Our Team
Kaitlin Bryson
Lead artist, producer, art & creative director.
kaitlin is a queer ecological artist and educator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico [USA] concerned with environmental and social justice and multispecies thriving. She primarily works with fungi, plants, microbes and biodegradable materials to engage more-than-human audiences, while also facilitating human communities through ecosocial practice.
Bryson received her MFA in Art & Ecology from the University of New Mexico in 2018, where she concurrently studied art and mycology with research in ecotoxicology. Currently, she holds a Lecturer III faculty position in Art & Ecology at the University of New Mexico and is the Field Coordinator for the Land Arts of the American West Program. Bryson’s transdisciplinary teaching focuses on facilitating ecologically relational practices informed by queer and critical ecology and traditional ecological knowledge, to enroot decolonial, interconnected, contemporary environmental art practices. She also works as a practicing artist, land care-taker, radical educator, and coordinator for Communities for Clean Water, and lives with her dog Mojave and their four chickens, ghost, snowflower, pinefoot and emily.
beata tsosie-Peña
Indigenous sustainable design lead
Beata is from Santa Clara Pueblo and El Rito, NM. She is a mother, poet,advocate, seed keeper, and is certified in Infant Massage, as a Developmental Specialist, an Educator, A Lactation Counselor, a full-spectrum Birthworker, and in Indigenous Sustainable Design (permaculture). She led the creation of the Española Healing Foods Oasis demonstration garden and Seed Library with the local nonprofit, Tewa Women United. She is currently on the steering committee for the Traditional Native American Farmers Association and is a board member for Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute. She was the recipient of the 2021 Jeanne Gauna Community Advocacy Award from the NM Environmental Law Center for her work in Environmental Justice. She has been working to address impacts and advocate for environmental and reproductive health and justice for over a decade. She currently works as the organizational director of Breath of My Heart Birthplace.
dylan mclaughlin
soundwork lead
Dylan McLaughlin is a multidisciplinary artist looking critically to ecologies of extraction and threatened ecosystems. He weaves Diné mythology, ecological data, and environmental histories while holding space for complexity. What transpires is the sonification of relationships to land through experimental music composition and improvised performance. In his multi-media installation and performative works, he looks to engage the poetics and politics of human relations to land. He is a current recipient of the NACF LIFT award, and has done residencies at Mass MoCA, BOXO Projects, and Slow Research Lab. McLaughlin’s work has been shown in spaces including the Denver Art Museum, Smack Mellon, and Museum of Capitalism. He received his BFA in New Media Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and his MFA in Art & Ecology at the University of New Mexico. He is currently an Early Career Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin.
Katie v. beidler
Scientific lead
Dr. Beidler is an ecosystem ecologist who explores the hidden world of roots and their fungal partners to better understand how energy (carbon) and nutrients cycle through forests. Mycorrhizal fungi belong to a large and diverse belowground network, forming interactions with plants and other microbes. Currently, Beidler is working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota, studying how microbial communities recycle the resources contained within these networks and contribute to the build-up of soil carbon, a necessary ingredient for productive ecosystems.
Beidler’s passion for ecology is largely born from its interdisciplinary nature which tries to capture the complex interactions between organisms and their environment. When her head is not under the ground, she is inspired by collaborations with artists. Contributing to art-based research and re-shaping ecological ideas with artists helps her find new connections to her novel research.
nancy dewhurst
Labor of Love coordinator
Nancy Dewhurst is an interdisciplinary artist, currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Through playful material explorations, she attempts to capture the intangible. Her artworks are thoughts in progress, scrambled narratives and poetic gestures that hold and address multiple truths.
Dewhurst was born in Oxford, England in 1994. She has exhibited and been an artist in residence in the UK, US, Romania, Czech Republic, Portugal, Finland and Germany. She completed her BFA in Sculpture and Environmental Art from the Glasgow School of Art in 2018. For her degree show work she was awarded the Steven Campbell Hunt Medal for Poetic Creativity, the SSA New Graduate award, and the RSA New Contemporaries. She attended the University of New Mexico in 2016 as an exchange student on the Land Arts of the American West program, which inspired her to return to Albuquerque in 2022, where she is now pursuing her MFA. Since moving to Albuquerque, Dewhurst has exhibited artwork at Harwood Art Center, John Sommers Gallery, The Sanitary Tortilla Factory, and in Santa Fe at CURRENTS New Media festival.
our partners
Neighbors Helping Neighbors
grassroots mutual aid organization. Las Vegas, New Mexico
Warrior Heart Ranch and the Center for Creative Intent
Las Vegas, New Mexico
with generous funding provided by
Bellow Forth has been made possible with generous support from Anonymous Was a Woman in partnership with The New York Foundation for the Arts.
The AWAW EAG program supports environmental art projects that inspire thought, action, and ethical engagement. The applications were reviewed by an esteemed panel comprising Patricia Watts, founder/curator of ecoartspace; Angie Tillges, Great River Passage Fellow, City of Saint Paul, MN; and Alicia Grullón, conceptual multimedia artist, educator, and organizer. The AWAW EAG was supported and distributed by New York Foundations of Arts.
Thank you so, very much to AWAW and NYFA For your support! We could not have done this without YOU!