Leigha Garcia George is a Latinx comics artist, geek, former librarian, and mother from Ohio. Since she could hold a pencil, she has loved drawing stories. As an artist and storyteller, she is passionate about sharing stories to bring others joy, comfort, and a knowledge that they are not alone.
Leigha has a BFA in Printmaking from Ohio University with an emphasis in screenprinting and non-traditional bookmaking, as well as a MLIS from Kent State University. When she’s not struggling to survive a global pandemic with two toddlers, you can find her volunteering with various political campaigns, reexamining the entire Star Wars canon, or stress cleaning.
Instagram: @ellegeorgina
Tumblr: @youlikesuketchi
Candace Weigand graduated with a BFA in Studio Art with a Focus in Painting from Southwestern University in 2014, but her practice incorporates a little bit of every 2d medium. Her senior show consisted of large, expressive figurative and abstract works in oil paint and charcoal. After graduation, she focused on printmaking, both relief and intaglio. Currently, she is back on her love of giant drawings using markers and charcoal. She has also been keeping mostly-daily, pseudo-autobiographical journal drawings since the beginning of quarantine in March.
Candace also does a little bit of everything on the side. She drives a school bus, she helps manage a local game store and she produces a Dungeons and Dragons actual play podcast with some of her friends.
www.candaceweigand.com
Instagram: @candace.weigand
Twitter: @Candor_Joy
Hope Spragg is a lifelong creative whose recent work investigates the natural world through a hyper-pigmented drawing and painting palette. She is interested in the process of all art and craft making, both the practical and psychological reasoning and impact of making art. She is a bit of a dabbler, although her recent work shows a deeper interest in daily, fluid, artistic practice.
She graduated from the University of Iowa in 1999 with a BA in art education. Her working life since includes art, classrooms and acting & directing in community theatre. Currently, she is a teacher at Preucil Preschool, an intensivist in the art and play department. She creates art whenever and wherever she can.
Her art studio is wonderfully and conveniently located at Public Space One, and is open for visits outside of Pandemic times. She has public work on display during this summer of 2020 as part of the Iowa City downtown Benchmarks and street pole banner projects. Additionally, her work is visible and available online and is available for commission.
Instagram: @hope.spragg
Website: www.hope-spragg.com
Etsy: @HopeSpraggArt
Carla Baudrons is an illustrator and printmaker currently in Iowa City, Iowa. She creates bold, character-driven artwork to sell in her Etsy shop and in local makers markets. She is also the founder and general manager of Art Office, a work program designed to fight artist’s block.
www.carlabaudrons.art
Email: carlabaudrons@gmail.com
Blog: @carlabaudrons
Instagram: @carlabaudrons
Etsy: @carlabaudronsart
Emily Jalinsky is a printmaking/mixed media artist, organizer, and educator in Iowa City, IA. She received a BFA in printmaking from the University of Kansas in 2012. Her works on paper, assemblages, and installations invoke mindfulness and resiliency.
She believes in accessible artwork, education, and community engagement. She is a leader at the Iowa City Press Co-op, active in the national Artist/Mother Co. community, and a member of the feminist art collective, Bluestockings.
Her art practice centers around mental health and changing states within the body through semi-abstract organic forms and repetitive patterns. Through implementing mindfulness, repetition, and ritual she brings each piece into a state of contemplation and stillness.
www.emilyjalinsky.com
Instagram: @emilyjalinsky + @sleepypress
Facebook: @emilyjalinskyart
Tracy Towley is a freelance copy/writer, contributor to Bookriot.com, and winner of the Iowa Chapbook Prize for her short story “Osmosis.”
Her artistic outlets include typing away on her Smith-Corona, decoupaging the enormous bookshelves her husband made her, sewing pillowcases with banjo-playing birds, and printmaking.
Having been a college student for 22 years, the last eight at the University of Iowa, she will finally receive her B.A. in English in Winter ’22, thank God. She is a Socialist and wishes college really was the Marxist indoctrination factory some people think it is.
She lives in a Magical House with her chef husband (Sean), two black cats (Dry Bones and Gristle), one dog (Fiddle, who looks like a creature created by Jim Henson), and a ghost (Kurt Vonnegut).
Instagram: @tracy_towley
Bookriot: @tracy-shapley
Art Office 