A4A is delighted to introduce our 2023 cohort of ValleyCreates capacity-building grantees. This impressive group of twenty includes visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, craft artists, curators, theater-makers, community organizers, and so much more.
This is our fourth year of partnership with the ValleyCreates program of the Community Foundation of Western MA, a collaboration that has allowed us to connect with and support more than 100 artists in the Valley region of Massachusetts.
Aisha Burns (South Hadley)
Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, violinist and singer-songwriter Aisha Burns began playing violin when she was 10 years old. Soon after moving to Austin, she gained her start with a Texas folk-rock band, began touring and recording, and later joined the instrumental ensemble Balmorhea on violin. After years of secret singing, she released her solo indie folk debut "Life in the Midwater" in 2013. Called "twisting, ethereal...arresting" by Dazed Magazine, and praised for its "delicate intimacy" by NPR, "Life in the Midwater" explored mortality and relationships with candor and wisdom.
Aisha’s newest album, "Argonauta," is a collection of songs about her struggle with the grief of losing her mother, while also navigating a new relationship, and ultimately trying to discern the new normal for her life. "Argonauta takes her vocal prowess to a new level—more confident and operatic,” Bandcamp wrote. Called “A poignant album” by Pitchfork, Aisha wrote "Argonauta" to quiet a weary mind. Aisha has performed at the SXSW festival in Austin, NXNE festival in Toronto, as well as the Reeperbahn festival in Hamburg, Germany, among others.
Aliana de la Guardia (Springfield)
Aliana de la Guardia is a Cuban-American artist with a multifaceted career as a soprano vocalist, actor, producer, and arts leader specializing in new music and opera. She has enjoyed collaborations with opera companies, ensembles, and artists creating genre-bending multidisciplinary works nationwide. She is half of the voice and percussion duo, Bahué, generating a repertoire of new music from Latinx composers, and a co-founding artist and Artistic Director of Guerilla Opera, with which she has produced and performed in many newly commissioned operas over 16 years of programming. She is a PARMA Recordings Artist and is also featured on BMOP Sound and independent labels.
She has participated in arts and nonprofit leadership programs from Philanthropy Massachusetts, OPERA America, and Double Edge Theatre, with awards from Essex County Community Foundation, Community Foundation of Western Mass and the New England Foundation for the Arts.
Aliana is voice faculty at the Community Music School of Springfield, the owner and head instructor of the award-winning Dirty Paloma Voice Studio, with two degrees in vocal performance from the Boston Conservatory [at Berklee] and professional development in vocal pedagogy from Shenandoah University and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Amalia FourHawks (Florence)
“I grew up in a family that supported art and creativity. From my father's Native American side, I learned beadwork and a love for the cultural art of Indigenous people. From my mother's Lithuanian/Russian side, I learned about the importance of color and detail.
As an adult, my focus has been on Native American art, always based on traditional crafts and techniques, but also incorporating modern materials demonstrating that Native American art, like Native culture is still active, and evolving and growing into the modern world.
My husband and I spent many years traveling on the Native American art show circuit, displaying our work, and meeting and learning from other Native Nations.
I work with many mediums from pottery to leather to beads and jewelry. I was taught to always think of my art supplies as my partners in creating beauty, letting them speak through my hands, becoming what they want to be. My workbench is my favorite place, surrounded by raw materials that inspire new creations.”
Cima Khademi (Amherst)
Cima Khademi is a visual artist with a focus in sculpture and installation. She recently obtained an MFA of Studio Arts from UMass Amherst and has been working in the area as an adjunct professor/lecturer. Khademi’s current work focuses on the unique experience of “identity” as an immigrant — the particular state where identity and homeland are called into question and we find ourselves simultaneously standing on the threshold of two worlds. Her experience of identity comes from two countries that are radically different. Cima’s creative practice is an exploration of balance in a diasporic space regarding class, gender, and ethnicity through materials and metaphors.
Elias Neijens (Amherst)
Elias Neijens is a filmmaker. He was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 1995 to a Dutch father and Colombian Mother. They relocated to the United States when he was just two years old. He graduated with a Political Science degree from UMASS Amherst in 2018. He then went on to pursue filmmaking by writing, directing, shooting and editing his award-winning debut short film, BLIND SPOT, shot in Medellín, Colombia in 2022. He currently works as a freelance videographer, and is currently producing a grant-funded documentary. His previous film, PUNTO CIEGO, was named Best Short Film at the Pure Magic International Film Festival (Amsterdam) in 2022.
