Hook&Loop Contributors to Access Artistry Manifesto
Julia Havard, Miranda Blas, CJ Jasen, Kai Kornegay, Rafi Ruffino Darrow, Aubrey Donisch, Shannon Brooks, Ernest Bing, Maggie Mills, Nat DiFrank, Cris Iacoponi, And Keller, George Shands, Vinetta Miller, Jenna Powers, Phoebe Dilworth, Pam Price, Aalaya Jones, Samantha Mitchell, Virginia Fleming, Miriam Saperstein
Julia Havard (they/them) is an independent scholar, access worker, and dance and ceramic artist. They received their PhD from UC Berkeley in Performance Studies, focusing on queer and disability arts and culture. They were a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College and a Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellow. Their writing has been widely circulated in journals such as Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Activist History Review, and Performance Matters. Their access consulting practice, Fracture Access Consulting, supports organizations in cultivating spaces of radical belonging. More about their work can be found at https://www.fractureaccessconsulting.com/ and www.juliahavard.net.
Cris iacoponi (they/them) is a Philadelphia-based poet and artist. They were the cofacilitator of the A-Space Poetry Workshop (2017-2019). Cris has been published in Lavender Review, Collide Magazine, Tenderness Lit, and others. Their work explores reclaiming spirituality and pleasure in disabled survivorhood.
Rafi Ruffino Darrow’s work is rooted in the toxic injury shaping their hometown, and the ways this troubles the boundaries of the body and unsure contours of our global futures. Rafi has studied with integrated dance companies AXIS, and Stopgap Dance on a Fulbright scholarship, and presented at the Society for Disability Studies. They have facilitated workshops at Dartmouth College and SAFEhouse for the Arts. They have also studied with the Dancing Disability Lab, created diversely accessible film with InterdepenDance, and undertaken a distinguished fellowship at Hambidge Arts. They performed in the accessible nightlife pop up, Crip Ecstasy, and most recently completed an Access. Movement. Play. Residency through the Mellon Foundation. They are a white, disabled (and chronically ill,) trans Jewish femme. Find them @cripplease.
Vinetta Miller (b. 1973) is a multi-media artist who works with paint, textiles, ceramics, and animation. Miller’s work depicts landscapes, people, and animals, often her cat Benjamin and the horses she rides. She is an animal lover and approaches her subject matter with a sense of joy and playfulness. Miller’s work has been exhibited in Philadelphia and regionally, with recent shows at Studio Route 29 in New Jersey, and the New York Art Book Fair and Outsider Art Fair in New York City. Instagram: @vinettapaints, https://vinetta-paints.square.site/
Nat DiFrank M.Ed (he/they) is a queer and trans centered sexuality and gender
educator, fat liberationist, and archivist. Nat utilizes education as a form of radical
healing. With years of teaching and care work experience, he creates affirming
spaces that foster growth, introspection, and vulnerability. Nat is the manager of
the Philadelphia Trans Oral History Project at the Research Center for Feminist,
Queer, and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His work is by
and for trans and gender non-conforming individuals and centers the power of
community care. Website: https://natldifrank.com/
Miriam Saperstein is a writer and visual artist concerned with how Jewish rituals are shaped in the context of empire. They draw on rabbinic narratives and ecological systems to make the familiar strange and the unknowable felt. Their work can be found in BathHouse Journal, the Radical Jewish Calendar, and Syllabus. Originally from Metro Detroit, they live in Philadelphia. Find them online at miriamsaperstein.com.
Pamela Price (b.1959) is a Philadelphia-based visual artist and poet born with cerebral palsy. She creates paintings with the assistance of a laser pointer due to her limited range of movement, and writes poetry about the joys, pains, and mundane activity of her everyday life. It is the balanced exploration of light and somber themes, and a direct, matter-of-fact delivery, that gives her poetry a distinct and equanimous voice. Instagram: @pammy_wammy_price
CJ Jasen (they/them) is a dance artist, mutual aid organizer, and writer. After a decade of dancemaking, they co-founded the Mutual Air Festival, a community care and arts festival, and is also a founding member of Queerobics West Philly, a collective of dance artists and movers who lead a dance-based, accessible community class and performance project all in one. CJ's dance work and programming has received support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, 92nd Street Y, La Maison du Butoh Blanc in Normandy, France, TRANSFORM Business Grant, The Movement Foundation, and the Leeway Foundation.
