Airs artists 2026/27

Willoughby Arévalo is passionate about connecting young people with the living world and the nature inside themselves through artistic process. His perspective is informed by relational worldviews, place, tradition, science, story, and the lifeways of our more-than human-kin. His approach involves multisensory attention, collaboration and interplay. Working in a variety of media and methods, he gravitates towards primarily found, foraged, salvaged, upcycled and modified materials, which may include living fungi and plants. His practices include making masks, costumes, instruments, paintings, drawings, sculptures, music, food, performances and more.

Willoughby has been a student of fungi and the living world in general since his childhood, and he has shared teachings from the fungi extensively over the last 15+ years, locally, across North America and in Europe, in part through his book DIY Mushroom Cultivation. In 2014 he and Isabelle Kirouac founded the Art & Fungi Project, which offers fungi-related art processes and experiences for the public, often in school and community-engaged contexts.

Willoughby learned mural painting, kinetic sculpting and mask making in a long-term mentorship with Duane Flatmo in Eureka, California. He earned a BA in Studio Art at Humboldt State University. He is a long term collaborator with Carmen Rosen and Still Moon Arts Society, as an artist, educator, and steward of the Still Cree Watershed in East Vancouver. He performs music at community events with The Carnival Band. Since 2021, Willoughby has taught forest school with Fresh Air Learning, where he currently co-leads weekly groups for ages 7-11 and 12-15.

As a visual artist with a strong foundation in drawing and painting, Evaly practices an art that highlights freedom of expression, exploration and personal gesture, operating withing the world of sketch, characters, fantasy, abstraction and symbol.

She has an interest in creating artistic interfaces that are easy to approach and inviting to a variety of perspectives and standpoints. Once a particular art experience has been considered in the light of celebration of the individual, the lens shifts to the explorative study of how it can be applied to a collaborative creativity. 

Monica Cheema (she/her) is a filmmaker, facilitator, and community organizer working across multiple disciplines. Her films experiment with fiction and non-fiction to explore the politics of memory, labor, family, and public space. Her creative practice is informed by several years of work in classrooms and communities, where she invites young people to join her in examining the relationship between power, political landscapes, and each other. Monica was raised on the lands of the Katzie, Semiahmoo and Kwantlen Nations. 

Laura Cisneros is a mujer mestiza from the Caribbean Sea, born in Havana, Cuba. She is a practitioner of conscious dreaming, a community builder, and an art historian. Laura has studied dreaming and plant medicine practices under various traditional healers, and medicine women and men from the Amazon, Andes, Mexico, and Turtle Island. "I came to the unceded traditional lands of the Coast Salish people in search of freedom. I quickly learned that I was already free and that my true purpose here was to know my own roots. I like saying, 'I came to the North to learn about the South'." Through her conscious dreaming practice, medicinal plant teachings, connections with the Cosmos, and guidance from ancestors, these lands—where her children are growing up—have become an integral part of her daily life. Laura is the founder of Unfolding Senderos, Dreaming Circle (2019). In 2020-2021, together with Lori Snyder, she was an artist in residence at Hastings Community Centre, and they also co- created monthly moon circles and nature walks. Laura is currently part of a team of teachers

 with Earth Bites, a Vancouver-based School Gardens program. She is also a steward of the Native Welcoming Garden, Templeton Park & Pool, and Chenchenstway Garden (both in collaboration with Lori Snyder) in Vancouver. In 2024, she was Artist in Residence with AIRS at Mount Pleasant

Elementary School. Laura's art practices include eco-artistic and earth art projects that extend beyond traditional art- making forms, bringing together the realms of nature, community, creativity, and the de- commodification of art. She is interested in collective art-making to foster personal and regenerative expressions, embracing diversity and inclusivity within the community. Through inquiry, curiosity, and empathy, she invites exploration of the intricate relationship between art and nature. Much gratitude for being part of a circle of ensoñadoras y ensoñadores. It is an honour to do my work and to dwell in the unceded ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people.

Vin Cuadra (b. Quezon City, National Capital Region, Philippines, 2002) is a Filipino-Canadian neurodivergent and queer emerging interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator, cultural worker and self identified anthropologist based in Surrey, British Columbia, on the unceded territories of the Katzie, Kwantlen, Semiahmoo, and other Coast Salish First Nations.

