Artist Index List

Amber Case studies the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds. They are an internationally recognized design advocate and speaker and the author of four books, including Calm Technology and A Kids Book About Technology. She spent two years as a fellow at MIT’s Center for Civic Media and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Her TED Talk, We Are All Cyborgs Now has over 2 million views.

Named one of Inc. Magazine’s 30 under 30 and Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology, she was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2012 and received the Claude Shannon Innovation Award from Bell Labs. She was the co-founder and CEO of Geoloqi, a location-based software company acquired by Esri, and a co-founder of EverCharge, acquired SK E&S in 2022. Case currently works on next generational governance tools at DAO DAO.

You can follow her work on Medium: https://medium.com/@caseorganic and Twitter: https://twitter.com/caseorganic.

The BLOCK Project is a Seattle based initiative that weaves the cornerstones of community, sustainability and innovation together to address the now 8-year long declared crisis of homelessness in our region. With innovation, design, over 2,000 volunteers and a high rate of success in keeping people housed, Bernard Troyer and Phoebe Anderson-Kline share how the BLOCK Project has evolved to be the most affordable and sustainable community supported permanent housing solution on the market.

ABOUT PHOEBE:
Phoebe has an MSW with a focus in administration and policy. With over ten years of social work experience working with historically excluded and marginalized communities, and personally impacted by homelessness in her family, Phoebe has been with Facing Homelessness and the BLOCK Project for nearly 3 years. She leads the Facing Homelessness community programs including BLOCK Host, Resident and Companionship programming, Window of Kindness policies and procedures, and currently is responsible for our Ethical Storytelling and Communications. Outside of work, Phoebe loves escaping to the outdoors, gardening and spending time with her community.

ABOUT BERNARD:

Bernard has been with Facing Homelessness and The BLOCK Project for six years. He has built every BLOCK Home. With over 15 years of construction and project management experience, he’s overseen the BLOCK Project from becoming a compelling idea, to the most affordable housing solution that exists in Seattle. He has also overseen over 20,000 hours of community volunteer efforts creating lasting relationships and impacts that resulted in the portfolio of BLOCK homes, and nearly $1 million of in-kind donations. His efforts reduced construction costs by 40% and have created the potential for the BLOCK Project to scale building one home every week.

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Nishat Akhtar is a designer and creative leader with 15+ years of experience in designing and leading initiatives for global brands. She is currently working as VP of Creative at Instrument, leading the design, and writing disciplines with 100+ creatives who specialize in product design, design systems and brand/marketing. Her portfolio spans across design, branding, content creation and interactive experiences for Nike, Google, the NBA and more. In addition to this work, Nishat has an ongoing illustration practice that is expressed in a variety of forms. This practice is often self-initiated though also includes work with The New York Times, ACLU and Adobe. Nishat has a deep care for the creative community, giving talks and art workshops across the globe (and via video) in both academic and non-structured environments. She loves the connection around a creative purpose and believes in the natural creative instinct within all people.

Cleo Barnett is a New Zealand-born and Mexico City-based multi-media artist, public art curator, and creative strategist. Since 2009, Barnett has directed and produced more than 300 public space interventions across five continents. Collaborating with artists, government agencies, non-profit and community-based organizations, philanthropists, educators, and global brands, her public art practice is grounded in community empowerment through public art and mass media experiments.

Barnett is currently the Co-Creative Director of Amplifier.org, a non-profit design lab that builds media experiments to amplify social movements. Her work has been featured at the Brooklyn Museum, The New York Times, NPR, PBS, CNN, VICE and elsewhere. Cleo holds an M.A. in Art and Public Policy from New York University, and a double B.A. in Political Science and International Business from the University of Auckland.

Jason Sturgill is a former graphic designer turned art director and illustrator. He grew up thinking he couldn’t draw and it wasn’t until he was in his 30s that he put the proverbial pencil to paper. Jason unknowingly has always been a fan of illustration from a young age through his fascination with skateboard and album art. This love of art led him to start an online art gallery in 2001 while he was working as an interactive producer at Wieden+Kennedy. His professional career started in advertising in a non-creative capacity but after having cancer at the age of 28 he made a concerted effort to switch to design eventually working for Dark Horse Comics and Nike Skateboarding before pivoting into illustration. After working for several years as a professional illustrator Jason found out he had Bipolar 2 disorder and has integrated mental health advocacy in his personal work that he regularly shares through his Instagram account. You can check out some of that work by following him at @jgspdx.

Meet Eric Moore, a dedicated facilitator, coach, and catalyst for quiet and emerging leaders.

With expertise in communications, Eric equips leaders with essential tools and strategies to succeed in an extroverted world. His successful track record includes renowned companies like Microsoft, Pokémon, and Boston Scientific, where he led impactful communication initiatives.

As your guide, Eric navigates the complexities of leadership with clarity and compassion. He invites you to embrace the transformative power of nonviolent communication on a journey towards authentic leadership and personal fulfillment.

With certifications as an ICF coach and Luma Institute trainer, Eric brings a wealth of knowledge to his practice. He is the author of "The Design Thinking Guidebook," a rich online resource that explores the language of work and offers a fresh perspective on design thinking.

Unlock your quiet leadership potential with Eric Moore and embark on a transformative journey towards authentic leadership and meaningful communication.

With a background in architectural design and a familiarity with postcolonial and critical urban theory, Sami Chohan is an educator whose teaching and research activities are centered on imagining spatial scenarios in direct opposition to dominant power structures and entrenched economic interests that shape and influence our built and natural environments. Wary of how strictly siloed and insular architectural education can be, his studios and seminars encourage students to move across disciplines and cultures in search of different perspectives, deeper understanding, and more responsible spatial solutions. Having lived in Riyadh, Karachi, Stuttgart, and Istanbul, he is currently based in Eugene as Visiting Faculty Fellow in Design for Spatial Justice and Visiting Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon. He is also associated with GCAS-Jəhān, a de-centered node of the Global Center for Advanced Studies that promotes transdisciplinary, collaborative, and anti-colonial processes of knowing and being.

