Kim Bishop is a nationally exhibited artist who has been working from her San Antonio, Texas, based studio for the past 20 years. Bishop holds a Master of Fine Art in Contemporary Drawing and Painting from the University of Texas at San Antonio, a Master of Arts in Education and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Arts from Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Her work is part of many private collections as well as the collections of the University of Texas San Antonio, Texas A&M Kingsville, the San Antonio Public Library, the Oxbow Tower and the Pearl Brewery. Her work can also be seen on the streets of San Antonio at several bus stops, as mural installations in the neighborhoods and across Texas in the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau billboards. Her latest public art piece is Poet’s Pointe, a pocket park in San Antonio that she designed with her partner Luis Valderas, opened to the community in June of 2023. Bishop is a co-founder of A3, a pop-up industrial street press, 3rd Space Art Gallery and is a mentor for the New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist program. She is working as a co-writer for the first Chican@ Art Curriculum book sponsored by the Department of Education and Centro Cultural Aztlan set to launch in 2024. Her mission is to socially engage audiences in the process of art making to create a healthier world. With over thirty six years of art education experience she is currently the Teen Programs Coordinator for the UTSA Professional and Continuing Education Department at the UTSA Southwest Campus, and is an adjunct professor of Drawing and Visual Culture at the UTSA.

Anel I. Flores is a lesbian, queer, woman story-maker. Her work manifests itself as drawings, chapters, and poems, as a continuation and evolution of the conversations started by the Xicana movement in art and literature, now infused by latinx, transfeminism, intersectionality, queer politics and resistance. As a cultural producer, Flores is driven by a sense of urgency to record and create queer visual and literary work as a continuous reflection and questioning of self-representation, aiming at discovering and recovering the history, dynamics, and complexities of relationships with others, self, memory, future the present. Flores is co-editor of forthcoming Jota Anthology with Korima Press and author of Lambda literary award nominated book Empanada: A Lesbiana Story en Probaditas. Among various anthologies and magazines, Flores’ work can be found in Camino Real , the Fifth Wednesday Journal, RiverSedge Literary Journal, Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art, Queer Spiritualities, Rooted: A Queer Women of Color Anthology and more. Her artwork and theater productions have been featured in galleries, homes, libraries, and streets throughout the world. Although her awards are many, one of her proudest moments was being honored with the award of “Best Author,” by her beloved city, San Antonio.

For nearly 15 years, Krystal has been dedicated to advancing, supporting, and promoting San Antonio's creative community. She is driven by her belief that the arts transform lives and should be accessible to all. As Executive Director of the City of San Antonio's Department of Arts & Culture since 2022, she leads a team of 25 and all department initiatives, some of which include seven grant programs for arts nonprofits and artists, a $15.7M+ public art program installing 33 new public art projects to San Antonio by 2027, the San Antonio Film Commission and its 7.5% film incentive program, two City owned and managed art galleries and affiliated programs, and the City of San Antonio’s Poet Laureate Program. Under her leadership, San Antonio secured historic funding to support public art maintenance, increased investment in public art from 1% to 1.5% of all City of San Antonio capital improvement projects, increased funding to San Antonio artists, and increased its film permits by 80%. Krystal began her career at the City of San Antonio in January 2011. She has served in various roles for the Department of Arts & Culture, including the role of Film & Music Commissioner where she overhauled and relaunched the San Antonio Film Commission. She also worked in marketing and communications roles for Visit San Antonio for six years. Before public service, Krystal directed award-winning marketing strategies for technology companies. Krystal is a board member of Texans for the Arts, a steering committee member for the national Urban Arts Coalition, a commissioner for the Women in Film & Television Texas, and serves on Visit San Antonio’s Cultural Committee and several task forces for the City of San Antonio and Visit San Antonio. She holds a Master of Science in Public Relations from Syracuse University and a Bachelor of Arts in Communications Studios and Psychology from Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio.

Stephanie LaFroscia was the Director of Grants and Community Engagement at the San Antonio Area Foundation, a community foundation serving San Antonio’s urban center and rural areas in seven surrounding counties. In her role at the Area Foundation, she advocates for the centrality of the cultural organizations, artists and culture bearers in equitable community development. LaFroscia has been instrumental in developing the 2021 Recovery Fund for the Arts and the Youth Development Artist Fellowship program, supporting artists working to advance youth leadership and mental health. LaFroscia previously served as a program officer at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Prior to that, she led education and public programs at at El Museo del Barrio, NY, where she developed a performing arts residency and interdisciplinary programming in the visual, performing, and literary arts, including Action Actual: Performance Art at El Museo and El Barrio’s Freshest, an annual b-boy/b-girl competition. LaFroscia received a MA in Visual Arts Administration from New York University and a BA in Art History, Summa Cum Laude, from Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. She lives in San Antonio, TX with her wife and children.

Andi is a long-time urban champion and leads Centro ‘people projects’ which tell our stories and bring us joy, such as Centro’s Art Everywhere and Zona Cultural. Serving on the Leadership Council of Urban Land Institute, she is a former city Planning Commissioner, Founding Chair of the Hemisfair Conservancy, Co-founder of Power of Preservation/PROM, former Chair of the Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women and immediate past Chair of Leadership San Antonio. Andi considers herself a servant leader; she has an MS in Architecture/Urban Planning, and enjoys advocating for the unifying power of art, history, and public space.

Libby Rowe is an artist working in photography, sculpture, interactive installation, and performance. Her artwork explores ideas of identity and belonging through self-definitions as informed by social and domestic constructs. Rowe explores the sociological, physiological and psychological aspects of femininity using image, object and installations. Rowe is interested in breaking from traditional presentation strategies for photographs to engage viewers in a more interactive experience as well as the role of the photographic image in relation to other media. Examples of her work and her professional activities can be found at www.libbyrowe.com. Rowe received her BFA from the University of Northern Iowa and her MFA from Syracuse University. She resides in San Antonio and is the Founding Director of the School of Art, Professor of Art, the Area Head for photography at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Luis Valderas received a BFA in Art Education from the University of Texas-Pan American in 1995. In 2005, Valderas co-founded and produced Project: MASA I, II,III, IV, V and 5.5—a national group exhibit series that continues to feature Latinx artists and focuses on Chican@ identities. He co-founded The A3 Press and Bishop & Valderas, LLC. a large-scale printmaking community engagement collaborative and production house. Valderas is a mentor and board member of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). He has exhibited at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia(MOA), the Medellin Museum of Art, Colombia, the Queens Museum, NYC and the UCR-Arts Block, Riverside, CA. His work is featured in books such as Altermundos-Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film and Popular Culture-2017, Mundos Alternos-Art, Science Fiction in the Americas-2017, Chicano Art for Our Millennium-2004, and Triumph in Our Communities: Four Decades of Mexican American Art-2005. His work is in the permanent collections of the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), Arizona State University, the Art Museum of South Texas, and the San Antonio Museum of Art.