Artists + Practitioners + Organizations

Meet the artists, practitioners, and organizations! Far South/Border North awarded funding to support artists and cultural practitioners working in disciplines from performing arts, visual arts, music, film and media, and literature to multidisciplinary and socially engaged forms.

Far South/Border North Round I Grant Recipients

Our Round I grant recipients include about 60 artists and cultural practitioners from San Diego and Imperial counties. Round I grant recipients began developing their campaigns in June 2023, and are now implemented those campaigns through May 2024.

Olivia Quintanilla

San Diego County

Olivia Arlene Quintanilla is a Chamoru educator born and raised in San Diego. Her cultural practice focuses on intergenerational public ethnic studies programming that centers on civic and community engagement. She organizes workshops and events that use culture, such as food, music, dance, poetry, art, and storytelling, as a catalyst for connection, awareness, and social change. A first-generation college student alumni of San Diego community colleges, San Diego State University, and the University of California San Diego, she is now an Ethnic Studies professor at MiraCosta Community College in Oceanside.

Sarah Garcia

San Diego County

Sarah Garcia is a visual artist from San Diego, working predominantly with clay and found organic materials. Her practice is rooted in exploring personal and shared connections developed, maintained, and altered through her life experiences. Objects are a focal point of her work, reflecting individual and collective experiences, histories, hopes, dreams, and intentions. Sarah creates opportunities for play and experimentation with clay for students of all ages and abilities, intending to facilitate meaningful access to expressive material deeply rooted in shared human experience. Through her collaborations with other artists, educators, and community activists, she works to develop community-centered projects, exhibitions, and workshops focused on art as public expression, engagement, and service. Garcia works in the San Diego City College art department and is an MFA candidate at San Diego State University.

Omar Lopex

San Diego County

Omar Lopex is a writer, director, artist, and academic whose work has screened at Big Muddy, San Diego Underground, Harkat 16mm Film festivals, Mingei International Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, La Jolla Athenaeum, and the Hyperreal Vegas Residency. He's a grant recipient from American Artists, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Avery-Tsui Foundation, and the William Male Foundation. Lopex shoots exclusively on celluloid film and won the Binational Filmmaker Award for his debut feature Ana, Who They Pulled Out of the River from Film Consortium San Diego 2018. In 2022, in collaboration with FotoKem and Kodak Film, Lopex established the inaugural Standard Fantastic Transborder Film Fellowship, providing materials, equipment, and mentorship for two teams of young filmmakers to produce narrative films within the US/Mexico Transborder region. Lopex serves on the Advisory Council for the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts at the University of California San Diego.

Dinah Poellnitz

San Diego County

Dinah Poellnitz is a curator and creative director, recognized as a leader for her arts programming in Oceanside's art and cultural district and a San Diego county leader in art curation and art education; she brings twelve years of experience in driving the development of communal partnerships, art exhibitions, and social impact programs across local communities. Throughout her tenure, Poellnitz gained a depth of knowledge in delivering the best-curated experiences through artist engagement and building partnerships with political organizers, students, artists, businesses, public institutions, and residents. In addition to her expertise, She is deeply committed to building thriving art communities and art event programming across Southern California.

Evan Apodaca

San Diego County

Evan Apodaca received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is best for his film "Que Lejos Estoy," which streamed nationally on PBS in 2016. His work has been screened and exhibited at museums and galleries nationally, including the San Diego International Airport, the New Americans Museum, The New Children's Museum, and the University of New Mexico. In 2018, he was the Associate Producer and Animator for "Singing My Way to Freedom," an award-winning feature film about musician and civil-rights activist Ramon "Chunky" Sanchez. His films have been screened at the Chicano International Film Festival (LA), the Tijuana Film Festival, and the San Diego Latino Film Festival. Apodaca was a 2019 San Diego Foundation Creative Catalyst fellow and recipient of the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture's Border Narrative Change Grant in 2021.

Mabelle Reynoso

San Diego County

Mabelle Reynoso is an award-winning playwright, educator, and applied theatre practitioner. She recently had work produced or commissioned by Theatre SilCo, Orlando Repertory Theatre, Olympia Family Theatre, Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre, and the San Diego Symphony. Her plays for multigenerational audiences are largely informed by her experience as a teaching artist for the arts education organization Playwrights Project. She works with underserved and marginalized populations, including Spanish-speaking immigrants, expectant teens, foster youth, and justice-involved youth and adults. Mabelle is co-host of the podcast Hey Playwright and leads TuYo Theatre's Pa' Letras, a workshop for emerging Latinx playwrights. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New York University and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts. Reynoso is pursuing her Ph.D. in Education for Social Justice at the University of San Diego. She was proudly born in Tijuana, Mexico.

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Far South/Border North Round II Grant Recipients

Our Round II grant recipients include 18 San Diego and Imperial County organizations. In fall 2023, they hired artists and cultural practitioners and began working alongside them to develop their campaigns, and implemented them through August 2024.

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