Pedro is a Human-Centered Designer and Deep Learning Engineer specializing in Generative Artificial Intelligence. He strongly believes that designing Joy as the centerpiece and guiding principle is the key to any venture’s success. An optimistic Practical Futurist with a firm belief in building a better future through Abundance, he often finds himself helping companies identify converging exponential technologies they can leverage to radically transform the world. He's the founder of Iterate Labs, an innovation studio that specializes in exploring the ethical application of Artificial Intelligence to amplify human potential. Pedro's latest research centers on the collaboration between humans and AI for creative endeavors. He explored this topic during his first TEDx talk titled: “Human + Machine isn’t the Future, it’s the Present.” One of his passion projects is composing and publishing music as the Human-AI duo "Abundant Sound".

Kait Kenobi of Midnight Grim uses emotion, exploration, and unconventional ideas to create authentically unique brand identities + scary good designs. She is passionate about finding the unique qualities in the people around her and help to highlight those attributes in life and in business. She’s a huge supporter of the weird things in life, because boring sucks.

When Kait isn’t running a successful brand design business, she is successfully watching every bad horror movie ever made. She lives in Bend with her family and enormous dog.

Chuck McBride is the Founder and CCO of Cutwater in San Francisco. During his career, Chuck has led iconic brands such as Nike, Adidas, Levi’s, Ray Ban, and Fox Sports. He defined Brands like Feeding America and Got Milk. Revitalize Brands such as Russell Stover's, Hartz, and Brawny. And launched brands like Ubisoft, and Hoka One One, Lexus, Sunrun, and American Giant, among others. Chuck worked alongside Lee Clow while running TBWA Chiat/Day North America. He ran the Nike business at Wieden and Kennedy. He was part of the inaugural team on Got Milk at Goodby Silverstein.

His work is featured at the MOMO in LA, Communication Arts annuals, and has been recognized by the One Show, DNAD, Clios, Cannes Lions, and the Emmys. Most significantly, Chuck helped over three hundred writers and art directors rise to CCO and ECD positions at world-class organizations.

Isabelle (Izzy) is an Ottawa-based design entrepreneur and Certified Brand Architect. With a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art and over a decade of experience, she is renowned for her artistic approach to design and brand strategy. As the founder of IP Design Studio, Izzy crafts immersive brand experiences that captivate audiences. In leading the Ottawa Design Club, she fosters collaboration among local and global creatives by hosting inspiring events and curating limited-edition, multi-sensorial zine publications. Izzy’s frequent presence on Adobe Live inspires a global audience, where she shares her creative projects and pushes the boundaries of design. Her unwavering passion for elevating the creative landscape leaves a lasting impact on the global design community.

Claude’s expertise ranges from outdoor furniture lines, experimental retail stores, and many categories of footwear sold in stores around the globe. Growing up and traveling the country Claude has always had a sketchbook and skateboard with him at all times so naturally found himself as one of the designers working at Vans skateboarding footwear. Over his time at Van’s Claude has managed to create multiple new models from the ground up and collaborate with some of the most well respected brands in the skateboarding industry.

Ka’ila is a contemporary Klamath Modoc artist whose practice is directly informed by her ancestral homelands in Southern Oregon. The framework of her practice focuses on channeling cultural, political, and historical research through a creative flow of experimentation and artistic playfulness rooted in Indigenous aesthetics and abstract formalism. The root of her current research is about familial lineage and connection to land. This has required genealogical research and tribal research tracking land sales/theft and legacies of Settler-Colonialism in Oregon. Her studio practice explores space in-between the Indigenous and western paradigms and fields of knowledge. This research is a part of the studio practice and the visual artwork is a performative act of dictation. She utilizes white paint as a form of redaction and erasure, reclaiming colonizer’s attempts to erase Indigenous power and control. The use of white functions as a reflection of the oppressive white supremacist culture, as well as the sublime.

The High Desert Museum opened in 1982 and brings regional wildlife, culture, art and natural resources together to promote an understanding of the natural and cultural heritage of North America's high desert country. The Museum uses indoor and outdoor exhibits, wildlife in natural habitats, and living history demonstrations to help people discover and appreciate the high desert environment. The Museum is a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and is a Smithsonian Affiliate.

Frank Miller is a photographer who lives and works in Salem, Oregon. His "Specimens” series invites us to think about the history and philosophy of science and the thin line between attraction and revulsion. These photographs of old and awkwardly preserved zoological specimens point out how much our relationship with nature has changed over time. Miller is interested in the specimens as artifacts that capture the history of how we understand our relationship with wild animals, and by extension our own place in the natural world. He utilizes his background in photojournalism and the technical skill gained from a career in commercial photography to make images that are eerie and thought provoking, but also beautifully executed. Miller’s skill as a photographer draws the viewer in and encourages them to engage with his somewhat uncomfortable subject matter.

April Baer hosts the weekly radio arts show, “State of Wonder,” at Oregon Public Broadcasting, covering how art is made and consumed. Prior to this assignment, she worked as a reporter and was the local host of “Morning Edition” at OPB. Before coming to OPB in 2004, she worked as a studio engineer, host, reporter and occasional music host at several stations in Ohio.

Katherine is a resident of Bend Oregon. Since 1991 she has been a California licensed architect and established her firm in 1995. For the last 25 years, Katherine has specialized in designing communities of smaller homes, apartments, mixed use buildings of both commercial and residential and most recently cottage homes. For the past year, she has represented the Southwest Oregon Chapter of the American Institute of Architects on the local effort to address the critical need for middle market housing in Bend through the Bend Collaborative Housing Workgroup. The Bend City Council appointed Katherine to serve on their Affordable Housing Committee. Katherine is a former Planning Commissioner, City Councilmember, and Mayor of Sebastopol California.

Jennifer Armbrust is an artist and advisor living in California. She is the principal of Armbrust & Co, a creative consultancy. She writes and speaks about the Feminine Economy and advises innovative entrepreneurs on Feminist Business Models. She also leads workshops for students and teams on values and visioning. Her recent work explores the collisions of gender, creative process, business and economics. Former owner and director of Motel (an art gallery in Portland, 2002-07), founder emeritus of PORT, and former principal of a small interactive studio, Armbrust has long been interested in the intersections of business and art and more recently, business as art.

