January/
Monifa Kincaid
Monifa Kincaid is a multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses the fields of visual arts, dance and film. She currently resides in Newark, NJ and is the Community Engagement Activator and the Program Director of the Youth Arts Ed Council for Arts Ed NJ. She also loves to sew and is a proud auntie of two college aged nieces.
February /
Natalie Duran
Natalie Duran (they/she) is a writer, zine maker, and Polaroid enthusiast from San Antonio, TX. They reconnected with their love of creating xerox art through the joyful and imaginative world of early childhood education and the teacher’s workroom copy machine. As a former educator, and long time hospitality worker, Natalie has honed the art of creating meaningful community connections and lasting memories through food and beverage. Voted most likely to “stomp the runway, darling,” you can find Natalie strutting any aisle like it’s the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
March /
Bertha Miller
Bertha Dolores Wilson Miller celebrated her 100th birthday on June 8, 2024. When she was 51, she earned her B.A. in Early Childhood and Elementary Education from Kean University and then her certification in Special Education and a M.A./Reading Specialist from NJCU.“I became a reading specialist because I love working with children,” she says. Her dedication and innovative teaching methods earned her the prestigious "Teacher of the Year'' award from the Hillside District.
Miss Bertha’s art has been displayed at The Newark Museum of Art, NJPAC, and the Kenilworth and Union Public Libraries. She studied millinery, pattern drafting, and line model sketching in New York City. Her entrepreneurial spirit led her to start “Naturally Me,” a home-based baking business specializing in organic products.
April /
Yvette Molina
Yvette Molina is a Mexican-American artist focused on the relationship between justice and caring. Her work is multidisciplinary and incorporates public engagement, performance and ritual, as well as traditional artisan techniques as a means of connecting to embodied forms of ancestral knowledge. When she isn’t in the studio, she can be found in her garden. Born in Kansas City, Yvette currently lives in Oakland, CA.
May /
Mrs. Marlene Ellis &
Dr. Antoinette Ellis-Williams
Mrs. Marlene Ellis is a Jamaican-born nurse. Marlene attended Kingston Public Hospital in 1956 where she began her career in nursing until 2018 when she retired from East Orange Hospital. She worked in many areas of nursing including, but not limited to critical care, orthopedic, crisis care, geriatric, and pediatrics. She migrated to the United States in 1967 with her husband Beresford Ellis. Marlene is a mother of five children. She believes strongly in a God-centered home where the family dinner table was critical to building culture, traditions, and values.
Dr. Antoinette Ellis-Williams is Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies at New Jersey City University. Ellis-Williams is an emerging, self-taught Jamaican-born, multi-media interdisciplinary abstract contemporary artist, playwright, scholar, and poet. Her creative process is based on layering, recycling, reimagining, and mixing media. Ellis-Williams earned her Ph.D. in Public Policy & Urban and Regional Planning, Cornell University, MPA from University of Pittsburgh and a BA in Sociology, Seton Hall University.
June / Krystle Lemonias
Krystle Lemonias is a Jamaican-born interdisciplinary visual artist, labor activist, and art educator. Her art practice researches social class privilege, citizenship, labor rights, and how economic inequality affects Black communities. Using found materials, baby clothes, and iconography, she encourages education of Black immigrant cultural identities and their connection to the broader diaspora.
www.krystlelemonias.com
August /
Meg Ellis
Meg Ellis hails from Texas, but don't hold that against her. She's a classically-trained clarinet player and nonprofit professional who's opportunistic about creative pursuits. She is an avid reader, a mediocre runner, always hungry for the next plate of Indian food, and navigating perimenopause like a drunken pirate with a piece of a treasure map. Meg hangs her hat in Austin with her husband and their two dogs.
September/
Lisa van Croft Ellis
Lisa D. Van Croft-Ellis resides in Union, New Jersey. Whenever she has time to herself, which is rare, her inclination is to find a bright, sunny spot to sit and just be. @sweetgoodness50
October/
Larissa Velez-Jackson
Larissa Velez-Jackson (LVJ) is from Newark, New Jersey and now lives in Middletown, NY. Called “an adroit physical comedian” who “seems to be questioning entrenched conventions of contemporary performance” in The New York Times, LVJ creates performances that involve movement, digital and vocal sound, storytelling and intergenerational community practice. As an ongoing cancer survivor, LVJ is an advocate of the healing potential of combining art and body/mind practice.
@lareesa_lvj
larissa-velez-jackson.com
November/
Ayana Kareem
Ayana Kareem is an intersectional multi-media artist focused on abstracted allegorical narrative works. She is the recipient of The Pingry Sculpture award, B. Jerry Donahue Memorial Prize for Pottery, and Tepper Scholarship. Her works call on a narrative that analyses the human psyche, specifically in reference to social interaction and self-reflection. These narrative scenes are drawn out using vibrant contrasting fields of color, figures that are slightly grotesque or hyperbolized in their formation, and use of "line as rhythm." She wants to curate a moment of reflection on something they have done or find familiar in their world. It is about the reflection into personal identity and experience.
@ayanakareemart @1comeunity
December/
Melisa Gerecci
Melisa Gerecci is an artist, writer, and curator from Houston who splits her time between New Jersey and Texas. She uses drawing, printmaking, and sculpture to tell stories through interventions and experimental narrative structures. Melisa has created work with The Bowery Mission, Brazos Bookstore, and Rutgers University. Her work is held by the Newark Public Library and in private collections. She has been commissioned for public art installations on the East Coast Greenway and for Audible’s global headquarters in Newark. Melisa draws from her experience growing up in a Turkish-American home and her work advocating for education. She earned a JD from NYU in 2009.
@megerecci
megerecci.com