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.

Carlos Uribe

Imperial County

Carlos Antonio Uribe is a 4th generation mariachi musician and director of Mariachi Acero Del Valle. He was born in Portland, Oregon, with roots in Guadalajara, Jalisco. He lives and works in Niland, California. He has performed with Mariachi Los Toros, Mariachi Espectacular, the 2022 Summit of the Americas, and Mariachi Acero.

Haydee "Betty Bangs" Juarez

San Diego County

"Betty Bangs is a queer Chicana artist, working with the medium of painting in acrylic and murals, but also sewing and DJ-ing. Bangs paints shapes representing women of all shapes & sizes. She has painted murals in San Diego and Mexico City and assisted in painting four murals in Chicano Park. Of utmost importance to her is representing her cultura & lifestyle through her work.

Sergio "Takito" Ojeda

Imperial County

Sergio Ojeda is a spray paint artist dedicated to changing the narratives of the binational communities of Imperial Valley and Mexicali. He was born and raised in the borderlands with a bohemian lifestyle and a cosmic perspective gained from an education focused on research, science, and psychology.

Omar Lopex

San Diego County

Omar Lopex is a writer, director, artist, and academic whose work has screened at Big Muddy, San Diego Underground, Harkat 16mm Film festivals, Mingei International Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, La Jolla Athenaeum, and the Hyperreal Vegas Residency. He's a grant recipient from American Artists, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Avery-Tsui Foundation, and the William Male Foundation. Lopex shoots exclusively on celluloid film and won the Binational Filmmaker Award for his debut feature Ana, Who They Pulled Out of the River from Film Consortium San Diego 2018. In 2022, in collaboration with FotoKem and Kodak Film, Lopex established the inaugural Standard Fantastic Transborder Film Fellowship, providing materials, equipment, and mentorship for two teams of young filmmakers to produce narrative films within the US/Mexico Transborder region. Lopex serves on the Advisory Council for the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts at the University of California San Diego.

Thao French

San Diego County

Thao Huynh French is an artist, muralist, and street photographer. Born in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, she lives and works in San Diego. She is best known for co-founding Mindful Murals™, a creative social enterprise with the mission of bringing communities together through the power of art. Since launching it in 2018, she and her husband (and business partner) have painted over 400 interactive murals for schools and public spaces, reaching places as far as Hawaii and Vietnam. French’s artwork explores different varieties of flowers and her Asian American heritage. Her art is an eclectic mixture of abstract and figurative concepts using acrylic and spray paint as primary mediums with no limitation of color. Her work continues to evolve, using years of practice to experiment with more modern ways to create art styles that are uniquely hers.

Oscar J. Romo

San Diego County

Oscar Romo graduated as an architect with master's degrees in urban planning, social housing, and computer science and doctoral studies in environmental sciences. His concentration is art, reflecting scientific discoveries and exemplifying his academic research. An advocate of sustainability, he has created hundreds of art pieces made entirely from repurposed materials. He has worked in several countries on sizeable public art structures down to miniatures, always inspired by natural systems and resource conservation. Committed to education since he was in college, he has led thousands of students to appreciate science.

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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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