Alejandra Alvarez is an artist, designer, and artisan from Colombia, based in Iowa City before coming to Cranbrook. Her multidisciplinary background provides a holistic approach where matter, form, text, and context are explored as part of her creative process and through this juxtaposition creates syncretic artwork. Each piece she produces seeks to spark the beholder’s curiosity and invites them to interact with the artwork, the setting, themselves and each other – leading from contemplation to conversation.

The drive to experience the blur between Art – Craft – Design has taken her to different places and cultures, such as India (as a Product Design intern at Rambhajo’s, a Fine jewelry bridal house), Germany (for a summer workshop celebrating the Bauhaus’ centenary), Peru (as a participant representing Colombia in a Hispano-American Silversmithing convention by Patronato Plata del Perú), Mexico (to learn more about printmaking, its historical impact and social legacy at the TIR) – among others places – to experience firsthand how production, tradition, gender roles, and social symbols shape and attribute meaning to the local context and beyond.

She sees artists, designers, and makers as mediums who use their body to transform elements and communicate the intangible. 

Stina Baudin received a BA in Applied Human Sciences from Concordia University (Montreal) in 2013. She also undertook post-baccalaureate studies in Fiber Arts / Tapestry at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in 2017. She has participated in national and international art residencies and exhibitions including Banff Center for the Arts Creativity (CA), Z/KU Berlin (DE) and Pocoapoco in Mexico. In 2022, she completed an arts fellowship at Wildseed Center for Art & Activism, a project birthed by Black Lives Matter activists who hope to build an enduring space that could cultivate the most transformative and radical ideas from Canada’s diverse Black communities and beyond. Baudin is an emerging Haitian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist. Working with large-scale, hand-woven fiber works she explores a counterpatriarchal, anti-capitalist and anticolonial way of narrating meaning from data. By collapsing the division between anecdotal and statistical data, her work removes the hierarchical distinctions between the scientific and the personal. They then start to operate as an entangled web of cohabiting knowledge centers – the scientific data indivisible from other knowledge forms that are affective and embodied. It is important to note, however, that her weavings are not merely data visualization; instead, they are an interpretative recontextualization of the datascape as a way to speak beyond binaries, a way to fashion a subversive lexicon that is haptic and relational rather than representational.

Myiesha Gordon Beales in her Cranbrook Academy of Art Studio. Photo: PD Rearick.

Myiesha Gordon Beales received a BA in Fine Art from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in 2003. She is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator with a practice anchored in clay.

In her experiments with clay, she examines real and imagined stories of life and human connectedness across cultures. In her most recent work, she creates architectural clay sculptures through which she examines issues of equity and belonging while incorporating local materials and wood-firing techniques.

In 2021, she was selected to participate in the Greenwood Art Project to commemorate the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Mario Cuellar received his BA in International Relations from Universidad Mexicana in 2004.

Cuellar is an interdisciplinary artist who works with installation, sculpture, and performance to explore concepts such as identity, craft, bureaucracy, ritual, and belonging. He utilizes a wide range of materials in his artwork, including discarded objects, found objects, wood, metal, wax, paper, stone, bronze, clay, bone, and even programming Twitter bots. Cuellar’s praxis involves a ritualistic approach that enables him to delve deeply into his chosen themes and share his experiences with his audience.

Cuellar’s work has been exhibited in several group exhibitions, including collective exhibits at Fernwood Botanical Garden and Fire Arts in the USA, Leun un Contemporary Art Gallery and Aguafuerte Contemporary Art Gallery in Mexico, and Ruleta MX in Mexico.

Fenelon Diaz received a BSc in Architecture from the University of Los Andes (Venezuala) in 1999, before pursuing graduate studies at the University of Los Andes and receiving a Graduate Studies Certificate in Urban Design in 2005. During his time as a student of the Master of History of Architecture at the University of Los Andes, Fenelon focused his research on the work of the Venezuelan architect Carlos Raul Villanueva and the integration of the arts into architecture, a subject he started developing back in 2000 as a part of the COPRED-UCV preservation team of the “Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas” (UNESCO World Heritage).

From 2008 to 2017, Fenelon taught architecture design, becoming a tenure-track assistant professor in 2012 with his promotion paper and later e-published book, “Intelligence Applied to the Design Process.”

