Angelina Nichols (she/her) is an actor, burlesque performer, and fiber artist based in Waldo County Maine. She is passionate about creating art that pushes boundaries and centers marginalized voices within rural communities.

Ash (she/they) is a queer maker originally from the midwest via rural Ohio and Chicago. She has lived in midcoast Maine since spring of 2021 with her partner, their cats, and a plethora of houseplants. She experiments with a variety of textile crafts including embroidery, sewing, quilting, weaving, and anything else that calls to her. A lover of fabric and fibers, they collect and use secondhand materials whenever possible.

Ash is passionate about promoting sustainable art making and believes in the value of creative reuse as both environmental and community care. In addition to collecting materials for their own work, Ash plans to organize and distribute materials for making through a community swap, with an eventual goal of having a physical space to share tools, books, art, and ideas.

Audrey Gidman is a queer poet, editor, facilitator, multimedia maker, and community herbalist living in rural Maine. She serves as chapbook editor for Newfound and guest editor for Frontier Poetry. Her work can be found in Rust + Moth, The Night Heron Barks, Birdcoat Quarterly, Luna Luna, SWWIM Every Day, and elsewhere. Her book reviews can be found in DIAGRAM, Southern Indiana Review, and Gigantic Sequins, among other publications. Gidman is the author of the chapbook body psalms (Slate Roof Press, 2023), which won the Elyse Wolf Prize. Find her online @orchidandcrow where she waxes poetic about plants and gossip.

My name is Carmine, and I’m a 37-year old, White, nonbinary, visual and performance artist.

Though, those words (visual and performance artist) seem to be too-small containers for what creative people are and the creative expression that we all possess.

In making/creating things, I gravitate towards upending and turning over what already exists, and getting curious about why something operates the way it does in society. Creativity is meant to critique and also meant to cultivate something new. My brain works galactically and sometimes I have to remember that my brain is connected to a body that requires nourishment and connection with the world around me. I’m working on becoming more embodied in my creativity.

I believe the core of the creative process begins with the words “what if…?” I enjoy performance art for this very reason, and particular enjoy when multiple creatives can intertwine their story lines for one brief moment in time. Improv comedy and drag performances have helped me to get out of my head, into my body, and be more connected to my fellow creatives.

Creativity is also catharsis, and I have used comic book making for many years to log and process trauma, addiction, travel, gender dysphoria and euphoria, and religious oppression.

Outside of personal creative process, I am trained as an art therapist and I run a private practice in Belfast, Maine called Creative Works Counseling. I work with clients to nurture and protect their minds and bodies navigating systems of oppression. I offer therapeutic creative modalities as an act of rebellion against these systems and help clients emphasize their own autonomy and strengths while also recognizing that we cannot heal in isolation.

Claire Horne (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and sewist based on unceded Wabanaki land in rural Midcoast Maine. Claire's creative practice centers curiosity and cultivates experimentation and play. Her work includes, and at times blends, the mediums of photography, collage, painting, and fiber arts. A lifelong fabric and garment enthusiast, Claire is now an eager learner of sewing and creative mending. Designing, fabricating, and customizing clothes has been an exciting area of growth and empowerment for her.

Claire finds purpose in strengthening her community relationships, showing up reliably in alignment with her values, and shifting norms towards ones of care and connection. Claire can often be found baking something sweet, consulting her tarot cards, grieving, making themed playlists, and taking slow noticing walks in nature.

Georgia Howe (she/her) is a Maine-based writer and creative. She loves exploring folklore and stories from the woods through a queer and gendered perspective. Along with a number of published articles and short stories, her past work includes creative production and editorial work for a number of literary, arts, and fashion magazines. She currently works for a ceramics nonprofit in Midcoast Maine and the newsletter team for Same Faces Collective. You can also find Georgia painting, reading fairy tales, hiking, or on Instagram at @georgia_howe

Morgain Bailey (b.1970, she/they) is a queer, European-American artist who lives in northern Maine. Her multi-media art practice centers around photography, painting and a critical dialogue about how we perceive and relate to the places that we live in. Her work serves as visual evidence and emotional metaphor. It also functions as invitations to contemplation and rest as practices of resistance and mindfulness. She works as an exhibiting artist, educator and creator of public art events. She has a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute of California. A short list of some of the locations where her work has been shown include the Tacoma Art Museum, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Maine at Farmington, The Humid in Athens, Georgia, Artemis Gallery in Northeast Harbor, Maine and The Common Gallery in Presque Isle, Maine. Her work is held globally in various private collections. In 2024, her creative practice was supported by the Kindling Fund, the Out in the Open Artist Fellowship and an Aroostook County Micro Grant.

Petrichor (Petri) Kneeland-Campbell is a disabled, trans, and queer artist. They have lived in Maine their whole life, and feel a deep connection to the people and the land. Though they have dabbled in many art forms over the years, currently their focus is on textile arts. After discovering their true self, Petri began sewing clothing to love their body more and express their gender in a way that felt authentic. Petri now sews clothing not only for themself but also for others so that they too can feel the joy of clothes that actually fit their body and style.

Petri’s sewing practice reflects their passion for social justice, community building, and rejection of gender roles and stereotypes. They mainly focus on sewing for plus-size individuals and gender-diverse people. They also sew binders and give them away for free to teens. Petri uplifts and supports the queer community through their work, particularly in communities and families in Maine that may not be supportive. Through the Fellowship, they hope to bring more awareness to the importance of gender-affirming clothing and create bigger communities of support for rural Mainers who need it.

Philippa Adam (they/she) is midwest princess at heart and a public school art educator by trade. They live on a sailboat on Mount Desert Island and are active in the Island Quilters chapter of the Pine Tree Quilters Guild.

Vin (they/them). I'm a visual artist who uses various traditional and digital mediums. Art and storytelling has always been my primary form of communication, processing, and coping with my own struggles and the struggles I've witnessed from others. My characters are all representations of parts of myself, the good, the bad, and the indifferent.

I share my creations in hopes of them helping others, primarily through showing them they are not alone. There will always be someone who understands you.

Originally from Huntsville, Alabama, and currently based in Rockland, Maine, Willoughby Lucas Hastings is an interdisciplinary research-based artist working primarily in textiles, photography, video, and sculpture. Her work examines the aesthetics, traditions, and systems of whiteness, especially within the American South. She thinks critically about the environments we inhabit and how they can maintain or confront our personal biases. She produces works of self and societal critique that often incorporate textiles and photography to document and subvert the material culture of whiteness. As well as, producing protest banners and protest garments which are made in solidarity with queer, feminist, and antiracist activism and are constructed with donated materials.

Hastings has most notably exhibited work at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Huntsville Museum of Art, and the Wiregrass Museum of Art. She has had solo exhibitions at the University of Alabama in 2022, and the Lowe Mill Arts Center in 2023. Hastings and Jahni Moore are recipients of the 2022-2023 Verdant Fund Project Grant and the Alabama Council on the Arts Grant to produce their public artwork, Southern Galactic which culminated in a weekend-long multidisciplinary event honoring the work of Sun Ra and his connection to Huntsville, AL. Hastings was also a 2022 Artist-in-Residence at MassMoca’s Assets for Artists Program and a 2023 resident at JX Farms in Cleveland, Mississippi. During the 2019-2020 academic year Hastings was a Research Fellow at the Tufts Institute of the Environment. Hastings has received additional grant funding from the SMFA at Tufts, Mass Cultural Council, City of Boston, and CERFT+.