Allison Arieff is a contributing columnist to The New York Times and is Editorial Director of the urban planning think tank, SPUR. Allison writes about architecture, design and cities for numerous publications including The California Sunday Magazine, the MIT Technology Review, Wired, Dialogue and CityLab. She is a former editor-at-large for GOOD and Sunset magazines and from 2006–2008, was senior content lead for the global design and innovation firm IDEO. She was the editor-in-chief of Dwell (and was the magazine’s founding senior editor) until 2006; Dwell won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2005 under her tenure.

Laura is an artist, humorist, and designer. She founded the Institute for Comedic Inquiry where she creates interactive objects and performances that point out absurdities through a technique she calls “Participatory Satire.” All are based on her research and collaboration with scientists, and they share a common goal: using humor, science, art, and performance as tools for publicly debating ideas. She’s made fashionable pollination accessories, turning people into honeybees to draw attention to colony collapse. She’s created a machine that remixes your fake laugh to ‘real’, questioning the danger of humanizing digital assistants. She’s designed a humor-first dating program to mock appearance-first apps that can have negative affects on our mental health.

Michael Ellsworth has honed his skills as a creative director, producer, curator, teacher and public programmer, over the last two decades. Ellsworth has led workshops on ideation at SXSW, taught courses at Western Washington University and the Frye Art Museum on the responsibility of designers, and has spoken to audiences at the AIGA, CreativeMornings, and Practivism (GDC) on how to use design as a means of social change. His commitment to public spaces and public access has led him to serve on the Board of Directors of HistoryLink and the Seattle Public Library Foundation.

Tamar Ettun is a Brooklyn-based sculptor and performance artist and founder of The Moving Company. Tamar received her MFA from Yale University in 2010, where she was awarded the Alice Kimball English Fellowship. She studied at Cooper Union in 2007 while earning her BFA from Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem. Tamar has had exhibitions and performances at The Watermill Center; e-flux; Madison Square Park; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden; PERFORMA 11; and PERFORMA 09. Tamar has been honored by organizations including The Pollock Krasner Foundation; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; Art Production Fund; and Socrates Sculpture Park. She is currently preparing for a major solo exhibition at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art in Las Vegas, which will open in 2018.

Eric Heiman is a principal and creative director of Volume Inc., a multidisciplinary studio he co-founded in 2001. Volume’s clients have included Bloomberg, Adobe, SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and McSweeney’s/826 Valencia, and their work honored by the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Communication Arts, Graphis, ID, Étapes, the Type Directors Club, AIGA, and the Western Art Director’s Club, among others. Eric teaches at California College of the Arts, where he manages TBD*, a student-staffed design studio that does work for local Bay Area nonprofits and civic institutions.

Heidi Hackemer is an entrepreneur and brand strategist whose work lives in the balance of provocation and practicality, helping build companies and brands that impact the world. Founder of brand strategy company Wolf & Wilhelmine, she has worked with clients including Google, the BBC, and the Obama White House. She’s also known for Six Items or Less, a clothing consumption experiment featured in the New York Times.

Troy Gua was born and raised in Seattle. He grew up with Ronald McDonald and Ronald Reagan, King Tut and the King of Pop: images and icons that have been burned into his subconscious. Media culture has shaped his life, and is a vital component of his creative process. Gua produces Pop-infused conceptual work in a wide range of media, marrying commerciality to contemporary with a glossy design aesthetic and a keen wit.

April Greiman has been recognized for revolutionary digital imaging work, and has been instrumental in the acceptance and use of advanced technology in creative processes since early 1980s. In 2014 April was featured in Apple’s documentary, ‘Mac @ 30’ recognizing 30 creative individuals contributions to the creative fields, and most recently awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago. An AIGA Medalist, Chrysler Awardee for Innovation, National Design Award Finalist in the inaugural year, 2000, she is often referred to by her small studio staff as the OG! Greiman, an educator, former Director, Visual Communications Program, Cal Arts; former faculty, Southern California Institute of Architecture; current faculty, Woodbury University School of Architecture. Published extensively, including four monographs, lectured, exhibited worldwide, works in museum collections, among them Pompidou Center, MOMA, LACMA and SFMOMA. She has 4 honorary doctorates, a big garden, even owns a motel/spa in the California desert!

Five years ago, we debuted the very first Bend Design. There we were blown away by MOWO, whose poetry gets to the heart of things that need to be said—yet often go unspoken. We’re delighted to have him back as the emcee for 2019. MOsley WOtta is a critically acclaimed “multimedia multiethnic multivitamin artist, performer, speaker” and the Creative Laureate of Bend, Oregon. His work has been recognized by the Oregon Arts Commission and Rise Up International in association with the US Embassy, among others.

Diane Gibbs is a Professor of Graphic Design University of South Alabama and host of the podcast Design Recharge. As a designer and entrepreneur, she runs the firm Little Bird Communications and has won over 24 national and international design awards. Diane coaches design entrepreneurs from all over the United States, guiding them in growing their businesses.

Artist Stephanie Gervais combines sculpture and the body in performance and photography in order to explore adornment, disguise, and identity transformation. Most recently based in Brazil, Stephanie visits Bend en route to international engagements in London and Paris.

Kirsten Furlong is a drawing and installation artist from Boise, Idaho, who is interested in depicting meaningful instances of human, plant and animal interactions that clarify and epitomize our impact on the natural world. Her elegiac drawings communicate a sense of loss and longing. Her work is supremely detailed and carefully executed, which gives it a sense of respect and reverence. Furlong’s drawings are a moving and sensitive chronicle of the environmental catastrophe that is the Anthropocene.

Analee Fuentes lives and works in Coburg, Oregon. Her large, immersive paintings of Pacific Northwest fish blur the line between representation and abstraction. From close-up her paintings look like abstract colorfield or pattern-paintings, but when the viewer steps back it becomes clear that they are in fact detailed and realistic studies of the scales and color patterns on the sides of fish. This reversal in scale is both surprising and engaging. We could read the disproportionately large size of the paintings as being symbolic of the importance of fish in the river and lake ecosystems where they are found. The paintings are executed with a near-meditative focus that shows the artist’s respect for her subject. Fuentes’ fish paintings are a testament to the beauty of nature.

