Artists + Practitioners + Organizations

Meet the artists, practitioners, and organizations! Far South/Border North awarded funding to support artists and cultural practitioners working in disciplines from performing arts, visual arts, music, film and media, and literature to multidisciplinary and socially engaged forms.

Far South/Border North Round I Grant Recipients

Our Round I grant recipients include about 60 artists and cultural practitioners from San Diego and Imperial counties. Round I grant recipients began developing their campaigns in June 2023, and are now implemented those campaigns through May 2024.

Ana Ruth Castillo

Ana Ruth Castillo

Ana Ruth Castillo

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Ana Ruth Castillo

San Diego County

Ana Ruth Yela Castillo is an art therapist, a mother, and a muralist of Guate-Mayan descent who engages the community in healing through creative expression. She began her career by developing after-school programming using poetry, theater, and muralism to empower the lives of youth. Listening to her student's stories of intergenerational trauma and resilience directed her toward the mental health field. She graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 2017 with a dual master's in Family Therapy and Clinical Art Therapy. Ana Ruth moved with her family in 2019 to the beautifully rural and artsy town of Ramona in San Diego County. As a mother, a new journey began that informs both her clinical and intuitive skills as a therapeutic arts practitioner. Creative expression continues to be the bridge she trusts and uses to facilitate a naturally unfolding process connecting people to themselves, their medicine, and wisdom.

Cat Chiu Phillips

Cat Chiu Phillips

Cat Chiu Phillips

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Cat Chiu Phillips

San Diego County

Cat Chiu Phillips creates installation work in public spaces, often using traditional handicraft methods, including crochet, weaving, and embroidery. She often uses discarded materials, including plastic and electronic waste, to create large-scale installations and public art projects.  Growing up in Manila, she was inspired by resilience through tragedy and a sense of resourcefulness. Phillips has received numerous national public art commissions and artwork in the Civic Art Collection of the City of San Diego and Redmond (WA) and has been awarded the California Arts Council's Established Artist Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts.  She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Master of Science in Special Education.  She has been an educator in public schools for over 23 years, a Filipino-Chinese American, adjunct professor, public artist, USMC veteran wife, and mother.

Dinah Poellnitz

Dinah Poellnitz

Dinah Poellnitz

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Dinah Poellnitz

San Diego County

Dinah Poellnitz is a curator and creative director, recognized as a leader for her arts programming in Oceanside's art and cultural district and a San Diego county leader in art curation and art education; she brings twelve years of experience in driving the development of communal partnerships, art exhibitions, and social impact programs across local communities. Throughout her tenure, Poellnitz gained a depth of knowledge in delivering the best-curated experiences through artist engagement and building partnerships with political organizers, students, artists, businesses, public institutions, and residents. In addition to her expertise, She is deeply committed to building thriving art communities and art event programming across Southern California.

Jose "Eduardo Kintero" Quintero

Jose "Eduardo Kintero" Quintero

Jose "Eduardo Kintero" Quintero

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Jose "Eduardo Kintero" Quintero

Imperial County

Jose Eduardo Quintero is an artist who has worked in many mediums, including large-format metal and ceramic sculpture, curatorship and museography of exhibitions, development, and dissemination of visual arts programs, and art workshops helping different groups of people from adults to children with special needs. He's worked for the Autonomous University of Baja California, the Baja California Government, Casa de Cultura Mexicali, and the City of Calexico Recreation Department, among other places, focusing on murals,  exhibits, cultural programs, art activities in public spaces.

Marcos Duran

Marcos Duran

Marcos Duran

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Marcos Duran

San Diego County

Marcos Duran channels intersectional imaginations into embodied performance. His approach to directing is informed by craniosacral integration, political reflection, and the desire for personal and collective evolution. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Marcos was in the final days of completing his Master of Fine Arts in Dance Theatre at the University of California San Diego. He took refuge in creating "Acts of Togetherness," a social media series that cultivated international, digital dance collaborations. In 2021, his short film "Minced" won Best Performances at the LA Experimental Film Festival, and his evening-length solo, "Shapeshifter," debuted at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in 2022. Marcos is currently in post-production for his autobiographical dance film, "Best To Move," and "Guardians of Water," a short featuring Donal Hord's sculpture at Waterfront Park. Marcos works to educate and uplift diverse voices as a University of California San Diego and San Diego City College Lecturer.

Miki Vale

Miki Vale

Miki Vale

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Miki Vale

San Diego County

Miki Vale is an international Hip Hop performing artist and U.S. cultural ambassador, teaching artist, Old Globe-commissioned playwright, and founder of SoulKiss Theater, an arts education organization for queer Black womxn. Her work serves to amplify community consciousness around relationships, wellness, and justice. Vale has performed and participated in panels at landmark venues and festivals in the US and internationally, from Hollywood and Washington D.C. to Mumbai and Cairo. For her contributions to Hip Hop culture, Vale has earned a San Diego Hip Hop Honors Award, a Female Perspective Award, and the 2021 San Diego Music Award for Song of the Year for "Bad Wolves," a song condemning anti-Black racism. For her work within the LGBTQIA+ community, she was awarded the 2017 Bayard Rustin Civil Rights Honor.

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Far South/Border North Round II Grant Recipients

Our Round II grant recipients include 18 San Diego and Imperial County organizations. In fall 2023, they hired artists and cultural practitioners and began working alongside them to develop their campaigns, and implemented them through August 2024.

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