JESSE BAGGETT

Originally from northern Texas, Jesse Baggett spent her formative years in New Mexico and her early adulthood in Oklahoma. She earned her BFA from Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, TX, and spent the next few years teaching art to high school students. Baggett's art pays homage to the places she has lived and loved by incorporating imagery of local wildlife. Through these animals, she explores and celebrates the unique friendships formed along life's journey. She is a member of the Wichita Falls Art Association and winner of the 2022 Texas State Championship Art Battle. From 2020-2023 she collaborated with artist Steve Hilton to design and create "Better Together," a large-scale mural in downtown Wichita Falls comprised of over 2000 individually handmade and glazed ceramic tiles. Baggett is currently pursuing an MFA in Ceramic Arts at West VirginiaUniversity.

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KEVIN D. HAMMON

Kevin Hammon started painting birds in 2011 to honor these animals and their habitats. Some extinct or endangered species are painted as reminders of our responsibility to protect the land, the oceans, the fauna at risk in the Anthropocene. The repurposed maps he incorporates into his paintings are dyed with watercolor or acrylic washes and sometimes cut into quilt-like patterns. The map serves as the background of the story, marking a moment as well as a place within that moment. Hammon's works have been exhibited at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center in Niceville, Florida, at Radius Gallery in Missoula, Montana, and at the Cooperstown Art Association in Cooperstown, NY. Born in Florida, Hammon attended the University of West Florida where he received a B.S. Degree in Computer Science, minoring in Political Science. He currently resides in LeRoy, New York, and works at the University of Rochester.

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JOHN ISAIAH PEPION

John Isaiah Pepion is a Plains Indian graphic artist from the Piikani Band of the Blackfoot Confederacy. He is based out of the Blackfeet reservation in north-central Montana, where the Rocky Mountains meet the plains. He never thought of himself as an artist until he started drawing to pass the time while recovering from a car accident. "I still use art to find personal healing," says Pepion. "I often talk with my students and other young people about the therapeutic qualities of art." He is now best known for his ledger drawings, carrying on a tradition that developed in Plains tribes: as the buffalo hide traditionally used for painting became scarce, Plains people were forced to adapt by making artwork on ledger paper from accounting books. Pepion comes from a family of artists, and ledger art has been in his family for hundreds of years.

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DIANA STETSON

Diana Stetson was raised in the Hudson River Valley, surrounded by nature. She studied Biology at Reed College in Oregon, undertook extensive private study in lettering arts in Asia and the US, and did graduate work at the Roehampton Institute in London. For decades she has been committed to civic engagement through collaborative projects, public art, international cultural exchanges, and work focusing on environmental issues. Stetson has received dozens of grants and awards for her work, including grants from the US State Department when she was invited in 2016 and again in 2024 to represent US artists in a cultural liaison in Turkmenistan. Her work resides in fine collections around the world, and has appeared in museum exhibitions at Le Musée en Herbes in Paris, Museum of Fine Art in Ashgabat (Turkmenistan), New Mexico Museum in Santa Fe, and Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon.

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