Beyond the Clock

NE-dah-ness rose greene

November 14, 2023

Ne-Dah-Ness Rose Greene is a Social Justice activist and BIPOC Photographer from the Leech Lake Reservation. Her powerful images reveal the unscripted poetry of our human world. Her creative design in her art is extremely important, settings and composition of her photos make you focus on the subject of the matter. Ne-Dah-Ness is a social activist through art and has a unique way of reaching people through the vision and ‘voice’ of her lens. Her talent is well known internationally and in Indian Country. She is regularly sought out to photograph important events and specialized photoshoots. Her creative intuition and mastery of the camera has Ne-Dah-Ness rising quickly to the top of the competitive field of photography.

Follow Ne-Dah-Ness on IG @nedahnessgreene

Nikiko masumoto

September 19, 2023

Nikiko Masumoto (she/her) is an organic farmer, memory keeper, and artist. She is Yonsei and gets to touch the same soil her great-grandparents worked in California where Masumoto Family Farm grows organic nectarines, apricots, peaches and grapes for raisins. With her family, she’s co-authored 2 books: Changing Season and The Perfect Peach, and has a children’s book forthcoming. She activates her facilitation, leadership, and creative skills as a performer and leader in Yonsei Memory Project and as staff of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice. Her most cherished value is courage and most important practice is listening.

Learn more about Nikiko at: www.masumoto.com

Whitney kimball coe

June 13, 2023

Whitney Kimball Coe is the director of National Programs at the Center for Rural Strategies. In that role, she leads the Rural Assembly, a nationwide movement striving to build better policy and more opportunity for rural communities across the country. As an organizer, speaker, moderator, and writer, Whitney has shared her perspectives on community and civic courage with audiences around the world. She has been featured on stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival and the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit, and as a guest on the radio program On Being with Krista Tippett. She writes a regular column for the Daily Post Athenian and has participated in Citizen University’s Civic Saturday Fellowship program. She holds a M.A. in Appalachian studies from Appalachian State University and an undergraduate degree in religion and philosophy from Queens University.

kelly yarbrough

April 11, 2023

Kelly Yarbrough (b. Plano, TX) is an artist based in Manhattan, Kansas. Her practice is rooted in an ecosystem that includes mixed media drawing, arts administration and creating meaningful opportunities for humans to engage with their environment. She enjoys unexpected collaborations, transdisciplinary conversations, and continual learning. Kelly holds an MFA from Kansas State University, and founded the Tallgrass Artist Residency in 2016. She is a Regional Field Representative and Art & Environment specialist for the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, a facilitator for Artist INC, a trained Konza Prairie docent, and a 2021TEDx Austin College speaker.

Find out more at: https://www.kellyyarbrough.com/
IG: @kelly_in_the_prairy

Sharon Mansur

March 8, 2023

Sharon Mansur (she/her) is an Arab/SWANA American dance/interdisciplinary artist, educator, curator, bodyworker and community mover and shaker, based in Winona, MN, Dakota land. Sharon is the curator of SHIFT~ experimental performance salons, and director of The Cedar Tree Project, a platform that amplifies art and artists of the Arab diaspora, inviting deeper understanding, empathy and engagement through artistic exchange. She revels in creative play, questions, and invitations, as well as facilitating: collaborations, public art happenings, immersive visual spaces, films, art jams, community meals, and more. Sharon’s site dance project 1001 Arab Futures (2021), co-directed with Yara Boustany (Lebanon), Mette Loulou von Kohl (NYC) and Andrea Shaker (MN), was shared at Minnesota Conservatory for the Arts (MN), Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts (MN), the Arab American National Museum’s Arab Film Festival (MI), and Tiro Arts Contemporary Dance Festival, Lebanon, among other locales. Ongoing investigations include: her Lebanese identity, subtle states of transition and transformation, embodied knowing between self and environment, and connections within somatics, healing and personal/societal agency.

Check out more of Sharon's work at: www.mansurdance.com; www.cedartreeproject.com

Eliza Blue

December 15, 2022

Eliza Blue is a folk musician, writer, environmental advocate, and rancher residing in one of the most remote counties in the contiguous United States, Perkins County, South Dakota. She writes a weekly column about rural life, Little Pasture on the Prairie, that is carried by 17 different print publications, writes and produces seasonal audio "postcards" from her ranch for South Dakota Public Broadcasting and Prairie Public Radio, and released her first book, Accidental Rancher, in 2020. Her writing on rural life has also been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, and she is regular columnist for The Daily Yonder, a national publication for and about rural people. Blue's latest project, a traveling concert television show for PBS that celebrates rural culture & arts called Wish You Were Here with Eliza Blue, was recently nominated for a Midwest-Emmy, and is now filming its third season. In addition to filming for WYWH and touring with her one-woman show: “Songs from the Soil,” she is also working on building the Kithship Collective, an informal organization that works to share, rediscover, and reimagine melodies from the grasslands biome.After spending years on the road full-time, Blue now lives and works on a regeneratively-managed cattle and sheep ranch with her husband and their two children.

