Micheala Angelena is a visual artist and entrepreneur from St. Louis, Missouri. She believes in the power of representation and shared experiences, using portraiture to empower those around her. Her artwork touches on themes of identity, beauty, relationship, and nostalgia. Micheala uses her friends, family, and everyday people as reference models for her work, rebelling against the thought that portraiture is for those of higher wealth and status. She uses her artistic practice to remind others that their beauty should be celebrated. 

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My collage centers around my grandma's passing and the process of painting her memorial portrait. It became a cathartic experience, forcing me to process her death. I would continue our girl talks as I painted, sharing with her my plans for the future. I'd even come home and vent about my day. 

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Ymani Wince is an entrepreneur, mixed media artist, public historian and zine-maker from St. Louis, MO. She is the owner of Nurturing Ourselves In Reading (NOIR), formerly known as The Noir Bookshop, a Black bookstore in South St. Louis that specializes in education and literacy advocacy. After operating NOIR on Cherokee Street for nearly three years, Ymani chose a new chapter in educating the community about Black history, literature and art through free workshops, zines and public lectures. In the last year, Ymani was featured as an artist in partnership with 5Dolla CAM art collective at The Luminary, with a debut of the installation "Lonnie's Autobody Read n' Repair," a automotive themed tribute to the Auto shop her grandparents owned in North St. Louis. 

Ymani's love for storytelling and passion for St. Louis culminated in 2022, with the release of Notes From the Book Lady's Desk, a self-published zine from The Noir Bookshop. It sparked a love and mission for zine-making, independent publishing, and drawing more Black audiences to the rich history of the power of the press in Black community's throughout the nation's history. Through mixed media art techniques, combined with archival research, literature and a St. Louis lens, Ymani develops collages, installations, and zines, all rooted in historical context, along with preserving the stories and privacy of her beloved grandparents. 

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The Mississippi River is the Crown Jewel of St. Louis. But what about the people who lived on the fringes of this city and on the mouth of the Big Muddy through the city's history? That is the story I'm telling. Through archival research, I discovered that my maternal great-grandparents traveled to St. Louis during the early years of the Great Migration from Tennessee, and lived on the banks of the MS River during the Great Depression. In fact , St. Louis had the largest Hooverville in the country--that is, poorly built homes in clusters called Shantytowns. I think about how praised and acknowledged the river is, but what about my people who lived there, relied on the river during the Depression? Even Further back, Black ancestors stood at the mouth of the river, looking directly at Illinois, their freedom. I will tell the many tales of one river. I can see the past through research and photos, but my ancestors had no idea what St. Louis would look like today, or who I would be at this very moment. Because even if they didn't reach where I am in 2026, I remember what they hoped for, through each generation of my family. My great-great-grandparents dreamt of freedom, my great-grandparents were free and dreamt of self-reliance and opportunity; my grandparents dreamt of a world where no one could take their success from them or their children's, and I am the product of it all: a fourth generation Wince, whose biggest dream is to always be at the foot of learning and education, while looking back thanking Them for it all. When my paternal grandfather left Mississippi for the last time, he arrived in St. Louis in 1964, met my grandmother at a bar on the Northside, and had no idea that the education he never received, the insecurity around literacy---would be redeemed by his children and his grandchildren.

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Ms. Anderson is the 4th Poet Laureate of St. Louis. She collaborates as a poet, visual and teaching artist, creative consultant, arts administrator, and community engagement coordinator, both locally and nationally. Pacia Elaine is deeply invested in working with the people in the place where she lives.

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Charisma Blue is a re-emerging multidisciplinary artist from St. Louis, whose diverse body of work spans photography, food art, poetry, and visual arts, particularly acrylic painting. With a passion for storytelling through various mediums, Charisma seeks to create dynamic, thought-provoking pieces that bridge personal expression with social commentary. Her vibrant use of color and texture in her paintings is complemented by her evocative photography and imaginative food art, creating a unique fusion of visual and sensory experiences.

A dedicated community advocate, Charisma also works with inner-city youth as a teaching artist, helping to cultivate creativity and self-expression among young minds. Through her workshops, she fosters a space where young artists can explore their voices and connect with the power of art to express their identities and experiences.

Her work is rooted in a desire to inspire, empower, and elevate the communities she engages with, using art as a transformative tool for both personal and collective growth. As Charisma Blue continues to evolve in her artistic journey, her commitment to creativity, community, and advocacy remains at the core of her practice.

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Maya Isabel Lee is a versatile creative based in St. Louis city. She is a 28 year old biracial womxn living with different abilities. Her mediums include writing and collage making. She works as a community organizer with a commitment to personal and political transformation through creative expression. Maya believes creativity to be the key to getting our people free. 

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Maya is an abolitionist who believes in the visionary power of afrofuturism to rebuild a new way of life. She believes living as an independent artist to be in the spirit of honoring our ancestors through creation. Collage making can be understood as a traditional African spiritual practice of Conjuring when we acknowledge the divine power of making something out of nothing.

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Diada Amiri (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist from St. Louis, Missouri, whose work sits at the intersection of collage, assemblage sculpture, experimental sound, film, and community storytelling. Amiri explores Black identity, memory, and resilience through layered material and sonic languages. Their practice centers on bridging the personal and collective through sculptural installations, sound compositions, short films, and participatory projects. Combining found objects, field recordings, and archival materials, Jones constructs works that challenge erasure, honor survival, and reimagine Black presence across space and time.

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My practice is deeply rooted in imagination and dreaming as methods of inquiry. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation, I interrogate the narratives surrounding images—seeking what can only be revealed through juxtaposition, fragmentation, and reassembly. I am interested in the instability of the image: who is represented, what is withheld, and how recognition can obscure as much as it reveals. I often return to questions of perception—how color, form, and texture shape the way memory is held and reconstructed. Within this process, I search for alternative or submerged narratives, asking not only who these figures are, but what remains unknowable or deliberately erased. In relation to Our Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams: Remembering the Future, these works sit with the ongoing question of freedom—one that Black ontology is continually negotiating. What does it mean to be free, and under what conditions? Who is freedom for, and when is it realized? By engaging the speculative and the archival simultaneously, my work attempts to hold space for futures imagined by our ancestors while confronting the limits placed on those dreams in the present.

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STL City Collage Founder, Adria Nicole is a South St. Louis City-based artist, musician, and herbalist. Inspired by the natural world, she explores themes of Black joy, beauty, and freedom through her photography, digital illustration, and songwriting. This multifaceted maker of art, music, and magic infuses her work with love, creativity, and a commitment to empowering others.

Adria is a Community Arts Training Institute Fellow and a St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Artist Support Grant recipient. As a singer/songwriter, she has performed across various genres and founded Uke Go Girl!, a nonprofit providing free ukulele instruction to girls. Her paintings and photography have been featured in publications and her current mixed-media work focuses on fanciful human representations and botanical imagery.

In addition to her artistic pursuits, Adria is studying for a career in clinical herbalism and is an active member of the St. Louis Herb Society. She also practices herbal alchemy and creates custom ritual oils and potions as BLK MGK WOMAN.

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