Since he arrived in the United States in 2017, Fenelon has been working with architects and engineers and going through the relearning path of the building codes to obtain his NCARB certificate, a privilege that only a few Venezuelans have achieved.

In 2021, Fenelon was invited by the AIBD to be a judge in the 2021 SkillsUSA Architectural Drafting competition and also to be a panelist for the 2021 AIBD Spring Conference’s Parametric Architecture discussion. Along with his passion for architecture, Fenelon is also an accomplished photographer, earning distinctions in several exhibition galleries and being published by National Geographic LATAM magazine in 2013.

Nomaki Etsu received his BFA in Product Design from Parsons School of Design at The New School in 2023. Throughout his studies at Parsons, he acquired a comprehensive knowledge of production methods and materials: wood, metal, ceramics, acrylic, upholstery, etc.

Using furniture as his primary medium, his design thinking focuses on the relationships between products, people, and space. His practice is dedicated to bringing the design and aesthetics of the product in alignment with the enlightenment of culture, humanity, and nature. His practice focuses on the category of furniture, lighting, and fixtures while targeting possible design collaboration of product and environment.

Throughout his studies, Nomaki has been heavily influenced by the Light and Space art movement; drawing upon his cultural background of Japanese and Chinese aesthetics and philosophy, Nomaki aims to develop a distinctive minimal, elegant, and tranquil design style.

Sehrish Hussain double-majored in Fine Arts and Business Administration from the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design and the Stephen M. Ross School of Business in the University of Michigan in 2023. In curatorial practice, she worked on Unsettling Histories, a curatorial project at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) in 2021, where she also held student leadership roles; in addition, she assisted with Halal Metropolis, a traveling exhibition examining Muslim visibility in southeast Michigan, and she also received a Stamps grant to organize and exhibit artists in the U-M Muslim community. She hopes to continue connecting with Muslim communities across Michigan as a student at Cranbrook. In her art practice, she specialized in printmaking, painting, and museum studies. Her printmaking practice is largely informed by the Pattern and Decoration movement, which sought inspiration beyond Western patriarchal contexts and looked towards global art. She also looks to contemporary artists, such as Osman Khan, Yasmine Diaz, and Amna Asghar, who explore Muslim sensibilities and hybrid cultural identities. The blend of traditional craft with new technologies reflect the contemporary context of print media, through which she can speak to cultural tensions and nuances arising from living with hybrid identities, memory, and change.

Savannah Faith Jackson received her BFA in photography from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2023. In December 2022, Jackson was the recipient of the Thomas Drysdale Production grant, and her photograph, Morgan in a Moment of Self Reflection, was awarded first prize in The Photo Review 2023 Competition and was displayed at the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia.

Recent exhibitions include the Tisch School of the Arts BFA Thesis photo exhibition and NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture’s inaugural exhibition, Rest is Power (2023), a part of the Black Rest Project.

Jackson’s practice encompasses documentary and fine art photography through which, with a focus on portraiture, she interweaves canons of personal, national, and art history. Her work is an exploration of representation that aims to expand narratives and simultaneously create an archive of images that depict intersecting identities.

Sophia Moreno received her BFA in Design from Wayne State University in 2020. She is a graphic designer and illustrator from Dearborn, Michigan, specializing in merchandise and editorial design, and freehand digital illustration with a strong interest in creative direction.

Born at the end of 1997, and a child with an older teenage sister and unlimited access to the internet, Sophia fixated on all forms of visual art and design in popular media throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Like many other Gen-Zers, she grew up exploring and curating her identity via the internet and still finds herself interacting with the internet in an aesthetically exploratory way via her art. She has developed an excessive, hyper-feminine style that helps express her relationship to femininity, her emotional world, self-empowerment, and spirituality.

Sophia’s work also reflects her mixed racial background while aesthetically exposing biases within society. Her work strives to challenge these biases by exploring the oppressive nature of systems, which deeply informs her work.

Sophia’s practice is split between freelancing and operating Disco Dime, her own merchandise brand, which she created during the pandemic in 2020. Disco Dime is now stocked in multiple online retailers.

Sophia has been able to develop her interests in art direction and visual concepts through apparel design and marketing collections on Instagram. In her practice, digital freehand illustration became an important means for her to express original, abstract ideas.

