Kaitlin Bryson is a queer, transdisciplinary, ecological artist and educator based in Santa Fe, NM concerned with environmental and social justice. She primarily works with fungi, plants, microbes, and biodegradable materials to engage more-than-human audiences, while also facilitating human communities through social practice and environmental stewardship. Her practice is research-based and most often collaborative, highlighting the potency of working like lichens to realize radical change and justice. She is a recipient of the 2022 Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Arts Grant, as well as the 2022 Future Art Award: Ecosystem X from Mozaik Philanthropy. Bryson has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, and in Mexico, Ireland, and Nepal as well as in notable festivals such as Ars Electronica (AT) and Politics of the Machine (DE). Her artwork and activism have been featured in books such as “In Search of Mycotopia: Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics, and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms”, by Doug Bierend and in the Autumn 2022 Edition of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture.

Bryson received an MFA in Art & Ecology from the University of New Mexico in 2018, where she concurrently studied art and mycology with research in ecotoxicology. Currently, she holds a Lecturer III faculty position in Art & Ecology at the University of New Mexico and is the Field Coordinator for the Land Arts of the American West Program. Bryson’s transdisciplinary teaching focuses on facilitating ecologically relational practices informed by queer and critical ecology and traditional ecological knowledge, to enroot decolonial, interconnected, contemporary Environmental Art practices.

Hollis Moore is an artist, landscape designer, and native plant conservationist living in Albuquerque, NM, within the historic floodplains of the Middle Rio Grande. She has an MFA and MLA from the University of New Mexico. Her practice focuses on researching the impacts of colonialism, capitalism, and climate change on aridlands with methods of counter-mapping. She responds with art and design that make visible and work with the encounters of multiple species- including plants, animals, fungi, and human communities- living within damaged and shifting landscape assemblages. Currently, Moore is plant materials technician with the Southwest Seed Partnership, coordinated by the Institute for Applied Ecology.

Mariko Oyama Thomas is a writer, instructor, and independent scholar currently living in the mountains of Taos, New Mexico with her partner and baby daughter. She has an M.S. in Communication and Research from Portland State University (2013) and a Ph.D. from University of New Mexico in Environmental and Intercultural Communication (2019) as well as a background in creative writing and performance. Her research interests are largely focused on  plant-human relationships, environmental justice, and more-than-human communication, with a methodological focus on oral history’s ability to access these subjects. Previous projects include an oral history exploration of plant-human communication, autoethnographic essays on the connections between family storytelling, race, and environment, and a mixed-method study on Western definitions of “nature.” Her current work aims to explore parenthood, birth stories, and expanding the concept of kin, as entry points to more-than-human connection, compassion, and advocacy.