Season Two
What a gift to be met with such a strong wave of applications from emerging and established artists across California.
Our second season brings together a vivid and wide-ranging mix of solo artists and collaborative duos, working across forms and disciplines.
Projects include an experimental reimagining of the “solo show,” a poetry-forward meditation on loss and becoming; explorations of Black trans queer desire, Black food futurism, and being Black in the 1950s, as well as a playful environmental series re-centering overlooked species and an interactive art-game blending illustration, sound, and storytelling into an experiential poem.
Together, these works reflect a shared commitment to experimentation, interdependence, and the expansion of form. We’re honored to welcome this group to nina Idyllwild.
Meet our Spring / Summer 2026 Residents
Christina Villamor
Christina Villamor is a Los Angeles-based artist born in Miami, Florida. Drawing on her Miami upbringing and Cuban roots, her practice engages with the diaspora experience through a Tropicália-kitsch aesthetic, weaving together Caribbean religion, ecology, and pop culture to explore themes of displacement, cultural heritage, and Florida's ever-evolving myths and landscapes. She received her MFA from California State University, Long Beach in 2022.
Cedric Tai
Cedric Tai is an un-disciplinary artist / educator born in Detroit, currently in Los Angeles (Tongva/Chumash/Kizh land.)
She thinks through sculpture, talking, writing, performance and experimental exhibitions.
They’ve partnered with neuroscientists, academics from critical psychiatry, artist collectives, disability justice influencers, and somatic therapists to co-create art and accessible resources where "mental health" meets anti-capitalist solidarity.
Levi Kalish
Levi Kalish is a nonfiction writer from Los Angeles. They are also a reporter covering LGBTQ+ rights at HuffPost. They received their MA in Postcolonial Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies and a BA in Political Science from Vassar College. They have written for BuzzFeed News, Cal Matters, Mother Jones, and cut their teeth as an arts reporter at The Myanmar Times. Their essays and poetry appear in Nepantla, The Offing, Autostraddle, and The Margins. They have participated in workshops with The Southern Foodways Alliance and Home School. They live in east LA.
Tonz
Tonz (they/them) is an interactive media artist producing collaborative projects as a way to process social issues in community and foster subversive imagination. Tonz’ aesthetic combines collage and illustration; the digital and natural; and playful and serious, opens mental space for the players’ to experiment with different ways of thinking and being.
They have an MFA in Interactive Media & Game Design from the University of Southern California and co-founded Browntourage- a new media collective. Their independent collaborations have exhibited with Indiecade at the Museum of Moving Image, Tribeca New Media Summit, Slamdance DIG, and LACMA member programming. Browntourage's process has been covered in Vice, Refinery29, and Rookie Mag.
Bird of Paradigm
Bird of Paradigm is a musician, visual artist, and absurdist who's passionate about sensual earthly splendor. Their practice spans color pencil drawing, experimental video, animation, electronic music production, and creative writing. Their mixed media videos and intuitive drawings combine a stream of consciousness approach, semiotic analyses, and digital “visual sampling” to express absurdist and liberatory ideas. Within their music and DJing, they braid philosophy, global music analyses, political history, and a spiritual love of sonic culture. In their music practice, they make experimental tracks that combine unexpected sound effects, digital versions of traditional Iranian instruments, and “eastern yodel-core” wailing vocals. They value improvisation and intuition in their art and place the melancholic catharsis expressed in their mixed media audio/visual performances within a practice of cultural grief ritual.
Schessa Garbutt
Schessa Garbutt (they/them) is a Belizean-American designer, educator, and founder at Firebrand Creative House. Their interdisciplinary practice spans ecological art, near-futurist fiction, and public programming. Across disciplines, they maintain a through-line of decolonial and afrofuturist frameworks, calling for human & ecological liberation with creations that shift how individuals and communities think about their role in shaping the future. They have collaborated with institutions such as CA State Parks, Los Angeles Public Library, Mariam Ibrahim Gallery (CDMX), ONE Institute, Yale University, and DiaTipo São Paulo. Garbutt is a lifelong Angeleno who lives, works, and loves in Leimert Park.
Omi Jones
Omi Osun Joni L. Jones’ work is grounded in Black Feminist principles and theatrical jazz
aesthetics. Her original performances include sista docta—a critique of academic life; and
Sittin’ in a Saucer—a series of readings with audience/witnesses using literature as prompts for
engagement.
Among her ethnographic works are Searching for Ọ̀ṣun—a performance installation around the Divinity of the River; and Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the
Power of the Present Moment—a collaborative ethnography of three theatrical jazz luminaries.
Her forthcoming essay, “Queer Medicine,” can be found in Transcendence: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy, 1924-2024 (Art Galleries at Black Studies, Austin, TX. Fall 2026). Omi has been shaped by Robbie McCauley’s activist art, Laurie Carlos’s insistence on being present, and Barbara Ann Teer’s overt union of Art and Spirit. She earned her Ph.D. from New York
University, and her Embodied Social Justice Certificate from Transformative Change. She is Professor Emerita from and co-creator of the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, the history of which is featured in Spring 2026 issue of
Callaloo, 43:4.
Angela Peñaredondo
Angela Peñaredondo is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and educator. They are the author of nature felt but never apprehended (Noemi Press), All Things Lose Thousands of Times (Inlandia Institute, Winner of Hilary Gravendyk Prize) and Maroon (Jamii Publications).
Peñaredondo’s work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets, Pleiades, Michigan Quarterly Review, Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere. Peñaredondo has received fellowships and awards from Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts, Kundiman, Macondo among others. They are an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at California State University, San Bernardino.
Nia Lee
Nia Lee is an award winning artist and writer whose practice materializes Black Food Futurism through essays, sculpture, and ritual. Their work has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, The Cut, Thrillist, Vogue, and more. Nia also appeared on Netflix’s James Beard–nominated docuseries High on the Hog and the James Beard Award–winning podcast Black Kitchen Series. Nia is a January 1st Capricorn with too many Sagittarius placements to name and thus is filled by wonder, whimsy, and fierce loving.
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