Allie Furlotti

Allie Furlotti is a multidisciplinary artist and PhD candidate in Depth Psychology whose work lives at the intersection of personal mythology, feminism, and relational aesthetics. With a background in ceramics and a passion for performance, her practice spans from uncanny installations to absurdist acts of stand-up comedy, often exploring the sacred and profane in the same breath. When she’s not manufacturing fake cakes out of architectural foam or appearing in films as “Lady #3,” she is creating immersive worlds through ILY2 Galleries in Portland, New York, and beyond. For her, raising a child is inseparable from raising culture itself, where each gesture in the studio is an act of world making, each project a relational offering. Her work is a conversation between the uncanny and the deeply human, inviting audiences into spaces where vulnerability, humor, and depth collide.

Jean Smith

b. 1959, Vancouver, BC. Lives and works in Vancouver, BC.

"Jean Smith paints portraits of women who aren’t here to make you comfortable. No smiles. No pretty posturing. Just faces that exist on their own terms. Since 2016, she’s sold thousands of her 11 x 14" paintings for $100, making her work accessible while funding the Free Artist Residency for Progressive Social Change. Jean is also the vocalist of Mecca Normal, a band that’s been challenging the status quo since 1983 and inspiring the Riot Grrrl movement. A published novelist and two-time recipient of Canada Council for the Arts awards, her work, across painting, music, and writing, is about emotional honesty, feminist resistance, and creating space for complexity."

Artwork Image: Angry Woman in Rock #92, 2025. Acrylic on canvas panel. 14 x 11 in.

i. max miller

b. 1980, Weed, CA. Lives and works in Portland, OR.

"i. max miller’s work always circles around hybrid realities, weaving personal and autobiographical threads into expansive narrative worlds. Through myth-making and intricate world-building in both audio and visual mediums, he creates spaces that feel simultaneously intimate and otherworldly. Since the recent passing of his longtime partner, his practice has deepened, becoming a dialogue with grief, memory, and the surreal landscapes of his inner life. His works oscillate between playfulness, horror, and profound sadness, depending on the viewer’s frame of reference. Even when working with niche mediums like abstract video games and uncanny installations, max’s art remains relational and accessible. There are always entry points, always places where I can find myself. I relate to his work as deeply heartfelt, coded with layers of meaning, always inviting, always playful."

Artwork Image: 4 Motivational Posters (detail), 2023. Digital print. 36 x 24 in.

Sarah Ama Duah

b. 1989, Berlin, DE. Lives and works in Berlin, DE. 2025 Diploma, Berlin University of the Arts.

"Sarah Ama Duah’s work feels urgent because it refuses to let history sit still. She uses the body, her own and others, as a site of resistance, pushing back against the frozen legacy of colonial monuments and grand narratives. I’m drawn to how she reclaims sculptural form, not as a static object, but as something alive: performed, worn, moved through. There’s a tension between the weight of history and the softness of flesh that she makes visible, an insistence that memory is not neutral, not abstract, and not settled. Her practice connects material craft with political embodiment, offering a new way of thinking about monuments: not as things we build and forget, but as actions we perform, remember, and sometimes dismantle. That combination of critical rigor and visceral presence is what makes her work stand out to me."

Artwork Image: Obroni, 2022. Sculpture-half relief.