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.

Mabelle Reynoso

Mabelle Reynoso

Mabelle Reynoso

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Mabelle Reynoso

San Diego County

Mabelle Reynoso is an award-winning playwright, educator, and applied theatre practitioner. She recently had work produced or commissioned by Theatre SilCo, Orlando Repertory Theatre, Olympia Family Theatre, Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre, and the San Diego Symphony. Her plays for multigenerational audiences are largely informed by her experience as a teaching artist for the arts education organization Playwrights Project. She works with underserved and marginalized populations, including Spanish-speaking immigrants, expectant teens, foster youth, and justice-involved youth and adults. Mabelle is co-host of the podcast Hey Playwright and leads TuYo Theatre's Pa' Letras, a workshop for emerging Latinx playwrights. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New York University and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts. Reynoso is pursuing her Ph.D. in Education for Social Justice at the University of San Diego. She was proudly born in Tijuana, Mexico.

Evan Apodaca

Evan Apodaca

Evan Apodaca

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Evan Apodaca

San Diego County

Evan Apodaca received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is best for his film "Que Lejos Estoy," which streamed nationally on PBS in 2016. His work has been screened and exhibited at museums and galleries nationally, including the San Diego International Airport, the New Americans Museum, The New Children's Museum, and the University of New Mexico. In 2018, he was the Associate Producer and Animator for "Singing My Way to Freedom," an award-winning feature film about musician and civil-rights activist Ramon "Chunky" Sanchez. His films have been screened at the Chicano International Film Festival (LA), the Tijuana Film Festival, and the San Diego Latino Film Festival. Apodaca was a 2019 San Diego Foundation Creative Catalyst fellow and recipient of the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture's Border Narrative Change Grant in 2021.

Isaac Artenstein

Isaac Artenstein

Isaac Artenstein

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Isaac Artenstein

San Diego County

Isaac Artenstein is a filmmaker and educator who grew up in Tijuana and Chula Vista, studied at the University of California Los Angeles, and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from CalArts. He founded Cinewest to create documentaries and indie features focusing on the border and Latin America, such as "Break of Dawn," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Artenstein produced the comedy "A Day Without a Mexican" and created internationally distributed documentaries such as "Ballad of an Unsung Hero" and "The Hidden Jews of the Southwest." A founding member of the Border Arts Workshop, he produced and directed "Border Brujo" and "Christmas at the Reservation" with performance artists Guillermo Gómez Peña and James Luna. His recent "The Journeys of Harry Crosby" premiered on PBS and Canal 22 (Mexico's Cultural TV). He's currently producing "Border Noir" about crime fiction writers in the region and teaching film at the University of California San Diego.

Sergio "Takito" Ojeda

Sergio "Takito" Ojeda

Sergio "Takito" Ojeda

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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.

Kelsey Daniels

Kelsey Daniels

Kelsey Daniels

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Kelsey Daniels

San Diego County

Kelsey O. Daniels is an artist organizer and baddie scholar from Southeast San Diego. Her work centers on storytelling, world-building, and dreamwork as tools for liberation. As a fat Black queer disabled femme, Kelsey's work is rooted in a commitment to honoring her ancestors and descendants by revoking consent from the failed experiment of white supremacy and dreaming up worlds that are affirming and lit. She explores themes of identity, imagination, and ancestral memory through poetry, performance, and mixed media. She is an internationally ranked slam poet whose work has been platformed on VAST Press and as an opening act for Rupi Kaur's world tour. Kelsey founded Check, Please: an open mic experiment, a transformative platform that reimagines creative community by prioritizing connection over perfection. Additionally, Kelsey curates the Black Dream Experiment, a creative universe that explores Black dreaming as a collective ancestral, wellness, and liberation practice.

Thao French

Thao French

Thao French

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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.

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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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