2026 3Arts Awards Panelists

Mesma Belsaré

Mesma Belsaré is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans choreography, Bharatanāṭyam, painting, and theater. Rooted in classical Indian forms and informed by a parallel practice in visual arts, her work explores mythology, memory, embodiment, and transformation. She trained under Sri Shankar Hombal and Padmashri Geeta Chandran and has presented work at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Asia Society, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Royal Ontario Museum, and the Krishnamurti Foundation. Her most recent work, THE HOURGLASS toured Europe in summer 2026. Her paintings have been exhibited in the United States, India, and Canada, and are held in public and private collections internationally. She is a recipient of the Dance/USA Fellowship and a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in Painting. Belsaré is a co-founder of Samvād, a forum for professional classical Indian performing artists.

India Harville

India Harville is a Black, queer, Disabled multidisciplinary artist, somatic practitioner, and Disability Justice activist whose work lives at the intersection of performance, healing, and cultural transformation. Through dance, ritual, storytelling, and community-based practice, she explores resilience, liberation, interdependence, and the wisdom of the body.

Rooted in modern dance, African dance, and hip hop, India has spent more than two decades developing an innovative movement practice that blends improvisation, somatics, contact improvisation, bodywork, and accessible dance methodologies. She is internationally recognized as a Master Teacher and Master Trainer in the DanceAbility method and is known for creating movement experiences that expand access while honoring the creativity and expertise of Disabled bodies.

India is the founder and Executive Director of Embraced Body, a Black Disabled-led arts and consulting organization advancing Disability Justice through dance, somatics, and access-centered cultural work. She is also the founder of How We Move, a national dance intensive and leadership program for Deaf and Disabled artists, and a core artist with the Black Spirit Dance Collective, a performance ensemble exploring Black cultural memory, spirituality, and collective liberation through movement and ritual.

Her artistic work has been presented nationally through organizations including Sins Invalid, Dance Exchange, the National Queer Arts Festival, Movement Liberation, and others. A two-time recipient of the Mellon-funded Access. Movement. Play. Residency; India creates work that reimagines who belongs in artistic spaces and what becomes possible when access is treated as a creative practice rather than an accommodation.

SK Kerastas

SK Kerastas is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist weaving together performance art, dance, and writing to tell stories of spiritual care. They are currently in a phase of re-entering their artistic practice after many years of service in cultural leadership roles – most recently, as the final Executive Director of Links Hall in Chicago. 

As an arts leader, community organizer, and strategist, they cultivate transformative spaces that hold communities in connection. They were the Creative Producer on Neon Was Never Brighter: A Glimpse Into the Future, San Fransico Chinatown neighborhood’s first-ever contemporary public arts festival and bold response to rising anti-AAPI violence. They served as the Artistic Producer at California Shakespeare Theater under Eric Ting’s leadership, where they line-produced mainstage productions including Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, House of Joy by Madhuri Shekar, and black odyssey by Marcus Gardley. Prior to that, they focused on new work at Berkeley Repertory Theatre through the Theatre Communications Group Leadership U fellowship funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. At the start of it all, they served as the Education Director at About Face Theatre in Chicago, where they directed the queer and trans youth theater and all outreach programs. 

Motivated by the interwoven nature of spirituality and social justice, they have organized with the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective and East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland. They received their B.A. in English-Theatre & Women’s Studies from McGill University in Montreal. 

Currently, they are developing a new performance piece engaging with the Heart Sutra or “The Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore.”

Dr. Tammy L. Kernodle

Dr. Tammy L. Kernodle is the Park Creative Arts Endowed Professor and University Distinguished Professor of Music at Miami University (OH). She is a recognized musician and scholar whose research focuses on African American music, gender studies in music, race, and American popular culture. Her scholarship has appeared in various journals, reference books, edited volumes, and anthologies. Additionally, she has been featured in several award-winning documentaries, including Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band, Girls in the Band, and Miles Davis: The Birth of Cool, as well as the most recent The Disappearance of Miss Scott which chronicles the life and career of pianist Hazel Scott.  

Kernodle is the author of the biography Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams, a comprehensive examination of the pianist/arranger’s six-decade career. She served as Associate Editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of African American Music and as an Editor for the revision of the New Grove Encyclopedia of American Music. 