He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a Minor in Anthropology from Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Cuadra primarily focuses on photo based media, new media, text, installation, and papermaking. He views his work as a blur between art objects, anthropological artifacts, and archival palimpsests, incorporating cultural and historical narratives of his surroundings, materials, and his diasporic experiences. Cuadra has exhibited works at Langley Arts Council, Langley, Centre A in Vancouver, and the Alberta Printmakers Society in Calgary, Alberta. He is also a current Fort Gallery board member in Langley, B.C. His innovative approaches and community involvement have earned awards from KPU’s Fine Arts and Anthropology departments, including a scholarship from BC Arts Council and was longlisted for the 2026 Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize.

Aibhlin Fowlie is a multimedia artist that specializes in illustration and visual storytelling. They find the small momentsthat lead us through our daily lives enchanting and they focus on telling small stories. They use their practice to notice how the world changes and to visualize how we are affected internally by our daily lives. They use digital and traditional illustration and comic arts to tell these stories and their illustrations vary from straightforward and comedic to surreal and expressive depending on what tells the story best. 

They would like to spread a message of community and awareness of each other and also ourselves with each piece they create.

Kelsie Grazier is a Canadian visual artist whose practice engages with painting, drawing and installation art. Through her work, she communicates the complexities of Deaf identity and cultural histories. Kelsie grew up hard of hearing and lost her hearing in her twenties. With layers of gestural paintings and light reflection installation, she is addressing themes of disconnection and belonging within Deaf and

hearing worlds. The work comes from a desire to understand the contrast of the isolation and beauty in deafness through intuitive gestures that span across the large surface to take up space, both literally and metaphorically. Kelsie holds a degree in Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, a Bachelors of Education in Fine Art and a Masters in Deaf Education from the University of British Columbia. In her teaching, Kelsie’s passion is to share a process based art practice rooted in mindfulness. Through sharing her own story and Deaf Culture, she strives to create a safe space for students to build self awareness, create and share their own perspectives through artmaking.

Rebecca is a community-engaged artist, author and educator. She received a MFA from the Tufts University/SMFA program in Boston. She has taught photography and photojournalism courses at several universities. After completing an undergraduate degree in Psychology, Rebecca studied documentary photography at the International Center of Photography in NYC.  She began working as a newspaper photographer in the 1990s and continues to do freelance work. However, in recent years Rebecca has become involved in the use of photography for pedagogical documentation in early childhood and primary school settings. She is currently engaged in graduate work with the Faculty of Education at SFU.  Rebecca has been working with AIRS since 2017, bringing experiences with nature and wonder into Vancouver public schools. In both her own art practice as well as her studio work with children, she seeks to create spaces in which dialogue and artistic modes of expression can flourish.

Fiana Kawane is an independent dance artist, choreographer, educator, and scholar living and working on the unceded xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Stó:lō, and Səlílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh territories. She specializes in movement vocabularies rooted in Kathak, a South Asian classical dance form known for its powerful storytelling and intimate relationship to music. Fiana has performed independently and ensemble across India, Pakistan, Canada, Japan, and France. Her practice centres interdisciplinary collaboration, public access, and ecological attunement.

fanny kearse, a Black-Queer-Jewish-Disabled human, is a recovering people-pleaser & overachiever. A late bloomer, dreamer & community tender, their art explores themes of self-reclamation & connection to land, grief as a guide, pain as a portal to the divine and the joy of unbecoming. In 2021 they won the Harold Green Theatre Monologue Competition. In 2023 fanny published their first book of poetry & prose. She holds an AIRS residency, sits on the Curtain Razors arts board & curates multidisciplinary art experiences.

  Isabelle Kirouac is a transdisciplinary artist, choreographer, perfumers

apprentice, educator and mother living in Vancouver, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. Informed by over twenty years of practice in dance improvisation, somatic practices, site specific installations, immersive performances, as well as more recent explorations into the realm of olfactory art, her artistic research is often inspired by sensory inquiries and ecological relationships, connecting humans and more-than-humans. Isabelle has been facilitating art projects with young people of all ages for over two decades. Isabelle holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from the

School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University and has shared her artistic work across Canada, the USA, Mexico, Colombia and Europe.

