan Young (he/they) works across many different media. His work as a writer and producer has been called "filmmaking gold" by The New York Times. He's also published comic books with Slave Labor Graphics and Image Comics. He's been a regular contributor for the Huffington Post, StarWars.com, Star Wars Insider magazine, SYFY, /Film, and was the founder and editor in chief of the geek news and review site Big Shiny Robot! In 2014, he wrote the critically acclaimed history book, A Children’s Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination. He co-authored Robotech: The Macross Saga RPG has written two books in the BattleTech Universe: Honor's Gauntlet and A Question of Survival. His latest book, The Big Bang Theory Book of Lists is a #1 Bestseller on Amazon. He teaches writing for Writer’s Digest, Script Magazine, and at the University of Utah. Follow him on Twitter @swankmotron or visit http://www.swankmotron.com

Emily Young is an artist proficient in the medium of embracing the here and now. Her gifts span from guiding mothers through birthing realms to examining consciousness and healing through plant medicine. Twenty years ago the black and white may have talked about her going to court reporting school for all the wrong reasons or eating pancakes and playing the piano high in her Mormon church. Ten years ago she was a few months sober out of her second rehab starting at the non-profit she would be with for eight years before ayahuasca and the plague revolutionized her world. Today she lives in a blue house with an orange door in Denton, Texas. She pays the mortgage as a doula and educator. Currently her focuses are in the birth and postpartum arenas and she is excited to have expansion into other passions in the works. In early 2022 she started her own company - Dancing With Now - a name that perfectly reflects her approach to life and birth that allows her the freedom to follow her professional flow wherever i

A breakdown of the writing, meaning, and hidden treasures in the twelfth track of my new album "The Hallowed Wide" out on all streaming platforms now!

I am an Artist based in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was born and raised in Texas and moved to Utah in 2014. I spent Two years (2015-2017) serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mongolia. My Passion has always lied within visual art. These days I’ve been painting film sets for an upcoming Apple TV show set to launch later in 2023. My personal work explores the relationship between memories throughout time and space and what we perceive as “reality.” I pull from a lifelong fascination with exploration characterized by dreamlike figures that intertwine current fashion and culture iconography. I aim to create combinations of imagery born from things recognized and things yet undiscovered. https://aeliaslorenzoart.com/ https://www.instagram.com/aeliaslorenzoart/

Katharine Coles was born and raised in Salt Lake City. After four years at school in Seattle and two in Houston, and a year in Washington, D.C. as Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School, she moved back to Salt Lake to pursue her PhD at the University of Utah. She taught for several years at Westminster College, then returned to the University of Utah, where she is now a Distinguished Professor in the English Department. Coles’ ten books include seven collections of poems, most recently Wayward (Red Hen Press, 2019). Her memoir, Look Both Ways, was released in 2018 by Turtle Point Press, which will also publish The Stranger I Become: essays in reckless poetics in 2021. 2018-19 Poet-in-Residence at the Natural History Museum of Utah and the Salt Lake City Public Library for the Poets House FIELD WORK program, she also served from 2006-2012 as the third Poet Laureate of Utah, and in 2009-10 as the inaugural director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute at the Poetry Foundation. In 2010, she traveled to Antar

At the age of 19, the perfect acting job came along. It was a very strenuous audition process. After months of searching the producers of Trolls 2 could not pass up on Steve’s talents. No seriously, they could not pass him up. They tried....they really tried but well they needed someone with minimal acting abilities and who was under four feet tall. Steve was offered the non-credited position to play one of the movie’s vital roles of a Goblin....ummm the movie rocked so much that it wasn’t even about Trolls! The rest of Steve’s life was average at best...I mean he did some politics, he was a journalist. Basically, he always ended up eating his family’s highly sought after confections. In 2003 Steve became one of the founding owners of “Hatch Family Chocolates” located in Salt Lake City. In 2010 Steve and his business partner Katie were featured on TLC’s “The Little Chocolatiers”. Steve has also been fortunate enough to act as an extra on such films as “The Lone Ranger” with Johnny Depp and “A Mi

Kathak is one of the eight major forms of Indian classical dance. The origin of Kathak is traditionally attributed to the traveling bards in the of ancient northern India known as Kathakars or storytellers.The term Kathak is derived from the Vedic Sanskrit word Katha which means "story", and Kathakar which means "the one who tells a story". Wandering Kathakars communicated stories from the great epics and ancient mythology through dance, songs and music. Kathak dancers tell various stories through their hand movements and extensive footwork, their body movements and flexibility but most importantly through their facial expressions. Stylistically, the Kathak dance form emphasizes rhythmic foot movements, adorned with small bells (Ghungroo) and the movement harmonized to the music Sonali Loomba, the Artistic Director of Kaladharaa Dance established this dance company in 2017 in Utah and Washington D.C along with her sibling Nidhika Loomba, which focuses on imparting the nuances of this ancient form to other

A breakdown of the writing, meaning, and hidden treasures in the eleventh track of my new album "The Hallowed Wide" out on all streaming platforms now!