Mary Welcome is a multidisciplinary cultural worker and rural avant-garde artist based in Palouse, Washington. For over two decades, Mary has developed projects that nurture local culture, reflect a sense of place, and deepen community relationships. Her work expands upon the rural condition, exploring both issues and assets of place, and advocating for diverse, resilient, culturally-rich shared realities across the rural-urban divide. As an artist-organizer, her projects are rooted in community engagement and the development of intersectional programming to address equity, cultural advocacy, visibility, queerness, and imagination. She brings a nuanced perspective to the contemporary field, as an organizer working in service to small towns, as a cultural producer across American geographies, and as a facilitator of place-based arts programming.
June T Sanders is an artist, writer, and teacher from the hills of rural eastern Washington State. She lives there still. Her practices spans through photography, sculpture, radical pedagogy, publication work, social practice, and the art of the rural avant garde. She is most often found in her truck, on a road, or by the river.