Ann Friedman is a freelance journalist who writes about gender, politics, technology, and culture. She is a columnist for New York magazine and the Los Angeles Times, and a contributing editor to The Gentlewoman. She also co-hosts the podcast Call Your Girlfriend, makes hand-drawn pie charts, and sends a popular weekly email newsletter.

Kiel Fletcher is an interactive-new media and video artist living in Bend, Oregom. His work has been shown at the Tate Britain, dOCUMENTA(13), Disjecta Contemporary Arts, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and is in the Yale University Library. He is a founding member of the interdisciplinary artist collective, Danger Punch. Fletcher is currently the program lead of Applied Visual Arts at Oregon State University, Cascades Campus.

Anna Fidler (b. 1973, Traverse City, Michigan) lives in Corvallis, Oregon where she teaches studio art at Oregon State University. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, in 1995 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in studio art from Portland State University in 2005. Fidler has had solo exhibitions at The Boise Art Museum, APEX at The Portland Art Museum, Johansson Projects in Oakland, Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, Oregon, Disjecta, Portland, Oregon, and has been widely exhibited at such venues as The Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science, and Art, The University of Southern California, The Tacoma Art Museum and The Sun Valley Center for the Arts. Excerpt from Anna Fidler’s Energy Portraits: We, Too, Are Vibrant Matter by Sarah Sentilles

Chris Fasan is a creative agency owner, brand consultant, creative director and hands-on designer here in Bend. Over the past 15 years he’s had many a good and bad client while running his creative agency Version-X Design Corp. A few years ago he decided to ditch the big office and full-time staff in LA and re-explore the joys of solopreneurship. He’s been enjoying what he does a whole heck of a lot more ever since.

Ka'ila Farrell-Smith is a contemporary Klamath Modoc visual artist based in Modoc Point, Oregon. The conceptual framework of her practice focuses on channeling research through a creative flow of experimentation and artistic playfulness rooted in Indigenous aesthetics and abstract formalism. Utilizing painting and traditional Indigenous art practices, her work explores space in-between the Indigenous and western paradigms. Ka’ila displays work in the form of paintings, objects, and self-curated installations.

Tallmadge Doyle is a printmaker and painter from Eugene, Oregon whose work explores moments of ecological change through the lens of natural events like animal migrations. Doyle’s prints are shaped and inspired by the palette of the natural world and its rhythms and patterns. Her compositions refer to natural structures and systems including fractal patterns, erosion patterns and migratory paths. The printmaking process allows her images to evolve into rich, layered patterns themselves, thus creating a unity of process and subject matter that is both beautiful and meaningful.

Beth M. Duckles, Ph.D. is a writer and social scientist that has taught and applied ethnographic techniques in a variety of settings from academic institutions, nonprofits, government agencies and corporations. Her academic research focused on sustainable construction practices and she spent a year as an embedded ethnographer at the U.S. Green Building Council during the creation of the LEED v4 green building standard. She consults with organizations to apply social science insights to business needs, drawing on ethnographic and mixed methods research to help organizations answer questions that matter. She received her B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology from Earlham College and her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Arizona. In her free time, she enjoys writing creative nonfiction, knitting, hiking, doing aerial silks and traveling. She holds the rank of shodan (first degree black belt) in the Japanese martial art Aikido.

Trevor Dodge is the author of three collections of short fiction, He Always Still Tastes Like Dynamite (Subito 2016), The Laws of Average (Dzanc 2015) and Everyone I Know Lives on Roads (Chiasmus 2006). His most recent work has appeared in The Butter, Hobart, Green Mountains Review, Juked, Gargoyle, Western Humanities Review, Metazen, and Golden Handcuffs Review.

Chris Do is an Emmy award-winning designer, CEO and Chief Strategist of Blind Inc. and the founder of The Futur—an online education platform that teaches the business of design to creatives. He currently serves as the chairman of the board for the SPJA (Society to Promote Japanese Animation), and as an advisor to Saleshood. He has also served as: advisory board member for AIGA/LA, Emmys Motion & Title Design Peer Group, Otis Board of Governors, Santa Monica College and Woodbury University. Do has taught Sequential design for over a decade at the Art Center College of Design. He offers a wealth of knowledge and expertise across Branding, Design Thinking, Graphic & Motion Design, Social Media Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Business Management, and Client Relations.

As Senior Industrial Design at Hydro Flask, Ryan Diener leads projects focused on creating experiences that inspire people to live their best life. Ryan’s passion for searching for insights and problem solving has led to a successful and varied career. His work has been recognized by multiple international awards and featured in Wired, Fast Company, Dwell, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and NPR.

For two decades, Chris DeWan has used design to connect people with places, objects, stories, and each other. With a focus on visual communication, he has led a broad range of award-winning traditional and non-traditional interactive media projects. Currently the Design Director at Second Story, part of SapientNitro, Chris oversees the practice of visual, interaction, and motion design across Second Story’s studios in Atlanta, New York, and Portland, Oregon, where he is based. Chris studied Graphic Design at the School of Communication Arts in Minneapolis, MN.

Stacy Desmond is a geek at heart. Whether it is catching up on what’s new for websites, crunching data, getting her nose deep in code, applying new user experience techniques or presenting at local tech meet-ups, she follows her curiosity for all things UX and web tech. Having run her own web development and user experience services agency, Saveda Web Strategies, for over 15 years, she’s had the opportunity to work with both small and large clients in a variety of settings.

Stacy juggles her tech life with a love of the outdoors and being engaged with the Central Oregon tech communities.

John Dempsey is a Senior Digital Strategist at Wieden + Kennedy, a global full-service agency based in Portland. In his time at W+K, John has led digital strategy for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Old Spice, Anki Robotics, and more. Throughout his career, he has helped clients large and small leverage creativity across traditional and digital channels to reach core audiences with unique messaging. John grew up in Central Oregon, and if he had to choose, he’d say his favorite beer is whichever one is in his hand at the edge of a cold mountain lake.

A native Texan, Carla is a graphic designer at Pentagram Austin. Her work is primarily focused around editorial design, a passion she found while working as a page designer for a small-town newspaper. Her work has been featured in Communication Arts, Graphis, Print and the Society of Publication Designers Awards Annual. When she’s not designing, she’s entertaining her 5-month-old son Daniel, tinkering in her woodshop and doing as many things outside as possible.