Benita Nnachortam received a B.S. in International Law and Diplomacy from Babcock University IlisanRemo in 2014. She also received an MA in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute in 2023.

Benita is an artist, curator, and administrator. Her art practice connects the disciplines of photography, art advocacy, and cultural preservation. Cultural diplomacy, space-making, resilience, and creative leadership are some of her thematic interests.

As a facilitator, Benita fosters art education, community development and creative expression. This can be seen in her past curatorial and collaborative projects with the African Artists Foundation, Nlele Institute of Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art Lagos, United States Consulate in Nigeria, The British Council and recently the School of Visual Arts Podcast.

Benita’s career in photography started in 2012; in 2016 she was appointed as a Special Assistant and Official Photographer to the Governor of Ogun State, Nigeria. Working with the State Government gave her the leverage and inspiration to initiate Kuta Arts Foundation, a pro-youth art community-based in Abeokuta, Nigeria where they have hosted exhibitions, residencies, and capacity-building workshops for young artists since 2017.

Her select exhibitions include Blue Sky, Red Lines, SAIC (2023), Foto Party, TNI & Goethe Institute, Lagos, (2018), and Women of Ogun, Governor’s Office Gallery, Ogun, Nigeria (2017). She also co-curated Citizen Artist for the SAIC Booth at EXPO Chicago 2022. She has been commissioned by the W.H.O., German Agency for International Development, Dropbox, Google, and Canva to mention only a few.

Joshua Thaddeus Rainer received a BFA in Illustration from the College for Creative Studies in 2018. He has since had solo exhibitions at M Contemporary Art and Harper Gallery of Art & Interiors. He has also participated in a variety of juried group exhibitions throughout Metro Detroit and abroad including: the Scarab Club, Marygrove College, the Grosse Pointe Art Center, the Charles H. Wright Museum, and Touch Gallery in Hong Kong.

Rainer was awarded second place for the 2021 Michigan Fine Arts Competition and has undertaken such commissioned portraits as that of Wayne County Executive Warren Evans. Rainer works from his home studio and teaches art classes to youth, teens, and adults at the BBAC.

Aaron Thompson received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University (2024). His practice aims to innovate in combining traditional design principles with contemporary and experimental flair.

Thompson seeks to make art not only for himself but work that positively impacts his community and inspires those around him. As the former co-chair of the art department at Acorn Sales Company, for example, he played a pivotal role in shaping the creative direction of the organization, helping to elevate the company’s artistic output.

In addition to his corporate role, Thompson has been passionate about using art as a tool for social change. As a former art instructor for kids with behavioral issues at Succor Behavioral Services, he leveraged his expertise to provide therapeutic and transformative experiences for his students. Through patience, empathy, and creative expression, he helped children discover their inner talents and overcome personal challenges.

As a young black talent, Aaron recognizes the importance of representation and strives to be a model for aspiring artists from underrepresented backgrounds. Through his art, advocacy, and leadership roles, he aims to break down barriers and pave the way for future generations to succeed. 

Kesiena Wanogho, aka KESSWA, received her BA in Sociology from Wayne State University in 2017. She is an interdisciplinary artist from Detroit where her practice as a vocalist, producer, and filmmaker, integrates performance, VR, film, music, and spoken word to function as a resource for emotional healing.

“Is My Mind a Machine Gun” (2021), her work with renowned musician Shigeto, premiered on MOCAD’s new media platform Daily Rush, before premiering as a performance art piece at Dlectricity in 2021, Detroit’s nuit blanche festival.

KESSWA is a 2022 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow and has toured Germany as Musicboard Berlin and Detroit-Berlin Connection’s premier artist-in-residence.

Among her performances are: Pop-Kultur Festival and Haldern Pop Festival, and in support of avant-garde artists such as Esperanza Spalding, Sterling Toles, Sudan Archives, The Sun Ra Arkestra, and Rashaad Newsome at institutions such as the Cleveland Museum of Art, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Most recently, she is a featured artist and producer on Theo Parrish’s Detroit Forward album, a legendary DJ-Kicks mix series compilation that was featured in Pitchfork and Crack Magazine. KESSWA has also collaborated with renowned visual narrator Texas Isaiah to produce I May See Myself as Others See Me Not, a photography and moving image project that was exhibited in Google Creators Lab cycle 7 and featured in Vogue, Essence Magazine, and V Magazine.