Wen Wen (Cherry) Lu is a multimedia artist interested in exploring the hidden, the small and the forgotten through installation, illustration, and animation. Taking inspiration from her family history, she seeks to combine it with the present experiences of culture, nature, and community to create something that questions.  Her work has been installed in spaces such as parks, bus stops, walkways, and hidden in nooks and crannies. For example, The Seed of Happiness, 2021 for Port Coquitlam Public Art, Isolated, 2020 with Vancouver Public Art, and Hidden Stories, 2019 at Richmond Nature Park. They have also been shown in more traditional spaces such as Centre A, New Westminster Museum and Gallery, and Burnaby Art Gallery. She has worked on animation projects with The Only Animal and Vancouver Maritime Museum titled Come dream with me in the forest, 2022 and The Deep, 2024. Her recent films, A thousand scenes in one word, 2023 shown at Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and Around the Kitchen Table, 2024 screened at the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen and Vancouver Asian Film Festival. Push & Pull, 2025 won an international film festival award for best animation and was listed as finalist for Canada Shorts. She graduated from Emily Carr University with a bachelor’s in visual arts in 2017 and has been a visual arts instructor at Shadbolt Centre for the Arts since. 

Christine Mackenzie, Kwakiutl Nation, a First Nation Artist and Facilitator. Her mother was born in Bella Coola BC is a part of the Eagle clan. Her mother was part of the Sixties Scoop and because of that Christine hard time trying to find her culture and identity, but through resilient and training she found a way back to her indigenous roots. She find’s inspiration in the natural world and in the eyes of people willing to learn and share cultural ideas. Christine works with traditional/contemporary design and with multiple mediums. She been doing art all her life, but as a professional Artist and Facilitator since 2009 and mentored by Anastasia Hendry, Haida elder, she was an Artist and Facilitator for 30 plus years and has since retired. Christine now helps others in their journey to self-identity and educating others about Indigenous culture, artwork and protocols. Speaking to only my teachings and life experience to support others in better understanding of empathy when learning about Indigenous culture. 

Alison (she/her) has been living and working on the shared, ancestral, unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations for over 40 years. As an artist, educator, and landscape architect with expertise in designing play environments, she has always been passionate about supporting creativity while strengthening our connection with nature. She fosters innovation and collaboration in the classroom to help students develop a diverse and flexible range of skills needed to face an increasingly complex world.

With her second Master's degree in Art Education from the University of British Columbia, complementing her BA in Visual Communication and MA in illustration, Sholeh is passionate about the ways in which we can situate ourselves as active participants living in the world aesthetically and take action to uncouple from the familiar to activate the potentialities of learning and growth. Sholeh explores working with materials as lingering in generative spaces that can inspire wonder and meaning making. Composing the studio practice, Sholeh invites students to explore how their unique ways of making can be shared, borrowed, transformed, and cultivated through reflective participation and also experience the infinite capacities of their attentive presence for thinking, making, and acting differently. Her research interest focuses on the experience of being a maker with a special emphasis on upholding the traditions of craftsmanship. 

Master printmaker, Julie McIntyre studied at the Banff Centre and holds a BFA from Queen's University. She has had solo shows in over 22 public galleries in Canada and participated in over 60 juried exhibitions, including 25 international credits. Julie has taught workshops across Canada for over 30 years and has been a popular Artist in Residence with the Vancouver School Board and ArtStarts for over a decade. Julie’s passion is to revel the magic of printmaking and its serendipitous nature that encourages experimentation. She uses ordinary materials and a wide range of transfer techniques to create professional results. Her goal is to have students delight in the playfulness of the repeated image, develop a greater appreciation for qualities of paper, deepen their appreciation for surface treatment, and above all, surprise themselves.

Born, raised, and practicing in Vancouver, Canada, Vanessa Mercedes Figueroa is a Latina artist exploring identity politics, and critical theory, especially considerations of varying degrees of labour through a diaristic lens. Her goal is to create a visual response and evaluation of how current events and lived experience affect herself and marginalized groups she is a part of to set the tone for the sociopolitical period we are in, to allow for reevaluation and critical reflection. A graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and a Master of

Fine Arts candidate at the University of British Columbia, Figueroa has

exhibited and presented her work across Canada and her practice has

been supported by SSHRC, among others.

