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.

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.

Neil Kendricks

San Diego County

Neil Kendricks is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, filmmaker, and educator. Kendricks earned a Master's in Television, Film, and New Media from San Diego State University in 2006. Kendricks launched his mixed-media "Strange Fruit" drawing series as a participant in the Art Produce Gallery's 2020 Artist-in-Residence program. The exhibition "Mirror, Mirror: Lights, Camera, Dreams!" at Bread and Salt Gallery showcased his short films and storyboards in 2021. Kendricks' exhibition "Temple of Story" which combined large-scale drawings with audio recordings of his short stories inspired by past, present, and future pandemics, was shown at the Oceanside Museum of Art 2021/2022.  His new experimental short film, "Book of Skin," will complete postproduction in 2023.

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.

Sandra Carmona

San Diego County

Sandra Carmona is of Wixárika descent, Chicana, daughter of farmworkers, and a muralist for over 20 years. She is a well-known leader in her community and a longtime activist for farmworkers and Indigenous rights. She founded Calpulli Omeyocan, a grassroots Indigenous dance collaborative, and her project, Maijawee Divine Serpent, is a transborder art piece that served as a political statement in solidarity with the Kumeyaay Nation and Indigenous people’s struggle over sovereignty on the U.S.-Mexico border. Sandra’s art intends to amplify the voices of her people and showcase their culture, contributions, struggles, and vibrancy. To her, art is medicine.

Berenice Badillo

San Diego County

Berenice is a Spanish-speaking Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, illustrator, muralist, and multimedia artist. She is an immigrant from Mexico and has straddled intertwined cultural and subcultural identities her entire life. She illustrated an award-winning book, "Am I Blue or am I Green?" that explores the identity and impact of a boy's life with undocumented parents in the United States. Berenice strives to document and encourage the creation of communal cultural wealth through murals, sculpture, pop-up art galleries, and the co-creation of counterstories. Berenice believes that representation is important and sees art expression as a means to amplify the voices of BIPOC and disseminate the stories of their community where it can be witnessed on a grand scale. Berenice is a Chicano Park muralist with a doctorate in art therapy and a social-emotional learning consultant.

Eric "EV93" Vargas

Imperial County

Eric Vargas, aka EV9thr33, lives and works in the Imperial Valley. He is passionate about creating and producing music and has produced, mixed, and mastered thousands of solo and collaborative projects for over ten years. He has recently expanded to work with more genres and networks with different outlets such as record labels and A&Rs. Since opening a studio in the area, Vargas has also pursued his artist development.

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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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