She is currently a member of the Editorial Board for Grove Music Online, an online music encyclopedia offering comprehensive coverage of music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship. She is also a member of the Advisory Board for Folkways Records, a recording label associated with the Smithsonian Institution. 

Much of Kernodle’s work is public-facing and focuses on fostering new understandings of musical genres and the recovery of excluded musicians and composers from the margins of our historical narratives. As a result, Tammy has written for and consulted with the American Jazz Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Walker Art Center, NPR, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, BBC, Smithsonian Folkways, and Carnegie Hall. 

Kernodle is the past president of the Society for American Music and currently curates the I Dream a World Festival, a multi-year initiative with New World Symphony that celebrates the legacy of Black composers. 

Reginald R. Robinson

Reginald R. Robinson is a winner of the 2024 MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the "genius grant," for his innovative ragtime piano works and music research. He performs and shares fascinating ragtime history and was commissioned by the Chicago’s Symphony Orchestra to write a work honoring early jazz musician James Reese Europe. He has also performed at New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. His music has been featured in theater and film, including the nationally registered independent film Compensation and the documentary Chicago’s Black Metropolis. He is internationally known for his college and university lectures, which help preserve the legacy of African American history.

Kyla-Rose Smith

Kyla-Rose Smith is an arts leader, musician, and cultural strategist dedicated to using music and the arts as a force for social connection and creative collaboration.A founding member of the internationally acclaimed South African band Freshlyground, Kyla-Rose has performed on some of the world’s biggest stages, sharing lineups with artists such as Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Hugh Masekela, and Shakira—with whom she co-wrote and performed Waka Waka (This Time for Africa), the 2010 FIFA World Cup anthem that became one of the best-selling singles of all time. Beyond performance, her work has spanned sound-mapping projects, large-scale public engagements, and interactive installations, always driven by a commitment to creative experimentation and social impact. She has collaborated with artists, educators, and cultural organizers worldwide, building platforms that amplify underrepresented voices and reimagine how music and the arts can shape civic life.

Lauren Callis

Lauren Callis (she/her) is an art therapist, co-founder, and executive director of Curiosity Studio. Her art practice is in painting, fiber arts, and making her thumb as green as possible. She is the result of many generous mentors. They have taught her that artists need relationships, curiosity, and positive regard to engage in the creative process. It's with this example and humility that she approaches mentees at a pivotal time in their artistic journey.  

Samuel A. McIntosh

Samuel A. McIntosh is a dancer, choreographer, and Hip Hop ambassador specializing in various Hip Hop, Club, and street dance styles, notably Popping, Animation, and Boogaloo. With over 15 years of experience, he has trained with influential pioneers such as Poppin Pete, The Electric Boogaloos, Jazzy J, Slick Dogg of G-Style, and members of Elite Force Crew. His foundational mentorship came from Cleveland native Anthony “Tony Fresh” Velez and many others in the national street dance community. 

Samuel has earned national and international recognition through competitions including the Serial Kickers World Street Dance Finals in Bordeaux, ONE STYLE, ONE LOVE in Osaka, Step Ya Game Up and The Kings of New York in New York City, and Under Pressure in Montreal. He has also won and placed in battles across Chicago. His performances and lectures have been presented at venues and festivals including the Cleveland Dance Festival, Severance Music Center, Karamu House, Kent State University, Peridance Center, Gibney Dance Center, American Dance Festival, and The 25th Anniversary Pro AM Jam in Miami

In 2020, Samuel founded the 10K Movement, a nonprofit preserving and cultivating Hip Hop and Street Dance culture in Greater Cleveland through programs including the Summer Street Dance Intensive and the annual Lords of the Land festival. His work has earned honors including the Cleveland Arts Prize Verge Fellowship, Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and Champion Creators Program. In 2024, Samuel and the 10K Movement were featured on The Kelly Clarkson Show for their community impact. He believes Hip Hop, when grounded in its foundational values, can empower individuals and communities, foster problem solvers, critical thinkers, and agents of change through movement and artistic expression.