Maggie Milne Martens is a community engaged artist and long-time art educator. She has a BFA in printmaking, and an MA in Art History.  She and has taught both studio art and theory at the post-secondary level and is currently working on a PhD in Arts Education at SFU. 

Her passion for art making with children began 30 years ago in Camden New Jersey, running arts programming for risk kids in the inner city.   Since then she has created community engaged art projects for elementary schools across the lower mainland and other community groups. Maggie's practice interweaves material expressions with collaborative and embodied processes to create multilayered works that allow students into felt connect with themselves, the stories of other and the beauty and complexity of the natural world.  Maggie is co-founder of the Artist in Residence Studio program and continues to  support, mentor and  hold space for artists to share their art practice with children in schools. 

Yasaman Moussavi is an artist and educator. She holds an MFA and a BFA and is currently pursuing a PhD in Art Education at the University of British Columbia. Yasaman has lived and worked in various countries, including Iran, the United States, and Canada. Her diverse lived experiences and teaching in different art programs have shaped her artistic vision and pedagogical approach. Yasaman is fascinated by how the immersive and embodied experiences of public spaces and site-specific art can inspire the imagination to overcome the alienation caused by precarity. Through her art-based research project, she aims to reclaim the embodied practices of mapping and placemaking as a means of fostering social bonding. Yasaman is passionate about community art and its potential to raise social awareness. Through her papermaking art practices, she uses recycled paper as a medium for collaborative and creative expression of identities, stories, and values. Her artwork has been exhibited in various venues across the world.

Tami Murray studied Fine Arts at Red Deer College’s Fine Arts Department and at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design where she received her Bachelors degree in Photography. Tami’s personal work is an ever evolving exploration of techniques and fanciful ideas. Her Art has roots in personal narratives blending whimsy and visual poetics
. She has participated in numerous festivals and art events in Vancouver and Burnaby, most recently as part of the art and music collective Canvas of Light and Sound; performing an improvised live painting and musical experience at the closing events for the 2025 Stride Festival. Over the past two decades she has exhibited in various groups shows.

I am an interdisciplinary artist with a background in puppetry, originally from

New York City and currency completing my MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at SFU. Working within an expanded and queered definition of puppetry, my practice orbits around the animation of objects, materials, sites, and situations. I create sculptures, drawings, puppets, installations, video, books, and performances. I am passionate about building with cardboard, newspaper, and paper mache – techniques I learned from my community of giant puppet makers back east. I am interested in how seeing things through the lens of puppetry can shift our awareness and attention, opening us up to perceive possibility, ask questions, and enact transformation. I hope to generate wonder around everyday experience – by defamiliarizing and celebrating what we take for granted, but also by questioning and challenging norms and expectations. One of my ongoing fascinations is with clouds, both as material and metaphor. A current project involves developing large-scale rope and pulley animation systems that are used to animate and compose hanging drawings of clouds. When working with students and in workshop settings, I value collaborative hands-on making and problem-solving, and hope to create the space for students to dream and build as a group, perhaps in the form of giant puppets, processional art, or site-specific installation. In the studio I aim to foster playfulness, silliness, seeing the potential in everyday materials, an appreciation for messiness and “mistakes”, and becoming okay with not knowing exactly what will happen.

Originally from Mexico City, filmmaker and digital media artist Yunuen Perez Vertti has over 20yrs of experience in the film and television industry. She has worked in various roles and projects and produced films for many public, private and non-profit organizations. Her short documentary "Aparajita" The undefeated was successfully screened at Tasveer Seattle South Asian Film Festival, Topanga Film Festival and Gulf Coast Film & Video Festival. She has been working as an artist in residency in the schools for the past five years. She is passionate about education through the arts and the importance of the arts as a fundamental tool for education. She believes teaching and introducing kids to all art disciplines as early as possible is essential to a healthy society.

Hân Phạm (Phạm Thụy Mai Hân) is an emerging artist and filmmaker from Sài Gòn, Việt Nam. Experimenting with video and film, photography, and soundscape compositions, Hân’s works think through the ephemerality of memory, language, and history in relation to the constantly changing and dislocated landscapes, rooted in the in-betweenness of distance as space for reflection.

