Sara Nickleson

Sara Nickleson is a painter and curator who lives and works in Detroit, Michigan. In search of a departure from prevailing ideas around figuration, Nickleson imagines the body as impermanent, morphing and changing as a representation of complex human emotion and cognition. Rooted in her own longtime battle with depression—and significant reprieve through psychedelic therapy—the artist finds solace in world-building that draws from her studies in consciousness and melancholia, as well as theories around ‘deep adaptation’ in the face of climate crisis.

Nickleson begins each painting by amassing a multitude of disparate elements to create her imagery through digital collage, a process she feels is representative of a human condition that is awkward, expansive, and fragmented.

After completing her BFA and BID, Nickleson spent over a decade as a museum curator and gallery director, and revived her studies in painting early in the pandemic. She recently completed her MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (Painting ’24).  

Halima Afi Cassells

Hailma Afi Cassells (@halima_afi). Halima (b. 1981) is an award-winning interdisciplinary community-engaged artist, facilitator, mom of three, avid gardener, with deep roots in Waawiiyaataanong/ Detroit, MI.

She credits gardening as inspiring her move away from painting to a practice where she aspires to use natural and upcycled materials and processes that lend to the thriving of all (human and non-human) communities. Halima continues to explore relationship-building, and the notions of freedom and work, value and disposability in a participatory context through her work. Community as at the heart of her work. Named as a 2023 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow for Interdisciplinary Arts, she has also been awarded grants from: Panta Rhea Foundation, BulkSpace, Art Matters, Culture Source, Knight Foundation Arts Challenge, WDET, Artplace America and Seed+Bloom Detroit. In addition to Detroit, her work has been featured in spaces in New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Oakland CA, Oaxaca, Berlin, Copenhagen, Bogota, and Harare.


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Cyrah Dardas

Cyrah Dardas (@cyrah_power), a Queer, eco-romantic artist and care worker living in Detroit/Waawiyaatanong, Anishinaabe territory. Cyrah’s work is informed by their experience as a parent, their work in childcare, as an educator, in growing and loving plants, as a member of artist cooperatives, and through relationship to the land.

Their practice is deeply rooted in ritualized art making, using the process as a tool for grief composition, and collective healing. Dardas uses her art practice as a tool in remembering the lost relationships between humans and non-human beings by regulating and healing our collective nervous system and body to restore interdependency. Their finished pieces are an archive of their continual seeking and learning, of a somatic remembering, of a way of engaging in and relating to the world.

Dardas has presented works with the College for Creative Studies Detroit, The Shepherd, and MdW Fair. They have been in residency within People in Education, Crosshatch, The Room Project, and BULK space.
   

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Jessica Wildman Katz

Resident artist Jessica Wildman Katz (@lakesnlakes) is a mother, musician, poet, gardener, and artist based in Highland Park, MI. Jessica’s dynamic, kaleidoscopic practice evolves from her analogue photography background capturing uncanny slice-of-life moments, fabricating absurd cameras, and constructing surrealist tableaux. Her vocational training as an apprentice to a builder specializing in historic home restoration fostered her devotion to the poetry of material, labor, and process.

Working across textiles, performance, installation, sculpture, photography, and video, Jessica blends heritage craft and formal training with a resourceful, ecological approach—creating from discarded and cast-off materials, reusing elements from past projects, and incorporating the bounty cultivated in her backyard. Her careful and deliberate work unfolds themes of transformation—delving into the slippery relationships between humans, the world we share, and the great unknown.

She is a first generation college graduate, earning her BFA and MFA from Wayne State University where she received the Award of Excellence from the Academy of Scholars for her creative research. Her work has been presented at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, MoCAD, and Muskegon Museum of Art, among others. She maintains a live-performance practice, recently activating a plethora of public spaces in Detroit-Metro with her performance-turned-short film Motherling, which premiered on public access television on Mother’s Day 2025. 

Portait by: Colin Massa


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Tony Printz

Tony Printz (b. Pontiac, MI, 1991) is a designer and craftsman in Southfield Michigan. Printz designs and builds furniture, interiors, and installations, engaging both traditional and digital fabrication processes, to explore themes of home, house, craft, and community. Printz has worked for Chris Schanck Studios for over a decade where he designed, fabricated, and sculpted furniture and installations exhibited internationally. Printz holds a Bachelors of Science in Architecture from Lawrence Technological University and a Masters in Architecture from the University of Michigan. Printz currently serves Buffalo Prescott as Studio Coordinator, where he assists in daily operations of the residency program and provides design and fabrication services.