Kathy lives in Sisters, Oregon. She is a watercolor artist and a fabric and tile designer. Her work is included in the permanent collections at :Roberts Field Municipal Airport;Brasada Ranch Resort; Mahonia Hall; OHSU Casey Eye Institute;OSU Cascades Campus;St Charles HospitalCancer Center; City of Sisters Fir Street Park; Sisters Chamber of Commerce; Peace Health Hospital in Longview Washington; and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, as well as many private collections. Kathy is also the trustee of The Roundhouse Foundation. The recent purchase of the historic Pine Meadow Ranch is a strategic move in an effort to create an artist in residence program and cultural center.

John founded DeForest Architects with a vision of developing a more collaborative, hands-on approach to design and a passion for making new connections between people, building, and ideas. Whether working with trace and pencil or cutting edge VR technology, his goal is to bring out the best in each project by making the design process accessible and engaging for all. John is a northwest native who has practiced in Boston, San Francisco, and Connecticut. He majored in Architecture and Engineering at Yale and received his Masters from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design where he received the school’s AIA Medal for Overall Academic Achievement. He was a founder of the CORA chapter in Seattle, a network dedicated to fostering dialogue among residential architects at a local and national level. DeForest Architects currently has projects in five states and has been published widely.

Lynda Decker is President, and Creative Director of Decker Design, a New York City-based design consultancy. Decker is currently co-chair with Heather Stern of the AIGA Women Lead Initiative. She is a former Vice-President of the AIGA/NY chapter. She began her career at Lubalin Peckolick Associates working as an assistant on the publication, U&lc. Later the firm merged with Pushpin Studios and she worked under the tutelage of both Alan Peckolick and Seymour Chwast. Her career then led her to spend a decade in the world of big advertising where she joined McCaffrey & McCall, Backer Spielvogel Bates and Wells Rich Green. Her work won a Clio and awards from both the One Show and the Art Director’s Club for clients such as Falcon Jet, Mercedes Benz and IBM.

Alexis Day is a Portland based, mixed media artist, originally from the coastal town of Bandon, Oregon. Utilizing her background in psychology, she investigates the themes of perception and memory, and how these processes relate to both individual and cultural identity. Working with a variety of mediums including paint, photographs, fabric, thread, and charcoal, Day creates artworks that resist categorization, and communicate through both their rendered subject matter, as well as the materials and processes used to create them.

For more than decade, Patrick has worked as a Creative Director and Experience Designer tackling critical challenges to transform companies. Prior to this, he spent time shaping the future of design as faculty at the Art Institute of Portland. Since moving to Bend he has found a love for Kamado grilling and Tenkara fly fishing.

Niko Courtelis is a creative director, designer, and filmmaker. A contributor to Plazm magazine beginning with early issues, he co-founded Plazm’s design firm in 1995. After a long stint in New York, he’s delighted to be back in Portland and relaunch Plazm Design. He has taught at his alma mater, Pratt Institute, and currently teaches at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and Portland State University. A recipient of the One Show Pencil, Art Director’s Club Cube and Young Guns Award, Niko collects postage stamps, typewriters, and vintage perforating machines, and uses them to make artistamps, mail, and correspondence art.

Fine artist, illustrator and author Lisa Congdon is best known for her colorful paintings and hand lettering. She works for clients around the world including MoMA, REI, Harvard University, Martha Stewart Living, Chronicle Books, and Random House Publishing, among many others. She is the author of seven books, including the starving-artist-myth-smashing Art Inc: The Essential Guide to Building Your Career as an Artist, and illustrated books The Joy of Swimming, Fortune Favors the Brave, Whatever You Are, Be a Good One, Twenty Ways to Draw a Tulip and A Collection a Day. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Forget the concept of magical ability and its evil twin phrase, “I’m just not good at that.” As a Designer turned Environmental Scientist turned Principal Designer, Troy is part design, part science. He knows a thing or two about changing course and acknowledging your own mad skills. After close to a decade of tromping through the wetlands of the Pacific Northwest, Troy joined Bungie Studios to brand “Halo 3″ and then produced “Taste Magazine” for PCC Community Markets. He now infuses PicMonkey’s creative team with fresh ideas, artistic inspiration, and bad dad jokes from time to time.

Architect, educator, and principal of Allied Works Architecture, Brad Cloepfil creates culturally resonant architectural designs that are forged by the defining elements of their mission and site. Cloepfil’s earliest influences lay outside the field of architecture—from the vast landscapes and monumental works of civil engineering in the Pacific Northwest, to the simple yet profoundly affecting gestures of land and installation artists. One of his earliest defining projects was the Maryhill Overlook, completed in 1998, the first in a series of site-specific interventions and installation designs in diverse landscapes across the Pacific Northwest. In the years since, his body of work has continued to be as informed by the history of place as it is by his formal training. His approach to design combines a research-intensive focus on the specific character of each project with an understanding of the transformative possibilities of architecture.

Jay Clarke is an Associate Writing Director at Instrument in Portland, Oregon. He’s also a composer who has scored numerous movies, TV shows, and commercials. Jay has worn a number of professional hats including a college English professor, professional touring musician, the music director of a licensing firm, an award-winning composer for films and TV, and most recently, the Associate Writing Director at Instrument in Portland, Oregon.

As a long time arts educator and the founder of Atelier 6000, Patricia Clark has embraced over several decades of MARK MAKING as a language, and an expression of selective seeing. Making marks is always the same, but different for each individual. By sharing her mark making she is a teacher, a designer, an artist who imposes images of invention and reflection of real and unreal imaginative landscape and environmental structure as her individualist style of mark making.

Lindsey Clark is a creative professional and skier based in Bend, Oregon. Through her fun and diverse career in the outdoor industry, she has learned how to make things happen in style. Whether that is planning and leading peak ascents on skis, or designing and bringing to life market-leading products, she knows what it takes to have a big idea and make it reality.

Evan’s multi-faceted career began even prior to his graduation from RISD in 2004, when he licensed a school project for manufacturing. Since, Evan has held a variety of roles in the industry, and launched his own studio, Nonlinear, in 2010; specializing in product design, art direction and interior design. The studio also produced its own line of products that have retailed in the MoMA store and around the world. Evan has done work for clients including All-Clad, Target and Tumi, and is currently the Chief Design Officer at OTHR and an adjunct professor at Pratt Institute.

