Kaleigh Michelle Mattson

Kaleigh Michelle Mattson is a singer-songwriter, visual artist, and educator from Morris, IL.  She has performed at Awakenings as part of the Gallery of Sounds in the past.  Sharing her story as a survivor of sexual assault through song and art in general has been a part of her healing journey.  She is grateful to Awakenings for offering her another opportunity to connect with others and share her story. 

Amanda Mitchell

Amanda is the Founder/CEO of InTouch & Motion, a creative arts therapies and psychotherapy practice here in Chicago. She is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and Board-Certified Dance/ Movement Therapist that specializes in working with trauma survivors and fellow Creatives. She strives to create an environment that facilitates a sense of freedom, innovation, and acceptance for your uniqueness and process of healing. She has supported those impacted by sexual trauma in her personal and professional life and has a passion for performance-as-therapy, knowing the experience of being witnessed and/or witnessing others’ truths can be uniquely healing. 

Wendy Parman

Haley Huskey

Leah Zeiger

Leah Zeiger is a choreographer, dancer, and activist based in Los Angele As a survivor of a teenage abusive relationship, Leah’s work is largely derived from her lived experience as well as embodied research in the survivor community. Leah’s methodology – Body Memory – invokes somatic principles, improvisational scores, and body-based research to explore the ways in which our bodies hold memory and how those memories shape our life experience. In 2015 she founded The Sunflower Project, an organization that uses dance to educate young people on abusive relationships, which was launched by the premiere of the documentary “Untold” that tells the harrowing story of Leah’s abuse. She recently completed the Los Angeles Contemporary Choreographer’s Lab, in which she choreographed an original duet titled “Bittersweet”. She is in process of completing a commissioned new work for the National Hotline for Domestic Violence, and is amidst an in depth creation process for her newest evening length work, “You Live In My Spine”. Learn more and stay connected at leahzchoreography.com 

Amanda Boike

Amanda Boike holds a BFA in Dance from Columbia College Chicago, where she trained under and performed works by Paige Cunningham-Caldarella, Rachel Damon, Darrell Jones, Emily Stein, and Meghann Wilkinson. She’s continued her education at Bates Dance Festival, the New York City GagaLab Intensive and the New Dialect Countertechnique Intensive in Nashville, TN. Amanda appeared in the original performance of Once It All Ends at the Awakenings Gallery in 2019 and has performed in Links Hall’s j e l l o series, Alluvion Dance Chicago’s Emergence Choreography Showcase, and the Peacebook Festival. Outside of the dance studio, Amanda is a Personal Trainer, helping post-menopausal women stay strong, mobile and independent.  

Phil Goldstein

Phil Goldstein’s debut poetry collection, How to Bury a Boy at Sea, was published by Stillhouse Press in April 2022. His poetry has been nominated for a Best of the Net award and has appeared in or is forthcoming in Jet Fuel Review, Door Is a Jar Literary Magazine, The Bookends Review,The Laurel Review, Rust + Moth, Two Peach, Awakened Voices, The Indianapolis Review and elsewhere. By day, he works as an editor and copywriter for a large technology company. He currently lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Jenny, and their animals: a dog named Brenna, and two cats, Grady and Princess

Veronica R.

Veronica is a self-taught artist based in Austin, Texas. She never attended art school but her unique art form has found it way to exhibitions in galleries in New York, Vegas and Texas. She explores details of lines and dots using a combination of various media. She uses lines and dots and repeat them to create unique patterns and design that all come together to invoke all five senses that connect us with the complex world we live in. Her art has been showcased in major exhibitions in Texas and participated in group exhibition in Franklin Place TriBeCa, Gallery 104 “Armory Art week in TriBeCa” in New York City. One of her art pieces was also featured in the Texas Capitol Hill picked by Rep John Bucy III as the Artist of the Month in March 2019, in conjunction with International Women’s days and Women’s History.” It has appear in literacy magazine in Europe and online exhibition in Toronto.

Raleen Kao

Raeleen Kao’s work uses garmentry to carry the weight of her own medical history, a rejection of antiquated gender ideals centered around female reproductive health, and the reclamation of her Taiwanese heritage through the lens of anti-colonization and gender-based intergenerational violence. She is a recipient of the Luminarts Cultural Foundation Fellowship, Illinois Arts Council Agency Grant, and DCASE Individual Artist Program Grant. Her work is in permanent collections of the Kohler Art Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, University of Richmond Rare Books & Special Collections, and the North Carolina State University Libraries Special Collections.

Miguel Barros

Miguel Barros was born in Lisbon,1962, he´s a citizen of Canada, Portugal, and Angola. In 2014, he moved from Africa to Canada. His art´s between harmony & conflict. His work is his soul handwriting a letter in a message of emotions that materialize into colours and shapeless forms! 

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