Erin Ross is a stop motion animation filmmaker and artist. She studied visual arts at Concordia University and received her BFA in Experimental Animation at California Institute of the Arts. Her work has screened at international film festivals. She has worked at stop motion animation studios and and is currently working freelance and on her own creative projects. Erin loves creating characters and worlds from interesting and unexpected materials and loves the magic of bringing the inanimate alive under the camera. She draws inspiration from the tiny and big moments in life and from the interesting materials and textures all around her. Erin has been working with children and youth for 20+ years through enrichment programs, schools, NGO’s and her own private studio. She believes art and creativity are powerful tools to connect us with our truest selves. When working with children and youth she wants to encourage and empower them to experiment, play and stretch themselves and to trust in their innate creativity.

Niloufar Samadi is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Simon Fraser University and a BFA in Theatre. Working across film, performance, installation, and participatory practices, she investigates transformation through the movement of materials, images, and bodies across forms and contexts. Her work reconfigures familiar relationships between object and image, audience and performer, documentation and experience, creating spaces where meaning emerges through interaction and change. Drawing on embodied memory, displacement, and collective imagination, her practice considers how identities, narratives, and material forms remain fluid and continually in the process of becoming. 

Marcela J Villaca is a visual artist and illustrator born and raised in Brazil who migrated to Coast Salish lands a decade ago. Her art practice often begins with observation and ends in play. Marcela’s work tells stories of belonging, movement, and the many relations connecting humans and the land. She creates with pencils, acrylics, collage, watercolors, crayons, and digital tools.

Kathryn Wadel is an interdisciplinary mixed media artist and second generation Filipinx-Canadian settler who works and resides on the traditional and unceded territories of the Katzie First Nation and Kwantlen First Nation peoples. She holds a BFA degree from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, with a major in Visual Arts and a minor in Social Practice and Community Engagement. Kathryn’s work explores environmental, cultural and social practices that connect communities across disciplines. She utilizes mixed media techniques in her painting, drawing, and sculptural practices that often explore the human condition as it exists within the Anthropocene. In the studio, she facilitates and encourages art-making as a creative process through socially-engaged material play. As part of her pedagogical practice, Kathryn is in her 4th year as artist-in-residence with AIRS Program society. Grounded in the Filipino philosophy of Kapwa, Kathryn works with the whole school community in Vancouver, her residency projects explore the human condition utilizing drawing, painting and mixed media practices to express contemporary relationships between art, culture, science and social practice. She has also given artist talks and workshops in various galleries, artist centres and private events, including the Banff Centre for the Arts, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Museum of Anthropology and various sites for school board professional development workshops. Kathryn believes that art is an essential human practice that builds meaningful connections across cultures and communities. Learn more about Kathryn’s art practice on her website: www.kathrynwadel.com

Amanda Wood is an interdisciplinary artist based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm(Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (Vancouver, BC). Working across alternative photography, printmaking, and hand weaving, her materially grounded practice centers on repetition and tactile experience. Drawn to marginal and in-between spaces, Amanda navigates the liminal spaces shaped by an intersectional life. She works with everyday materials and complex processes, combining craft traditions, scientific methods, and archival impulses to examine what is often overlooked or discarded. Through abstraction, translation, and accumulation, Amanda deconstructs and reconfigures information into new patterns and forms. These in between spaces hold a generative tension—bridging gaps between conventional and divergent ways of being, and offering new ways of seeing, sensing, and connecting. Amanda’s work has been supported by multiple Research and Creation Grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and a 2024 Professional Development Grant from the BC Arts Council. She is a 2024 Merit Scholar for Material Code at SAIC’s Oxbow program, and has held residencies at New Media Gallery, Ou Gallery, and Emily Carr University’s Leeway Studio. Her practice is further informed by mentorships through NYC Crit Club, Malaspina Printmakers, and interdisciplinary artist Lenka Clayton. Committed to community engagement, Amanda has served on the AiRs advisory board, as a peer assessor for the Canada Council and Manitoba Arts Council and frequently leads talks and workshops with institutions such as UBC’s MFA program, Sheridan College, and Malaspina Printmakers.