2023/2024 Emerging Visual Artist
Leslye Villaseñor is a recent Studio Arts graduate from UCSD, Leslye Villaseñor has exhibited as part of several exhibitions throughout San Diego including South Central Library in Chula Vista, the Student Gallery at Southwestern College, the Adam D. Kamil Gallery at UCSD, and most recently at the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library in La Jolla.
Primarily focused on oil painting, Leslye’s creations delve into the essence of human consciousness, memory, perception, and the rawness of human emotion based upon her own personal experience, direct observation, and philosophical underpinnings. Most of her work, which features melancholic and haunting themes, aims to capture a moment in time allowing audience members to feel connected with and insert themselves into these dream-like scenarios. During her work with the New Native Narratives Apprenticeship Program, Leslye explored the idea of imperfection in discarded materials where the shadow of a material’s past purpose remains. Now at the precipice of her budding professional career, Leslye is eager to dedicate herself completely to experimentation, research and creation.
2022 Emerging Dance Artists
Trixi Anne Agiao
Trixi Anne Agiao is a socially conscious performer, choreographer and filmmaker using the digital guise of The Thoughtful Beast. She creates work centered on fighting the stigma against mental illness and mental health. Trixi graduated Summa Cum Laude from UC San Diego where she received most of her formalized dance training. She grew up practicing indigenous Igorot dances from the Philippines. Trixi spent time as a dancer and assistant director with Visionary Dance Theatre and is now a freelancer who has been expanding her performing and creating mediums.
Trixi actively participates in the following organizations: Movement Catalysts San Diego, The Filam Film Collective, The San Diego Filipino Cinema, United AAPI Artists, Visionary Dance Theatre and Mental Wellness for Artists. T
Lavina Rich
Choreographer and founder of Push Process Movement, Lavina is focused on exploring the human experience through movement, humor and shared emotions. She studied dance at Grossmont College and then UCSD, learning from many of San Diego’s finest dance creators and educators.
Lavina performed at the Without Walls (WOW) Festival, produced by the La Jolla Playhouse, in April 2022. It was here that Lavina premiered her new work, The Reticent Volcano. She is now shifting and beginning a new work for Disco Riot’s first Queer Movement Festival in June 2022. This work will explore the life of Nancy Valverde and the masquerading laws of the 1940/1950s in Southern California.
Marcella Torres-Sánchez
Marcella is from Tijuana, México, where she began her dance training at Denz Dance Studio at the age of three. She then continued her artistic and experimental studies at Lux Boreal Dance Company, where she received a certification in Contemporary Dance and Scenic Production. She was a member of Gloria Campobello Dance School and the Northwest México Ballet, and later received her Associate’s Degree in Visual and Performing Arts from San Diego City College. In 2020, Marcella graduated with honors from UC San Diego where was awarded the Patricia Rincon Diversity Award for her senior capstone project “Flores Ma(r)chitas.”
2019/ 2020 Emerging Artists
Remi Dalton
San Diego-based artist. Her work investigates how internet culture has blurred the boundaries between art and life, aesthetics and ethics. Her practice is centered around painting, but also includes video, mixed media, and installation. Remi received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from San Diego State University in 2019, and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Visual Arts and Chemistry from the University of San Diego in 2014. Learn more.
Nina Montejano
Nina Montejano is a visual artist currently based in San Diego. Working in a variety of media, she uses subjects that carry personal implications and meanings, which she has developed through her own life experiences. Her work is personally meditative in its repetition of ordinary subjects and material handling; more importantly, however, it raises questions of meaning rather than giving a direct answer. Nina earned her Bachelor of Arts in visual arts and architecture from the University of San Diego in 2019. Learn more.