Name: Granite Falls: Ignite Rural 2023 Showcase
Start: 2023-9-23T17:00-5:00
End: 2023-9-23T19:00-5:00

Event Type Info Session

Event Type

County

City

september

23sep5:00 pm7:00 pmGranite Falls: Ignite Rural 2023 Showcase

Location

The YES House

726 Pentice St

Time

(Saturday) 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Event Details

You are invited to join Department of Public Transformation at The YES! House (726 Prentice St., Granite Falls, MN) on Saturday, September 23rd from 5-7 PM CST for an open house, meet and greet, artist talk, and exhibition showcase featuring 8 rural artists and culture bearers from across the Upper Midwest that participated in this year’s Ignite Rural program!

At this event, each artist will share stories and artwork from their creative journey over the past six months, in conversation with Ignite Rural Program Director, Holly Doll, Anpao Win (First Light Woman).

We hope you will join us for this incredible gathering of artists and showcase of talent in what is sure to be an inspiring evening!

Event Flow
5-5:30 pm – Open House + Artist Meet & Greet
5:30-6:30 pm – Artist Talk, featuring all 8 Ignite Rural Artists, moderated by Holly Doll, Anpao Win (First Light Woman).
6:30-7:00 pm – Q&A + Open House

Ignite Rural artists that will be in attendance at this event include:

Rocky Casillas Aguirre (Nerstrand, MN)
Rocky is an emerging, Latinx and LGBTQ artist originally from Tijuana. His comics and creative efforts aim to create safe spaces to talk about mental health and to empower young people everywhere, especially kids of color and LGBTQ2IA+ identities, in recognizing their true potential and living authentically.

Omani Luger (Mandan, ND)
Omani is a self-taught illustrator of Lakota and Northern Tutchone descent. Inspired by film and comics, she’s on a journey to find her place as a multi-media sequential storyteller.

Lynne M. Colombe (Mission, SD)
Lynne M. Colombe is a digital storyteller, documentarian, and writer from the Sicangu Lakota (Rosebud Sioux) Reservation. Lynne aims to create space for digital storytelling by Native peoples and build content platforms.

Leticia (Gonzales) Snow (St. Peter, MN)
Born and raised in the desert southwest of New Mexico, Leticia is the Assistant Library Supervisor at the Saint Peter Public Library in Saint Peter, Minnesota, overseeing teen and young adult programming. Leticia plans to further develop her writing and publishing skills and will facilitate a youth-centered project that incorporates culture with a focus on community engagement.

Leah Xiuzhen Rathe (Brainerd, MN)
Leah was adopted from China and raised in the US. Many of her previous projects have covered topics such as gender equality and the criminal justice system and she has begun diving into her own identity as a transracial adoptee. Leah plans to create projects to help other transracial adoptees feel represented and seen. She is very passionate about the impact of art and aims to create with meaning and intention.

Esmarie Cariaga (Vermillion, SD)
Esmarie Cariaga-Whiteman is a self-taught artist based in Vermilion, South Dakota and a citizen of the Isanti Dakota people of Santee, Nebraska. Esmarie is a fashion illustrator who enjoys creating pieces reflecting contemporary fashions, while mixing them with Dakota contour. She wants to see more indigenous representation in the fashion industry and wants to create ways to uplift and support her community through fashion.

Cecily Rose Engelhart (Wagner, SD)
Cecily Rose Engelhart (Ihanktonwan Dakota & Oglala Lakota) is a Master Certified Life Coach and Indigenous arts practitioner. Cecily is interested in creating functional, everyday-use items that incorporate cultural imagery, personal stories, and historical contexts. She has big visions for a contemporary re-emergence of parfleche purses in a range of styles and functions.

Alixena Patnaude (Belcourt, ND)
Alixena is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and lives on the Turtle Mountain Reservation. An avid beadwork artist, she is interested in learning diverse art forms, particularly quillwork, and creating pieces that represent her culture and heritage.

To learn more about each artists, visit www.publictransformation.org/igniterural

About Ignite Rural: Ignite Rural is an “at-home” artist residency focused on uplifting and supporting emerging rural artists that engage in social/civic work. To be considered for the program, artists must reside in rural communities with a population of 20,000 or less within the colonial state borders of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the 23 Native Nations that share that geography, with priority given to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and Native artists and culture bearers. Ignite Rural 2023 operates as a 6-month cohort model to connect rural artists with each other, provides digital learning exchange opportunities, and supports rural artists in their social and civic work within their communities.

Organizer

Department of Public Transformation

(952) 486-0533 The YES! House 726 Prentice Street Granite Falls, MN 56241

Learn More

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