Cindi Strauss of Houston, Texas is the Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design and Assistant Director, Programming at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. At the museum, she is responsible for the acquisition, research, publication, and exhibition of post-1900 decorative arts, design, and craft.

Diana N'Diaye, Ph. D. is an interdisciplinary visual artist/maker, and folklore scholar. Her artwork, research and writing, reference sacred expressions of identity across Africa and the Diaspora.

Lynda was born and raised in Orange, CA. She did undergraduate work in Drawing and Illustration, Crafts and Jewelry, and received an MA and MFA in Jewelry/Metalsmithing from California State University, Long Beach.

Diego Romero is well known for his ceramic vessels, which elevate Pueblo life to Olympian stature. He draws on historical oral traditions as source material. He distinguishes his work from more traditional Pueblo pottery by the use of a narrative style influenced by comic books and popular culture.

Michael Puryear is an internationally recognized designer/furniture maker. He is self-taught learning his craft through reading and experimentation and has been practicing his craft for more than 45 years.

Mark Newport’s work uses textiles, performance, print, and photography to reveal the vulnerability inherent in traditional western ideals of masculinity.

Yuri Kobayashi, a sculptor and furniture maker based in Rockport, Maine, brings a wealth of expertise honed through diverse educational and professional experiences.

Collaborating brothers, Einar and Jamex de la Torre, were born in Guadalajara, México, 1963, & 1960. In a sudden family move, the Brothers moved to The United States in 1972, going from a traditional Catholic school to a small California beach town. They both studied at California State University at Long Beach and taught at the prestigious Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington. Currently the brothers live and work on both sides of the border, the Guadalupe Valley in Baja California, México, and San Diego, California. The complexities of the immigrant experience and contradicting bicultural identities, as well as their current life and practice on both sides of the border, inform their narrative and aesthetics.

In the tradition of the African griot(storyteller) Michael A. Cummings'quilts tell the stories of African American life. As a result of his masterful creativity, he has become one of America's premier quiltmakers.

Syd Carpenter is a sculptor working in clay and mixed media. She focuses on African American farms and gardens as a source of form and content attributing this interest to her mother, Ernestine and grandmother, Indiana Hutson, both of whom were master gardeners

Tip Toland of Vaughn, Washington, is a full-time studio artist and a part-time instructor in Seattle.

Preston Singletary of Seattle spent years studying and participating at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington.

Mark Pharis of Roberts, Wisconsin, was introduced to ceramics in 1967 at the University of Minnesota.

Kristina Madsen of Southampton, Massachusetts, trained under British-born furniture maker David Powell from 1975–1979 and has been building furnitu

Keith Lewis of Thorp, Washington, creates jewelry which deals with issues of sexual identity, memory, and loss and the notion of jewelry as a trans

Nancy Koenigsberg of New York City weaves, knits, and crochets copper and steel wire into sculpture that can be both evocative and abstract.

Karen Hampton of Lowell, Massachusetts, is a conceptually based fiber artist, addressing issues of colorism and kinship.

Teri Greeves (Kiowa) of Santa Fe, New Mexico, was born on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming where her mother ran a trading post.