KELCEY EDWARDS, DIRECTOR

Raised by a contemporary art curator/art professor, I was immersed in a world of art from a young age. Even as a child, I understood artists to be an extraordinary demographic with a special purpose: visionaries who could at once mirror our culture and challenge it. After founding my first nonprofit gallery in Austin, Texas at the age of 25, I spent the next several years creating opportunities for emerging artists who may have otherwise gone unrecognized. Many of my earliest film projects were focused on interviewing artists and documenting their practices. After receiving an MFA from Stanford University in documentary filmmaking, I moved to New York City to forge my film career and experienced firsthand the challenges MFA graduates often face: the difficulty of earning enough income to pay off student loan debt, the scarcity of teaching positions, and the amount of sacrifice required to balance “being an artist” with “making a living.”

DEBI WISCH, PRODUCER

Debi’s producing credits include the Emmy-award nominated documentary The Price of Everything, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018, sold to HBO and received distribution around the world, and Love, Cecil, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in 2017. She is currently in post-production on A Test of Civilization with the multi-award winning Film Manufacturers Inc. Debi serves on the Advisory Boards of the Cantor Art Museum at Stanford University and Hunter College's Arts Advisory. She also serves on the board of Film at Lincoln Center, as well as the board of governors of the American Jewish Committee. She is on the National Council of Artadia and Anderson Ranch, and a member of MoMA PS1’s Greater New Yorkers. Debi has mentored high school and college students for many years. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, she worked in marketing and public relations for 20 years in the U.S. and Asia.

CHARLIE JARVIS, FAIRCHAIN

Charlie Jarvis is the co-founder and CEO of Fairchain. She is an entrepreneur, technologist and creative with a passion for art, culture and social justice. Previous to founding Fairchain, Jarvis studied Computer Science and Studio Art at Stanford and worked in engineering and product management roles at Google and Youtube Music. Jarvis grew up in Cambridge, MA in a household filled with both art and activism. Jarvis is committed to building at the intersection of tech and creativity, while creating frameworks for lasting social change.

FELIPE BAEZA, ARTIST

Felipe Baeza (b. 1987, Guanajuato, Mexico) works and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Fusing collage, painting, printmaking, and other techniques to create multilayered, textural works that explore notions of the body and migration, Baeza’s sensually rich and visually arresting works evoke both mythic dimensions and contemporary themes. His figures created over densely layered paintings appear in different states of becoming and at times are even abstracted to the point of invisibility. Baeza’s has exhibited solo shows at the Mistake Room Room, Los Angeles, CA; Fortnight Institute, New York, NY; Maureen Paley, London, UK; and the Public Art Fund, New York, NY. Baeza's recent group exhibitions include The Milk of Dreams, 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy; Prospect. 5 New Orleans: Yesterday We Said Tomorrow, New Orleans, LA; Desert X, Palm Springs, CA; and many others. Baeza’s works are in the public collections of Columbus Museum of Art, LACMA, Moderna Museet, North Carolina Museum of Art, and San Jose Museum of Art. Baeza is the recipient of a Latinx Artist Fellowship by the U.S. Latinx Art Forum, Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, and completed residencies at NXTHVN and the Getty Research Institute. Baeza received a BFA from the Cooper Union and an MFA from Yale.

CHRIS WATTS, ARTIST

Chris Watts is an American painter and installation artist whose work interrogates social and personal narratives around embodiment, and understandings of the visible. Within his work, the artist seeks to analyze, re-examine, and revise existing conventions by means of their abstract representation, and re-evaluation. He attended the MFA program at Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT, the College of Arts and Architecture at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC, and the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Wroclaw, PL. The artist is a 2022-23 Soros Justice Fellow, and has held various artist residencies, among them the Marek Maria Pienkowski Foundation, Chelm, PL; McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Charlotte, NC; the Art & Law Fellowship Program at Cornell University Art Architecture Planning, New York, NY; and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, New York, NY. His work has been exhibited in national and international institutions. Chris Watts lives and works in New York, NY, and North Carolina, USA.