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Brenda Melgoza Ciardiello

is a Texas-based interdisciplinary artist, educator, and independent curator born in Mexico City. Her work and curatorial interests explore place and memory as material and self. Her journey has taken her from Texas to Italy, the U.K., New York City, New England, the Rocky Mountains and the Middle East - shaping a practice that is both global and deeply personal. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, attended residencies in Greece, Maine, and Wyoming, and was named a 2021 Carter Community Artist with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth.

Brenda holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Classical Civilizations from the University of Notre Dame, a Master of Science in Education from The City College of New York, and an Interdisciplinary MFA from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Based in Fort Worth with her husband and three sons, Brenda teaches ceramics and art history at Tarrant County College and shares her layered vision of place and identity by exhibiting regularly in her community.

Stéphanie Williams is a French-born and based in Beverly, MA, Stéphanie brings a multidisciplinary background as an exhibit designer, artist, and educator. She spent many years designing exhibitions for museums and creative agencies across the country.

A recent MFA graduate from Clark University, Stéphanie was part of the inaugural cohort to present its thesis exhibition at MASS MoCA—a transformative experience. She currently serves as an adjunct professor in the Visual and Media Arts Department at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and as the Education Director at Art Lab Everett. She also recently joined the board of Art+Everywhere.

Stéphanie’s studio practice integrates an exploration of raw material aesthetics with an ethic of thoughtful and compassionate ecological stewardship.

Christopher Carlos Montejo is a first-generation Cuban-American educator, curator, and artist from Miami, Florida, based in Boston, Massachusetts.

As an educator, he works to empower first-generation youth through art. Engaging with art together unearths the pluralism of experience and fosters sensitive, critical, and creative thinking. He teaches for the MFA Boston, the ICA Boston, and an after-school program. As a curator, he aims to platform historically silenced voices. His curatorial project, "Tertulia," is a collective of Greater Boston creatives of the Latin American and Caribbean diaspora. For Tertulia, he has independently organized performances, workshops, gatherings, and gallery exhibitions. As an artist, his work is interdisciplinary and rooted in his Cuban heritage. His dance studies are in Cuban traditional and modern choreography. His music combines Cuban percussion and tradition with American jazz. His visual art transforms found objects into social and political installations. In total, his artistic work is centered on ancestral memory, creating identity in the diaspora, and transforming folkloric tradition in a contemporary context.

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