An architect by training, John Cary has devoted his career to expanding the practice of design for the public good. He is the author of Design for Good: A New Era of Architecture for Everyone and his writing on design, philanthropy, and fatherhood has appeared in the New York Times, on CNN.com, and in numerous other publications. John works as a philanthropic advisor to an array of foundations and nonprofits around the world, and he frequently curates and hosts events for TED, the Aspen Institute, and other entities. For seven years, John served as executive director of the nonprofit Public Architecture, building the largest pro bono design program in the world, pledging tens of millions of dollars in donated services annually.

Peter Burr is an artist, a master of computer animation whose works have been presented at Documenta, MoMA PS1, and The Barbican Centre, among others. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Burr worked under the alias Hooliganship and founded the video label Cartune Xprez.

Each painting is part of an imagined whole, similar to a frame from a film. The images are narrative and allegorical. Heroines and animal-heroes are on a quest of sorts; surrounded by a feeling of marvel and mystery, perhaps foreboding or uncertainty, balanced by a sense of joy. Many of the images have animals, which are similar to animal familiars - part of a person’s spirit in animal form. This kind of creature is one’s protector, and one protects it in turn. There is mystery about the relationships, mirroring “real life”. The images are about the hardest part of the quest; the intersection between potential and conflict.

T is a writer, editor, poet, mom, and interdisciplinary artist living in the woods of Oregon. Her nonfiction has appeared in Wired, Utne, The Oregonian, Bust, Oregon Humanities, Bookforum, Portland Monthly, and BoingBoing, along with various anthologies. She attempts to promote values of meaning, creativity, and integrity in her strategic, branding, and editorial projects. Her client list includes Nike, Samsung, NBC/Universal, and the musician Sting, along with local favorites like Fort George Brewery and Kid Made Camp. She frequently collaborates with the Portland-based firm Plazm, which now operates in Central Oregon as well, and teaches in the Masters of Humanities program at Prescott College.

Christian Brown was born in 1971 and received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. He has worked as a fine and freelance artist for most of the last 2 decades in New York, New York. His creative endeavors include the exhibition of his work (paintings, drawings, sculpture, and mixed media installations), the formation of a drawing salon, acting as a contributor to the organization for returning fashion interest, illustrating for newspapers, magazines, and album covers, as well as writing and illustrating two books, one of which has won several design awards. He currently works and makes his home in Bend, Oregon.

Founded by Kim Brannock in 2006, SY DESIGN is a creative apparel, product, and surface design studio proudly located in the outdoor playground of Bend, Oregon. Our team of industry experts in design, product line management, pattern-making, and prototyping brings significant experience from the outdoor and snow-sport industries to an extensive design process. But there’s more to success than years spent at a company—our passion is found outside. Self-proclaimed adrenaline junkies, we’re focused on delivering top-notch, innovative products that we use and rigorously test ourselves.

Michael Boonstra utilizes drawing, photography, installation, and sculpture to examine issues of landscape and time. He is a founding member of Gray Space, a group of Oregon artists based in the Corvallis, Eugene and Roseburg areas who came together in 2016 to claim agency and circumvent institutional structures. Recent awards include a Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission, project funding from the Ford Family Foundation, and Ford Family Foundation sponsored residencies at Playa and the Djerassi Resident Artist Program. Boonstra has had solo exhibitions at Duplex in Portland, the A.N. Bush Gallery in Salem, and Fairbanks Gallery at Oregon State University. He has created site-specific, temporal projects in Michigan, California, and at numerous sites throughout the Pacific Northwest. Boonstra received his BFA from the University of Michigan and his MFA from the University of Oregon and currently teaches at Oregon State University.

Kate Bingaman-Burt mostly draws, letters, documents, and collects. She is a Professor of Graphic Design at Portland State University and makes illustrations for all sorts of clients all around the world, including IDEO, The New York Times, and the Museum of Modern Art.

John Bielenberg is a designer, entrepreneur, and imaginative advocate for a better world. He is the founder of Project M, CCA Secret Project, and co-founder of Future and Common. John delights in helping people find the courage and sense of humor to bring their stories, ideas, and ingenuity out into the world. He has won more than 250 design awards in his career, including the 2013 AIGA Gold Medal for leadership in the design for good movement. He became an AIGA Fellow in 2008.

Joshua Berger believes that design can change the world. He was born in the Bronx, raised on Mount Hood, and lived and worked in Portland in the late 1980s, throughout the 1990s and into the new Millennium, helping till the fertile ground that would blossom with Portland’s present-day creative explosion. Josh has won various design awards from the 100 show, Art Director’s Club and the AIGA, among others. His artwork has been shown at The Museum of Sex in New York, PICA’s TBA Festival, and ZGRAF in Zagreb, Croatia, among others. Josh and his family have just moved to Sisters, Ore., and look forward to joining the creative community here. Plazm will now be able to better collaborate with clients and creative partners in the Bend area. Josh is also keen on promoting deeper regional design dialogue throughout the Pacific Northwest through lectures, publications, and events.

FISK Projects is a full-service, collaborative creative studio based in Portland. Our core team consists of three designers and one copywriter. Together we work on multi-disciplinary projects of all shapes and sizes. We specialize in ideas, brand identity, typography, campaigns, art direction, environments, and artist collaborations. We have a strong foundation in friendships, play and fun. We work with a diverse cast of people and backgrounds. We have worked with Toro y Moi, Harry’s, adidas, Nike, University of Oregon, Q Center, Facebook, Uniqlo, Beacon Sound, Reverie, Cocanú, Tiësto, Source Material, and GOOD Magazine. In addition to our commercial practice our physical space also functions as a contemporary art gallery where each month we showcase national and international artists.

Jessica Bellamy is an international speaker, Adobe Creative Residency alumna, and award-winning infographic designer. Founder of the social enterprise GRIDS: The Grassroots Information Design Studio, Jessica created the award-winning Infographic Wheel and the workshop series Infographics for Social Change: A Graphic Ally Hackathon.