Learn more about Elisa at: https://elizablue.net

Tim lampkin

October 19, 2022

Tim Lampkin is the Founder and CEO of Higher Purpose Co, a 501c3 economic justice nonprofit building community wealth with Black business owners across Mississippi by supporting the ownership of financial, cultural, and political power. Lampkin has over a decade of community development and entrepreneurship experience. He previously managed the Racial Equity Program for the Mississippi Humanities Council, which won the national 2018 Schwartz Prize. Lampkin also worked for Southern Bancorp Community Partners to implement multi-million community initiatives and has advised rural entrepreneurs in several counties served by Delta State University.

Learn more about Tim at: http://www.timlampkin.com

Nhatt Nichols

August 9, 2022

Nhatt Nichols is a poet and graphic journalist living on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. She uses drawing, poetry, and comics to explore human/animal relationships and how they fit into bigger political and environmental issues. You can find her work in High Country News, Edible Magazine, Civil Eats, and The Daily Yonder. Nhatt is a 2023 Literary GAP Grant recipient. Her first book, This Party of the Soft Things (Bored Wolves, 2022), is in its second printing, and Morels, an illustrated novella, is forthcoming from Bored Woles. 

Learn more about Nhatt Nichols here: www.nhattnichols.com

Tyler Owens

June 14, 2022

Tyler Owens (she/her) is a member of the Gila River Indian Community in Southern Arizona where she was born and raised. Currently, she is the Program Coordinator for the Rural Assembly and studying finance. Prior to joining the Rural Assembly, Owens’ had opportunities in her young career to work for the National Congress of American Indians, Department of the Interior, and the Arizona Coyotes. Through her various job capacities, she has discovered a passion to focus her efforts in finding ways that her work can positively impact Indigenous and rural youth.

Carolina Porras monroy

April 20, 2022

Carolina Porras Monroy (she/her/hers) grew up in the swampy suburbs of Central Florida. Carolina is co-founder of Piney Wood Atlas, a country-wide artist residency research project highlighting radical and DIY spaces through publications and online resources. She was Executive Director at Elsewhere Studios in Paonia, Colorado before transitioning to her current role as Studios Residency Manager at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. Her most recent project investigates identities of being first-generation Latinx by having conversations around language, traditions, food, and music.

Maria Sykes

February 8, 2022

After graduating from Auburn University’s College of Architecture + Planning, a program known for a focus on community-engaged rural work, Maria Sykes sought after a community where her skills and passions could be utilized for good. Following a visit to the town of Green River, UT (pop. 952), she moved there to co-found Epicenter with colleagues from Auburn in 2009. Sykes is the Executive Director of Epicenter, a non-profit organization focused on rural investment through arts and design, and has a contagious passion for working with small communities from Southeastern Utah to East Iceland and beyond.

Holly doll

November 9, 2021

Holly Doll is the founder and president of Native Artists United, owner of Five Nations Arts, a public speaker on cultural education and racial sensitivity, and making a shift to having a healing-centered approach to work and life. She is also an artist, specializing in traditional Lakota forms of beadwork and quillwork, modern painting with watercolor, and occasionally writing poetry. Her mother taught from the age of two everything she knows when it comes to art and she has kept it up ever since. A lover of Halloween, astrology, fall scented candles, poetry, baking, fiction books, and crying over Pixar movies.

ChristinaMaria Patiño Xochitlzihuatl Houle

October 12, 2021

ChristinaMaria Patiño Xochitlzihuatl Houle is an Uto-Aztecan, Celt Double Woman. She is a plant Skyborg, intergalactic peace doula and a black jaguar alien. Xochitlzihuatl is an artist, activist and visionary. Her work breaks spells of colonial patriarchy by centering the femme and nonbinary gaze and re-integrating the construction of self with the madre tierra. Xochitlzihuatl is a co-founder of the socially engaged art collective, Las Imaginistas. She is also the Cosmic Weaver for Voices Unidas (formerly the Equal Voice Network), a network working to liberate the occupied US/ Mexico border.

Julie Garreau | Wičhaȟpi Epatȟaŋ Wiŋ

June 29, 2021

An enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Julie Garreau has been the executive director of the Cheyenne River Youth Project since its 1988 inception. Julie is a dedicated youth advocate, and she hopes that CRYP will become a model for other communities to follow as they develop effective, sustainable, culturally relevant youth programming. In 2014, she became a founding member of the Native American Food Systems Alliance; she is completing her term as NAFSA president in 2021. In the last six years, Julie and her staff launched the innovative, groundbreaking Waniyetu Wowapi Lakota Arts Institute, Waniyetu Wowapi Art Park and RedCan Graffiti Jam.

