Edna Stevens is a choreographer, performer, and teaching artist who has taken her craft locally, nationally, and internationally. She has performed and offered instructional dance presentations in Korea, Japan, and Nigeria, and led Gospel devotions in Senegal. She taught at three secondary schools in Nigeria and two in The Gambia. Edna got her start in [...]
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Thomasina Petrus
Thomasina Petrus is a 25-year equity actor and professional jazz vocalist, a company member at Penumbra Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, and Park Square Theatre, and has performed with the Twin Cities’ most beloved artists. Mentors and friends, James “Cornbread” Harris, Sr., Javetta Steele, T. Mycheal Rambo, Stokley, Walter Chancellor, Austene Cleopatra Van, and Prince, have encouraged [...]
Simmia Nelson
2025–26 Teaching Artist Fellow* Simmia Nelson is a music producer, sound designer, and teaching artist who helps young people explore emotion and identity through creative technology. He guides students in transforming their feelings and experiences into original art using music production, photography, and digital storytelling. His teaching practice is collaborative, student-centered, and rooted in building [...]
Evie Digirolamo
Evie Digirolamo is a theatre maker who specializes in new plays made from scratch. Her work is highly physical, using partner acrobatics and aerial arts, highly collaborative, and highly innovative, using multiple art forms (poetry, music, puppetry, and more) to tell a story. Evie invested 12 years as a principal teaching artist with Upstream Arts, [...]
Alsa & Morgan Bruno
Alsa and Morgan are married actors, improvisers, and educators with 15 years of mental health and play work between them. They are passionate about using imaginative play to drive the momentum of social change and amplify strategically undervalued voices. They believe that a playful and flexible spirit builds capacity for transformation, both personally and communally. [...]
Esther Piszczek
In 2008, Esther left the practice of law to live more creatively. When she was introduced to the Zentangle® method of pattern drawing, a non-representational, contemplative way of drawing complex patterns, her life changed. She’d been drawing patterns since she was a child, but it wasn’t until she experienced the Zentangle method that she felt [...]
Jinjer Markley
Jinjer Markley is an artist, illustrator, and color nerd in Minneapolis, MN. Her formal training is in science: She has an M.M.s in Plant Biology. She also formally studied science teaching and formerly taught middle school science. Her interest in math and science leaks into everything she does, including her abstract watercolor painting. Working with [...]
Andy Jacobs
Andy Jacobs is an interdisciplinary artist who works with the mediums of fibers/textiles, sculpture, drawing, and installation. Her work contemplates biodegradability, cyclicality, and explores the field of intrinsic relations found in ecology. As a self-taught weaver, she has developed a style of tapestry weaving that pushes against the rectilinear grid of the loom, and weaves [...]