With a background in both the arts and software engineering, Yong Joseph Bakos pushes the boundaries of cross-disciplinary research and teaching. An Ohio native, Bakos previously served as the assistant department head of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at Colorado School of Mines, where he taught for six years. Prior to OSU-Cascades, Bakos helped cultivate the Center of Creative Computation at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The Beauty Shop is a boutique design studio located in Portland, Oregon, focused on creating thoughtful design at the intersection of beauty and clarity. Specializing in brand identity, print, and interactive design to empower small to mid size businesses, the Beauty Shop provides agency-level design at an intimate scale, with elegant, inspired branding at the core of each project, and has become recognized as a studio that strives to push Squarespace design and customization beyond trend. Their work has been featured by the Webvisionary Awards, Logo Lounge, Fonts in Use, and Print’s Regional Design Annual.

Tom Elliott and his wife, Barbara, are green building pioneers, having recently completed their residential compound (Desert Rain) in Bend which strives to meet the Living Building Challenge, the most-stringent green building certification on the planet.

Brian has lived in Central Oregon since the year 2000 and loves to ride bicycles and work with community. Working for Commute Options since 2008, Brian has learned many techniques for outreaching and engaging community in Central Oregon. Brian works with Oregon Safe Routes to School, ODOT, City of Bend, City of Redmond and internationally with the Open Streets initiative. He is passionate about creative change and activating our largest public space – our streets – to promote community health, active transportation and a vibrant local economy.

Working at the intersection of creativity and commerce, Joel Pilger’s mission is to unleash the genius of creative entrepreneurs. He is a consultant and partner at RevThink, and host of The RevThinking podcast.

A filmmaker by trade, Pfister resides at the crossroads of media arts, storytelling, and community-building. Pfister, who immigrated to US from Brazil for her MFA, offers an expansive view of citizenship as “commitment”—to communities and individuals, to plants and animals, and to ideas. At all times, Pfister’s work promotes those key values of shared prosperity, place as being, communal experience, and the embodiment of art in all we do.

Stan Peterson carves wood sculptures, which depict moments when something is about to happen. These are everyday moments, sometimes poignant, sometimes with an edge of humor. The subjects are figurative; female, male, animal with attention to their gestures and relationships. The scale is modest, handheld, yet on occasion, larger than life in feeling.

Hailing from Boulder, Colorado, George Peters and partner Melanie Walker are nationally known for their aerial and wind sculptures, mobiles, and installations. The pair has installed more than 70 large-scale public art installations across the United States and abroad.

David is a photographer, teacher and storyteller. His work has been featured in Fine Gardening many times, including six cover features in the past few years. He is also a frequent contributor to Sunset magazine and has had his work featured in This Old House, American Rose, Better Homes & Gardens, Flower, Leaf, Garden Design, Pacific Horticulture and Cut Flower Quarterly.

Jim E. O’Connor is a geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey in Portland, Oregon. He is a Pacific Northwest native long interested in the processes and events that shape the remarkable and diverse scenery of the region. Following this interest with a Geological Science major at University of Washington and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at University of Arizona, he has spent the last 28 years hiking, wading, boating, studying, and writing about rivers, glaciers, and landscapes of the region.

Whitney Nye is a visual artist based in Bend, Oregon. Her work is deeply affected by the texture, hues and sensations of the world that surrounds her. Working in different mediums, Nye’s thematic approach consistently examines patterns of repetition. She explores the rhythms and pauses of our natural world, becoming a conduit for their character. Travel of all kinds is a key influence and source of inspiration for Whitney.

Melissa Nordquist is an architect with DeForest Architects in Seattle, and for six years she has called Tacoma, Washington her home. Along her route to the Pacific Northwest, she has lived and worked in Boston, Houston and San Francisco. She majored in Economics at Williams College, and soon followed up with a Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her personal pursuits include drawing, printmaking, jewelry casting, road bike riding, and swimming in the Puget Sound.

Handmade, surf inspired, and ready for the deepest of powder days. SnoPlanks is a snowboard brand based out of Bend, Oregon producing handmade, bamboo powder boards. SnoPlanks co-founder James Nicol was seeking a snowboard that allowed him to surf the snow. When he didn’t find what he wanted, he began shaping it himself. When he discovered bamboo in 2014 and began using the wood material to produce boards, he knew he had found just what they were looking for. A board that was light, had an incredible amount of pop in the wood, and was extremely responsive in powder conditions. Knowing he was onto something, he continued to dial in the product and SnoPlanks was born.

During his 50-year career, internationally recognized Pacific Northwest artist Royal Nebeker (1945–2014) exhibited throughout the United States, and in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, and Germany. Nebeker’s paintings and monotypes are dreamlike, with a focus on power and relationships between individuals. His work is noted for highly autobiographical, narrative imagery that often centers on identity, and the power of dream and memory.

Mohan guides the Innovation Force (IF), an enterprise wide incubator/accelerator creating and launching 5 companies in 5 years. He reports to the CEO who is accountable for 25 businesses totaling $9 billion. Mohan joined the company in 2004 as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Executive and then ran 4 health plans for 2 years.

​M. V. Moran earned her MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. Moran has a BFA in Painting from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. After several years of working at the UO in Student Services, she resigned from her position and began her dream of becoming a professional artist. She exhibits extensively and has been invited to show new work at the Coos Art Museum in 2020. Moran is an Adjunct Professor of Art at NCU in Eugene, Oregon and a Lane Arts Council Artist-in-Residence.

Elena Moon is the founder of Osage Orange, a human-centered design studio. She has been doing a mix of research and design for the last 15 years and particularly enjoys socially and environmentally conscious projects. Her work has supported access to health care for underserved communities, open source education, community agriculture, NASA astronauts, illiterate grandmothers in the developing world, home energy conservation, and the deaf-blind community. She was a recipient of the Thomas J. Watson fellowship to conduct anthropology work with indigenous peoples in Australia and Papua New Guinea and has been involved with Portland’s Interaction Design Association for many years, leading it from 2012-2014. She’s excited to return to Bend where she once lived in a log cabin and worked as a rafting guide.

Daniela Molnar works in a range of forms including painting, art direction, design, a collaborative poetry/visual art project, and writing. She is a Trip Leader and Vice President of the Board for Signal Fire, an organization that provides opportunities for artists to engage with and defend public wild lands, and Art Editor for The Bear Deluxe Magazine and Leaf Litter, two art and literary publications focused on the intersection of art and environmental issues. Daniela is a full-time Assistant Professor at PNCA.