Sarah Ross

Sarah Ross is an artist whose work is centered on the spatial politics of race, gender, class, and control. Her projects use photos, video, installation, and she works collaboratively with other artists and communities. Since 2006, Sarah has been working with incarcerated artists in Illinois prisons. In 2011-2024, she co-founded and co-led the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP), a cultural project that brings together artists, writers, and scholars in and outside Stateville prison to create public projects. For more than a decade, PNAP has hosted exhibitions and painted community murals around the city of Chicago. 

Since 2011, Sarah has worked closely with local artists, activists, lawyers, torture survivors, and scholars on Chicago Torture Justice Memorials’ campaign for reparations for survivors of Chicago police torture. This project developed, in part, as a call to artists to imagine a memorial, and ended with a historic reparations package for survivors of torture by Chicago Police under former Commander Jon Burge. 

Sarah has been involved in many projects. She co-founded Walls Turned Sideways, a gallery and community space on Chicago's West Side for artists and people impacted by incarceration. She has built a body of collaborative work with Ryan Griffis, which explores the social and political impacts of land use and global agriculture. Her own work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Montreal, Copenhagen, and Rio de Janeiro, among other places. She is co-author of several books, including The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working Toward Freedom (2019). Sarah is a Soros Justice Media Fellow, an inaugural Leaders for a New Chicago award recipient, and an Associate Professor in Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Jesse Cameron Alick

Jesse Cameron Alick is a dramaturg, producer, poet, playwright, essayist, artistic researcher, and science fiction expert. Jesse has been working in the theater world for over 20 years, they have worked in the field, starting as Artistic Director and Producer at The Subjective Theater Company, then serving as Company Dramaturg at The Public Theater and later as Associate Artistic Director at The Vineyard.

Jesse is an active freelance dramaturg in New York City, nationwide and internationally. He studied writing with Adrienne Kennedy and has taught theater courses, lectured at classes and mentored students at a myriad of programs, currently at New York University. He is currently a co-director of HERE Arts Center, in a shared leadership model and is an active freelance dramaturg at various theaters in NYC, nationwide and internationally.  

Miranda Gonzalez

Miranda Gonzalez (she/her), born and raised in the city of Chicago, is a writer, director, producer, facilitator, and organizational strategist with a Bachelor of Science from DePaul University and has co-created curricula addressing anti-Blackness in the Latiné community. Currently she is the Producing Artistic Director for UrbanTheater Company (UTC) in Chicago, she has curated and led numerous interdisciplinary projects that blend theater, music, dance, and oral history to tell the stories of Chicago’s history that mirror her identity and lived experience.  

As a collective member of Culture Change Lab, she helps support arts organizations, funders, and lobbyists in reimagining collective structures through operational management. Concurrently, she serves on the National Latinx Theater Initiative Steering Committee advocating for the advancement of Latinx artists and organizations, influencing policy. In 2020, she was invited to record a TEDx talk titled The Fear of Decolonization. With a deeply rooted history in ensemble practice, she is a founding member of Teatro Luna and has produced, devised, and developed plays since 2000. Selected to participate in Disney’s Live Entertainment 2024 Creative Intensive, Miranda was able to collaboratively present new storytelling concepts worldwide. Her play Back In The Day: an Immersive 80’s House Music Dancesical had its World Premiere at UrbanTheater Company. Her most recent critically acclaimed play Mascogos, commissioned by the Los Angeles Latino Theater Company’s Imaginistas which discusses the history of the underground railroad to Mexico and had its world premiere in October 2025.  

In the summer of 2025, she was a playwright in residence at the University of Chicago’s Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts, where she began developing her current play Fina (fee-nah) a time-bending afro-peruvian musical. Directing, writing, and script development credits include: Evolution of a Sonero by Flaco Navaja, Remote Learning Curve by Albany Park Theater Project, Thank You for Coming. Take Care by Stacey Rose at Court Theatre, Ashes of Light by Marco Antonio Rodriguez, La Gringa by Carmen Rivera; Teatro Luna Productions S-E-X-Oh!, Lunaticas, Crossed, GL 2010, The North/South Plays a workshop at DCASE; F.O.P and Crime Scene Chicago with Collaboraction Theatre Company; and Melissa DuPrey’s Sushi-Frito at Free Street Theater. She is also an Executive Producer for the web series 50 Blind Dates with Melissa DuPrey and has written for web series Ruby's World Yo created by Marilyn Camacho. She is a recipient of the Diane Rodriguez Teatrista Award, Leaders for a New Chicago Award, a 2022 3Arts/Walder Foundation Award, a participant of the International Centre for the Arts residency, and more!  