EM JOHNSON & JACK FORINASH

May 25, 2021

Em Johnson: Through measured and deliberate work, Em has been leading rural innovation through social enterprises and systems thinking with Blue Sky Center since 2016. She is motivated by holistic community investment that uses celebratory tools of art and creative community engagement, often bringing people together over food.

Jack Forinash: Jack’s role at Blue Sky Center — and in the Cuyama Valley as a community member and neighbor — has focused on seeking a definition of Cuyama that is quantified, verified, and self-determined. With an attention to detail and a love of spreadsheets, Jack focuses rural development discussions on the importance of data in communicating the human experience of a place.

KIRAN SINGH SIRAH

April 13, 2021

KIRAN SINGH SIRAH- is President of the International Storytelling Center (ISC), an educational and cultural institution dedicated to enriching the lives of people around the world through storytelling. ISC organizes the world’s premiere storytelling event, the National Storytelling Festival, and leads applied storytelling initiatives within the arenas of peacebuilding, social justice, health care and community development. Kiran has developed a number of award-winning arts, cultural and human rights initiatives in the UK, Ireland, and Europe. In recognition for his commitment to advancing storytelling as a global peacebuilding tool, Sirah was awarded the Rotary International “Champion of Peace” award at the United Nations in Geneva. Kiran firmly believes Storytelling not only enriches lives, but it’s a radical gift of love, that can change the world.

Diana Oestreich

March 23, 2021

Soldier turned Peacemaker, Diana Oestreich is an Activist, Veteran, Sexual assault nurse, and relentless practitioner of Peace. Speaking across the country, she empowers us to identify our own rural, urban, political or religious divides to cross our own “enemy lines” in order to heal all that’s tearing us apart. Because Justice and Joy can’t wait. She’s the founder of the Waging Peace Project. Her first book "Waging Peace: One Soldier's Journey to Love First" was Amazon’s #1 New Release in War and Peace.

Kelle Jolly

February 23, 2021

Vocalist Kelle Jolly, "The Tennessee Ukulele Lady", is one of East Tennessee's most celebrated jazz musicians. She and her husband, saxophonist Will Boyd, were the 2015 MLK Art Award recipients in Knoxville. She is the founder of Ukesphere of Knoxville. She and her uke are featured on Will Boyd's latest album release, "Freedom, Soul, Jazz". Kelle Jolly is the host Jazz Jam with Kelle Jolly on WUOT 91.9FM, an hour-long radio show that celebrates great singers of jazz. She is also the founder of the Women in Jazz Jam Festival.

Eliot Feenstra

January 27, 2021

Eliot Feenstra (he/they) is an organizer, a performer, a teacher, and a gardener. He is descended from Frisian potato farmers and early English settlers to North Carolina but grew up in Pittsburgh, PA and lives and works in rural Oregon. He is the artistic co-director of Beyond Boom & Bust, a theatre project about the economy and resilience. His work focuses on using community-based arts, dialogue, and organizing to lift up radical and queer histories, land justice movements, reckoning with inheritance, and our relationships to the places we live. He lives on a former commune in Takilma, Oregon.

Brandi Turner

October 20, 2020

Brandi Turner was born in Michigan and raised in New Orleans, LA and Oxford, Mississippi. She is a very creative spirit and an active member of the Utica/Raymond community. Brandi has built a strong career in beauty products, including a number of years with Estee Lauder and Mary Kay. She is still an active freelance makeup artist. Currently, Brandi works as co-owner and Managing Director of TWA Consulting, a firm that provides services in creative consulting for organizations looking to strengthen their work in arts and culture. She is also the Program & Event Coordinator for the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production in Utica, MS. Brandi resides in Utica with her husband Carlton Turner and their three children, Jonathan, Xiauna Lin, and Tristan.

warren montoya & jaclyn roessel

November 24, 2020

Born and raised in New Mexico, Warren Montoya is of the communities of Tamaya (Santa Ana Pueblo) and Kha’po Owinge (Santa Clara Pueblo) in New Mexico. He is the founder and Executive Director of the REZILIENCE Organization, as well as an entrepreneur, multidisciplinary artist, father and husband. As a muralist, Warren partners with New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence to produce collaborative projects with youth in communities across New Mexico. As a contemporary visual artist and jewelry maker his works express vibrant color, material, subjects and form to challenge stereotypical aspects of “Native” arts and Indigenous identity.

Born and raised on the Navajo Nation, it is the wisdom of her homelands that shapes Jaclyn Roessel’s cosmovision. Whether it is as the founder of her company Grownup Navajo, in her poetic writings, or in her work as a cultural justice & equity consultant, Jaclyn is motivated by the pursuit of Indigenous excellence and the action to radically imagine futures where Native peoples’ lands and cultures are thriving, revered and protected. She is director of decolonized futures and radical dreams at the US Department of Arts & Cultures as well as a co-founder of Native Women Lead. Jaclyn is a wife, mother and lives with her family in the Pueblo of Tamaya in New Mexico.