René Mitchell is a creative convener and arts advocate with over two decades experience cultivating creative thinking and challenging perception. Following eighteen years co-leading Bend-based branding agency, tbd, in 2016 René took on the role of the Director of Marketing for former-client Humm Kombucha while continuing to promote arts, culture, and social change through her creative studio, René Mitchell Creative; as a Board of Director for Caldera Arts, Art in Public Places, and ScaleHouse; and as the Director of the Bend Design Conference. René finds her inspiration from her two young daughters and their creative pursuits. She loves film festivals, far flung destinations, and spaghetti.

Named “one of the most creative people in business” by Fast Company, and “one of the most influential designers working today” by Graphic Design USA, Debbie Millman is also an author, educator, curator and host of the podcast Design Matters. Formerly president of Sterling Brands, she co-founded the world’s first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her projects have received honors including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, a Gold Mobius, a Print Typography Award, and a medal from the Art Directors Club. She is currently working with actor and activist Mariska Hargitay’s Joyful Heart Foundation to eradicate sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse and the rape-kit backlog.

Reese Mercer designs website experiences for organizations. As Director of Digital Engagement at Five Talent, Reese helps clients to create compelling user experiences through content strategy – including site architecture, design, and written and visual content.

Méndez is an artist, designer, and professor at UCLA, Design Media Arts, where she is director of the CounterForce Lab, a research and fieldwork studio dedicated to using art and design to develop creative collaborations, research, and projects around the social and ecological impacts of anthropocene climate change. Her research and practice investigates design and media art in public space, critical approaches to public identities and landscape, and artistic projects based on field investigation methods. Méndez’s art is driven by her interest in perception and embodied experience. Her diverse works—photography, 16mm film, book arts, and architectural scale sound and video installations—have been exhibited widely at significant institutions and biennials worldwide.

Molly McLeod is a designer, artist, and educator based in Oakland, CA. At Code for America, she helped cities adopt user-centered practices to deliver better services to residents. She’s worked on a documentary film about a feminist art collective, a board game about economic justice, and public art projects in New Orleans. Her mission is to empower people to improve their communities through design.

Miwa Matreyek is an animator, designer, and performer based in Los Angeles. She creates live performances that integrate animation, performance, and video installation. Arriving to animation from a background in collage, her work explores how she can create dream-like, often surreal, yet emotionally impactful moments on stage, by combining animation and body, in a juxtaposition of the cinematic and theatrical, fantastical and the visceral.

Desi Matel-Anderson is the Chief Wrangler of the Field Innovation Team (FIT), 501(c)3, and CEO of the Global Disaster Innovation Group, LLC. Desi is the first and former Chief Innovation Advisor at FEMA and Think Tank Strategic Vision Coordinator. During her tenure at FEMA, she led the first innovation team down to Hurricane Sandy to provide real-time problem solving in disaster response and recovery and ran think tanks nation-wide to cultivate innovation in communities.

Chris Martin is a curiosity builder, filmmaker, and award-winning educator obsessed with creativity and curiosity. He is also the producer and host behind Getting Work to Work, a weekly podcast for creative entrepreneurs. He loves stories that are filled to the brim with heart, edge, and fearlessness, and can’t get enough of real people living their authentic and unique lives.

Angela Luna is the Founder and CEO of ADIFF, a humanitarian clothing startup that uses design intervention to assist globally displaced persons. A graduate of Parsons the New School for Design with a BFA in fashion design, she is redesigning the fashion industry to be more inclusive and proactive. Angela is a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2017, winner of Parsons’ 2016 Designer of the Year Award, and winner of the Eyes on Talents Innovation Award. Based in New York, she is a solution-based designer who is committed to creating products and services that better the world.

With roots firmly in the design world as well as experience building a world-class social enterprise, Steffanie Lorig is an influencer who combined design thinking and business strategy to produce a portfolio of innovative, therapeutic books and trainings that have helped over 155,000 children internationally. She is the author of 10 books, is the recipient of the “Light A Fire” Award from Seattle Magazine for her work at Sandy Hook, and is a four-time recipient of Sappi’s Ideas That Matter grant. Steffanie now spends her time as a creativity consultant, illustrator, and fine artist whose painting style has been described as a mix between Art Brüt and Contemporary Expressionism.

Esther is a full-time artist, illustrator, designer, and teacher whose work is an extension of her perpetual curiosity. Clients seek her out for her playful hand lettering and illustration style as well as her versatile skills in textiles and surface design. For the past thirteen years, she has created work for both large and small companies including Target, Google, Frito Lay, Seattle Chocolate, Capstone Publishing, Seattle University, and many others. She has been featured on the Adobe CC blog as well as in 3X3 and CMYK magazines. An explorer by nature, Esther is passionate about learning and creativity. She has been teaching illustration and design for six years and is currently an adjunct instructor at Cornish College of the Arts. For the past three years, she has been speaking to creative teams and facilitating workshops for businesses and individuals in Seattle. She developed “Finding your Creative Voice,” a workshop that encourages participants to explore and express the inspiration that resides inside of them. She also teaches hand lettering classes online. When she’s not making or teaching, you can find her cooking Indian food, doing yoga, or reading dystopian novels.

Todd has led the BendFilm organization since 2014. In that time the organization’s budget tripled, it has acquired a daily-operating cinema, the Tin Pan Theater, and was named “Top 25 Coolest Festivals in the World” in 2019. Todd began his professional career as a business manager for Chicago’s largest general construction firm. While working in the construction business, he taught himself filmmaking and eventually made the leap to full-time filmmaking in 2008. Todd’s second narrative feature, “LEFTY,” screened at festivals across the country and was named in “The Top 10 Movies of 2009…” by the “Chicago Tribune’s Metromix.” His follow-up, “Son of None”—a narrative short shot in Liberia—won the Special Jury Award at Slamdance 2011 and won Best Short at the Boston Film Festival. Todd’s last narrative feature, “Be Good,” stars established filmmakers and actors Amy Seimetz and Joe Swanberg and was called, “Well acted, crafted and observed” by “Variety.”