Shaunda McDill

Shaunda McDill is a value-based creative producer, strategist, arts & culture consultant, and educator. Most recently, Shaunda served as the first Black female Managing Director of Pittsburgh Public Theater where she provided operating and financial oversight for the 50-year-old LORT C Theater with an $8 million annual operating budget operating budget and approximately 50 full-time employees. Previously, she was a program officer at The Heinz Endowments, supporting a suite of Pittsburgh-based artists and arts organizations. 

Shaunda has over two decades of nonprofit executive and arts management experience, working for theater companies across the country, including the Goodman Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, Second Stage Theater (2ST), and Cornerstone Theater Company. In 2006, she also founded DEMASKUS Theater Collective. This unapologetically Black and faith-filled collective inspires transformation that leads to personal fulfillment, professional purpose, and spiritual upliftment through artistic and authentic voice.

In Pittsburgh, Shaunda served as Vice President of Programming and Cultivation at the (then) August Wilson Center for African American Culture, where she managed all artistic and educational programs and produced the organization's first Black Dance Festival. As the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s director of public relations, she headed both national and local public relations campaigns including, the memorable North American premiere of the Rubber Duck Project. Shaunda is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale University’s David Geffen School of Drama. She is an adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University and formerly served on Pittsburgh's Public Art & Civic Design Commission as well as Governor Shapiro’s Advisory Commission on African American Affairs. She serves on several local and national boards and became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated in the Spring of 1998. Shaunda is married to Pittsburgh native Sager McDill and the proud bonus mom to four children.

Saj Issa

Saj Issa (b. 1994) is an artist born in St. Louis and raised between the Midwest and West Bank, Palestine. Issa received her BFA from Webster University and her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her practice has garnered recognition, including the 2022 NCECA Graduate Student Fellowship and selection for the prestigious Great Rivers Biennial at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2024). Her work was featured on the cover of Artforum’s Summer 2024 issue, accompanied by an extensive portfolio exploring her artistic practice. Issa has participated in artist residencies at Belger Crane Yard Studios in Kansas City and Craft Alliance in St. Louis. Her practice, noted for its thoughtful interrogation of cultural memory and identity, has attracted critical attention through interviews with Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz, and Khamsa Magazine, among others.

Sean Lee

Sean Lee (he/they) is the Director of Programming at Tangled Art + Disability, which operates as Canada’s first gallery dedicated to exhibiting Deaf, Mad, and disability arts and advancing accessible curatorial practices. His work focuses on championing disability arts as a vital contemporary movement and embedding accessibility as a creative and organizational practice across the cultural sector.

For over a decade, Sean has contributed to national and international conversations on disability arts, access aesthetics, and disability-led curatorial practice through exhibitions, public programming, teaching, and mentorship. At Tangled, he leads exhibition development, strategic partnerships, and institutional initiatives that position disability arts as a site of cultural innovation and civic engagement.

Sean has taught and presented with organizations including the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, NODE Curatorial Studies Online, Humber College, and the Goethe-Institut, and has contributed writing to multiple publications including Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation and Living Disability: Building Accessible Futures for Everybody. He regularly advises artists, curators, and institutions on accessibility and disability-led cultural practice.

He currently serves on the Board of the Toronto Arts Council and CARFAC Ontario and is Chair of the Toronto Arts Council’s Visual and Media Arts Committee. He has contributed to peer assessment panels for the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Manitoba Arts Council, and the Ford Foundation, and served on advisory committees supporting cultural policy initiatives for the City of Toronto and the Ontario Arts Council.

Teresa Magaña

Teresa Magaña is a Chicago-based multifaceted creative. She is a mixed-media artist, educator, curator, and co-founder of Pilsen Arts & Community House, whose artistic perspective was shaped by a childhood moving between South Texas and Chicago. As a self-taught artist, she weaves together a rich range of techniques, from 1 Shot enamels and relief printing to tambour embroidery and stained glass, creating work deeply rooted in her Chicana identity, feminine energy, and the spiritual rhythms of life. Her background as a musician, having played both clarinet and cello, adds a melodic sensibility to her visual practice, creating a unique harmony between sound and image. As the co-founder of Pilsen Arts & Community House, Teresa is committed to fostering a space where emerging artists can collaborate and grow, driven by her belief in the transformative power of collective creativity.