Erica Russo (Conway)
Erica Russo is an interdisciplinary artist, songwriter, singer, and multi instrumentalist. She is also a queer, disabled, quiet porch-dweller. Her songwriting has been inspired by the expansiveness of travel and complexities of relating, and is her way of attending to deep loss, the fragility of life, and of course, love. Erica’s creative practice is continually evolving, as she navigates life with chronic illness. She has lived, recorded, and toured extensively across the country and internationally. Erica has recorded several albums, collaborating with a diverse group of artists, recording engineers, and labels. She studied at Massachusetts College of Art & Design and Berklee College of Music.
Eva Lin Fahey (Chicopee)
Eva Lin Fahey is a painter and writer. Eva primarily works in water-based media to create abstracted, dream-like spaces. These spaces explore the interconnections between family, cultural hybridity, loss, and longing.
As one of over a quarter of a million children adopted internationally from China, her work exists within the context of this shared experience — of cultural loss, personal migration, and separation. It is often centered around themes of motherhood, intergenerational ties, and the East Asian diaspora.
Indë (Westhampton)
Indë (he/they) is a prolific multidisciplinary artist with a BFA through the Studio for Interrelated Media department at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. They have also studied harmony, music production, and songwriting at the Berklee College of Music.
Their current art practice consists of an ambitious catalogue of disciplines, but the constants are illustration and songwriting. Their work can be described as a synthesis of socio-political thinking, drawing, and creative problem-solving. More specifically, Indë’s work frequently references their experience as a queer, mixed-race individual and how that intersectional identity is [mis]represented or omitted in American media.
Iyawna Burnett (Springfield)
Iyawna Burnett is a writer, performing artist, activist, and mother of two who started writing poetry and performing on stage at 15yrs old. She joined a performing arts physical theater ensemble The Performance Project (Frist Generation) at 15 and was active in the program for seven years. Within this time she co-authored and performed in the ensemble pieces “Ripple Effect” and “Fo n’ ale (we must go),” and she co-authored and co-directed the subsequent piece, “Tenderness. She has been a powerful role model to First Generation members and has experience as a peer counselor for members struggling with family addiction and incarceration. She has also co-facilitated First Generation workshops in DYS facilities. Iyawna is a lover of PURE HUMAN CONNECTION! and self-published her first book titled My Mother's Garden in 2021.
LESN101 (Springfield)
LESN101 is a Lao-American Artist born in Nashville, TN. His mother fled from Laos in 1976 and was a refuge in Thailand following the country's communist takeover as the result of the Laotian Civil War and conflict of the Vietnam War during the 1970’s.
He grew up in Columbus, OH throughout the 80's and later relocated to Springfield, MA where he discovered hip hop music and the graffiti culture.
LESN’s current work converges abstract expressionism, graffiti and portraiture to communicate journeys of self liberation.
Meegan Schreiber (Sunderland)
Meegan Schreiber is a primarily self-taught metalsmith who creates objects of adornment. Through traditional metalsmithing techniques and experimental processes she resists and challenges the culture of fast fashion and mass production. She is interested in exploring how the intimacy of objects can intersect with larger universal themes of identity, embodiment, bodily autonomy, and connection to the natural world. Meegan has worked in the fields of reproductive health & justice, youth development, and social work and holds a B.A. from Hampshire College with a concentration in photography and writing. She is a late-discovery anonymous donor-conceived person and is currently exploring themes of identity, familial dis/connection, and corporeal agency through metalwork, visual art, and writing.
Michael Medeiros (South Hadley)
“I work at the intersection of words and artistic imagery, with a deep questioning of perceptive and conceptual experience driving my work. Primarily a poet and ceramist, I also connect photography, printmaking, fiction and narrative non-fiction into multidisciplinary personal work and community collaborations. Mindfulness and the exploration of varied methods of creative understanding and implementation are essential aspects of my practice and teaching.”
Nago (Agawam)
Nago makes music for ghosts. Originally trained in classical piano, he left the instrument in favor of Ableton Live in an effort to become more expansive. Self-taught in the software, he now specializes in sample-based music production. Though his work varies from project to project, Nago's production consistently carries with it a deep love for hip-hop, voices, and the ephemeral. He wishes to bring sample-based music into places and genres it has been historically excluded from. Nago looks to release his music under his independent label Backstitch Records.
Pamela Acosta (Northampton)
Pamela Acosta is a Mexican painter, illustrator, and occasional animator from the borderlands along the Rio Grande Valley, living and working in Northampton, Massachusetts. She often finds inspiration in literature and nature. She draws on dreams of flourishing inner lives and creates visual narratives about a myriad of beings, quests and the symbiotic relationships formed between beings and their environments, exploring how we construct, transform and are transmuted by our surroundings. Her work is characterized by figurative narratives explored through visual poetry and magical realism.