My name is Michael Bing and I am the owner and CEO of Bings Blessings! I design and sell t-shirts, long sleeve shirts, custom denim jackets, tote bags, and buttons. I also am happy to collaborate and design custom items listed above that are not included on my website. I live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bings Blessings began in August 2021. I started taking art classes in school and I discovered that art is my passion. I continued creating art at home and decided to turn my passion into a business! My daughter is a huge inspiration to Bings Blessings in so many ways. She brings the creativity out of me, and I believe that love and my family foster my passion. I'm a fun-loving guy who takes his business seriously. I enjoy traveling and taking Bings Blessings on the road, so you might just see my products outside of Philadelphia! I hope you enjoy what you see on my website! https://www.bingsblessings.com/
Instagram: @bingsblessings
Maggie Mills (she/her) is a Philadelphia-based artist and an Associate Professor of Art at Cedar Crest College. Her work documents the effects of technology and ecological collapse on our landscape and its most vulnerable inhabitants. Mills is a Center for Emerging Visual Artists Fellow, Fleisher Wind Challenge winner, Visual Artist Network finalist, and was awarded the Landlab residency through the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and Knight Foundation. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions including at the Michener Museum, Delaware Contemporary, Moore College of Art, and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Her practice is grounded in collaboration with community engaged organizations including Grizzly Grizzly Gallery, Brush with the Law, Hook&Loop, and UNDUE BURDEN. Her writing on Disability and our failing safety net has been published in Salon, Monthly Review, Common Dreams and elsewhere. Website: maggiemills.art , Instagram: @millssuperstars
Miranda Blas is a multi-media visual artist and art teacher. Her work deals with and questions concepts like feminism, queer and disabled identity, animal welfare, art history, and literature. Miranda is currently focused on figurative sculpture in ceramic and bronze. Follow her on Instagram @mirandablasart
Virginia Fleming is an artist highly influenced by movies and the uncanny. Born in 1982 in Savannah, GA, she moved to Philadelphia, PA in 2000 after graduating high school. There she earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She currently works at Seven Arts Framing as a conservation framer and is co-founder of This Must Be The Place, a publishing house and online gallery based in Philadelphia. She makes paintings and animations in her studio at home in West Philly. Find her online, @chunlivf and www.vafleming.com.
And Keller (they/she/he) is a musician and poet based in Philadelphia who is interested in gender, (dis)ability, asking and answering questions through the process of abstract creation, and imagination as a catalyst for change, on levels both personal and societal. Most recently, And has composed an album of songs for two violas titled Free Watermelon, played bass on two albums for the band Shanda, and completed his sixth full-length album for her longstanding project called Snow Caps. Find And online @snow__caps and snowcaps.bandcamp.com
Kai Kornegay (they/she) is an abortion doula, land steward, community herbalist, artist, harm reductionist, and organizer. When they’re not busy building a more liberated world, Kai can be found cuddling with her pets, flipping through a magazine, or yapping on her landline.
Shannon Brooks is a multidisciplinary artist making live, performance-based work. Their work wades between practice, performance, and happenstance; cultivating tactile experiences experimenting within the interstitial spaces between body, material, and the unreal. Shannon’s creative practice is deeply collaborative, eroding, and ever-transforming. Shannon’s work has been presented at Movement Research at Judson Church, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, AUTOMAT, Vox Populi, The Rotunda, Icebox Project Space, and others. They are a founding member of Hook&Loop a collective of Disabled artists, and UNDUE BURDEN a digital community archive for Disabled people. Shannon has received support from The Velocity Fund, The Leeway Foundation, and the Illuminate the Arts fund. They have worked with artists such as Leah Stein, Asimina Chremos, Lea Kieffer, Hana van der Kolk, Annie Wilson, Annie Heath, and Donna Oblongata. IG : @shalynbro
Aubrey Donisch is a dance teaching artist and arts administrator. Originally from Minneapolis, she is now Philadelphia-based and works from her deeply embedded history of movement as a practice of access. Locally, she works for The Philadelphia Cultural Fund and The Naked Stark. Nationally, she has worked for and collaborated with organizations such as Young Dance, Art Spark Texas, and Keshet Dance and Center for the Arts.
Samantha Mitchell is an artist, writer, and curator based in Philadelphia. She was born in New York City has a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA program of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Aside from her work in the studio, Mitchell is cofounder and director of THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, a publishing and curatorial project that foregrounds work by neurodivergent artists. She is the Exhibitions Manager at the Center for Creative Works, a studio for adults with developmental disabilities. She was a managing editor for Title Magazinefor five years, and contributes writings to Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, and Sculpture Magazine. IG @sdmitche