Shauta Marsh

Shauta Marsh is a curator, writer, social practice artist, researcher, and co-founder of Big Car Collaborative. Her work centers on artist-run spaces, popular culture’s influence on the pursuit of utopia, and urban/rural relationships. She served as Director of Programs and Exhibitions of Tube Factory Artspace since its opening in 2015. In December 2025, Tube Factory became the Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), and in February 2026, Marsh was promoted to CAMi Director and Chief Curator. The new expansion opened on May 1, 2026, with nine galleries in multiple buildings across a five-acre campus. Exhibitions are curated based on the themes of memory, kinship, place, and mythology.

Over the past 20 years, she has worked with local, national, and international artists, including LaToya Ruby Frazier, Saya Woolfalk, Wendy Red Star, Jesse Sugarmann, LaShawnda Crowe Storm, Mari Evans, Pablo Helguera, Yvette Mayorga, Scott Hocking, Toyin Odutola, Tabitha Soren, Juan William Chavez, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Richard Mosse, and more. She specializes in rapid-response exhibitions.

CAMi is now operated by Big Car Collaborative, and the new expansion includes 18 artist studios. She leads the affordable artist housing program and a short-term residency program hosting artists and intellectuals from around the world. She runs the regranting program, Power Plant Grants, which distributes $60,000 annually to Indianapolis-based visual artists. She writes and produces two radio programs on 99.1 WQRT and coordinates public art projects and events via Big Car Collaborative's placemaking program, Spark Placemaking. She is the co-author of a chapter in Creative Placemaking: Research, Theory and Practice, with her partner, Jim Walker, and edited by Cara Courage and Anita McKeown, published by Routledge Press.

Stacia Yeapanis

Stacia Yeapanis is a Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist and educator. Her work is born of a longing for stillness and a compulsion toward action. Yeapanis holds an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies (2006) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at SAIC and won a Marion Kryczka Teaching Excellence Award in 2020. Her first monograph was published jointly by Aperture and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in 2009. Yeapanis has been an Artist-in-Residence at Chicago Artists Coalition BOLT Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Facebook Chicago, and Zócalo Apartments in Houston, Texas. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago, 2014), Indy Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois, 2018), and Kent State Stark (North Canton, Ohio, 2019), Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan, 2020), and Material Exhibitions (Chicago, 2022). In 2023, Stacia launched Color Is My Dopamine‚ a retail brand that allows her to transform the remaining materials from her impermanent installations into one-of-a-kind objects for everyday use.

Kay M. Pick Zivkovic

Kay M. Pick Zivkovic is an artist, educator, designer, curator, and art administrator. She was born in Yankton, South Dakota. She earned a B.A. in Art Education, an MFA in Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking, and a M.S. in Higher Education concentrating on Art Administration from Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC).

As an artist, (printmaker, painter, and illustrator), her forty-five-year art career includes work exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her work has been featured in over 25 solo exhibitions and 80 group exhibitions. Her work is also represented in several permanent collections including Inveresk LTD, St. Cuthbert’s Mill, Sommerset, UK, Pedu Morset Folkehoyskole, Selbustrand, Norway, Northeast Normal University, Changchun. Jilin, China, Plains Art Museum, Fargo North Dakota, Bemidji State University, Emerson Electric World Headquarters, St Louis, Barnes Hospital, St Louis, Northeastern University School of Law, Boston, Indiana Tech Law School Fort Wayne, Morris Library, School of Art and Design, Altgeld Hall, School of Music at Southern Illinois University. 

Among her many accomplishments in 43 years at SIUC, she established a craft facility offering a comprehensive art and design program and developed a permanent art collection and acquisitions program that still operates on campus. As a tenured professor, administrator, and faculty member in the School of Art and Design, she revised and taught the design undergraduate curriculum and graduate program in Communication Design. Her focused research and consulting design activities included environmental graphic design, illustration, and exhibition design. Kay has lived in southern Illinois for the past 55 years.