Pampi (Holyoke)
A 20+year newcomer-settler of Turtle Island, Pampi is a nonbinary second-genx casteD-Bengali culture worker who plays at the intersection of healing and popular education. In community they develop community-centered art that releases creative potential and drives collective change-making. Currently they are developing anti-Capitalist popular pedagogy that encourages community and self-determinism through a re-connection with land, food growing and saviour-less wealth redistribution. Founding choreographer and dance researcher at In Divine Company, an experimental dance theater collective, they are beginning work on their second full-length musical dance drama.
Photo credit Isabella Dellolio Photography
Sharona Color (Easthampton)
Sharona Color is an artist and community activator. She uses mesmerizing colors to capture fleeting moments of awe from life. Sharon’s work begins with a process of deep listening, both to herself and her community. She dives into the confluence of our innermost thoughts and the playful nuances of our shared experiences in a way that challenges societal norms and makes way for healing. Sharon’s work draws from the spontaneity and improvisation of abstract expressionism. Like a symphony of poetic phrases and words, curved forms, and bold colors, Sharona’s work evokes a sense of ever-present movement and a joyful acceptance of change for the viewer. Her paintings encourage a surrender to reverence and whimsy. Sharona runs a collective studio space in Easthampton called The Color Collaborative.
Taylor Rose Mickens (Springfield)
Taylor Rose Mickens is a multi-hyphenate artist- singer, songwriter, and actor.
Taylor's background in many musical genres such as jazz, indie, musical theater, and folk come together to inform their unique sound in their original music and their approach to songwriting. They recently played with their band at Rockwood Music Hall and Boston Pride.
Taylor also just finished the NYC Broadway-bound workshop of the new Duncan Sheik musical NOIR.
Their debut studio EP Precarious Aquarius and debut music video for their song Opaque is out everywhere now!
Tomantha Sylvester (Ashfield)
Tomantha is an Anishinaabe actor, musician and playwright. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lake Superior State University where she was also the recipient of the 2018 Female Leader in the Arts award. Her plays Now You See Me and Something Else have had readings through the Anishinaabe Theater Exchange and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. She is a Lin Manuel Miranda Family Fellow through the National Theater Institute and an Art and Survival Fellow through the Double Edge Theatre and Betty’s Daughter Arts Collective. Tomantha is an ensemble member through Double Edge Theater and Emerging Native Artist through the Ohketeau Cultural Center where she also works in community advocacy.. Tomantha believes that storytelling is a practical component to healing, joy, and knowledge. She says that for millennia, her ancestors were among the first storytellers on Turtle Island. “We are constantly surrounded by images and language. The type of language we’re using, the stories we are being told, and who they are being told by are critical when shaping a world of truth and connection.” She enjoys storytelling that captivates the mind and cultivates connection. She delves into a multitude of subjects for inspiration in an attempt to illuminate the past, present, and future from the perspective of an Ojibwe woman.
Yaya Mzuri (Springfield)
“I’m Meztiza, Taíno, Africana and Gitana.
I'm a singer, drummer and dancer. I sing Bomba from Puerto Rico, my culture, but I bring to it the profoundness of what it means to be part of this powerful ancestry.
I see drums as part of the communication between this realm and the spiritual one, I see singing as being the voice of my ancestors, the ones who couldn't speak, I see revolution in the dance, freedom.
I'm going through the path of liberation, that we all see with the same eyes how powerful we are.”
Vick Quezada (Easthampton)
Vick Quezada grew up in El Paso, Texas, right where the United States and Juarez, Mexico borders converge. Quezada's mixed media work is an invitation to explore the spiritual and cultural landscape of the borderlands in a post-colonial and post human context. Quezada is an Assistant Professor of Studio Practice at Hampshire College. Most recently Quezada served as a Yale Mellon Arts & Practitioner Fellow. Additionally, in 2023 their works will be shown at Des Moines Art Center, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Atlantic Wharf Gallery in Boston, American Museum of Ceramic Art -California, and Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, TX. In 2021, they were a select recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship co-sponsored by the Ford Foundation in Latinx art. In 2020 Quezada was hand selected from a "large-scale survey" of 40 emerging artists from the US and Puerto Rico to be featured in El Museo del Barrio's groundbreaking, La Trienal. From 2019-20 Quezada was the artist-in-residence at the Latinx Project at NYU where they gave public talks, and workshops. In 2018, Quezada was selected as the University Massachusetts Contemporary Arts - University Massachusetts at Amherst Curatorial Fellow. Their work has been featured in Hyperallergic, BOMB Magazine, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Art News, Trans Studies Quarterly, and Remezcla. Quezada holds a BA from the University of Texas at El Paso and an MFA from UMASS Amherst.