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.

Berenice Badillo

San Diego County

Berenice is a Spanish-speaking Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, illustrator, muralist, and multimedia artist. She is an immigrant from Mexico and has straddled intertwined cultural and subcultural identities her entire life. She illustrated an award-winning book, "Am I Blue or am I Green?" that explores the identity and impact of a boy's life with undocumented parents in the United States. Berenice strives to document and encourage the creation of communal cultural wealth through murals, sculpture, pop-up art galleries, and the co-creation of counterstories. Berenice believes that representation is important and sees art expression as a means to amplify the voices of BIPOC and disseminate the stories of their community where it can be witnessed on a grand scale. Berenice is a Chicano Park muralist with a doctorate in art therapy and a social-emotional learning consultant.

Sandra Carmona

San Diego County

Sandra Carmona is of Wixárika descent, Chicana, daughter of farmworkers, and a muralist for over 20 years. She is a well-known leader in her community and a longtime activist for farmworkers and Indigenous rights. She founded Calpulli Omeyocan, a grassroots Indigenous dance collaborative, and her project, Maijawee Divine Serpent, is a transborder art piece that served as a political statement in solidarity with the Kumeyaay Nation and Indigenous people’s struggle over sovereignty on the U.S.-Mexico border. Sandra’s art intends to amplify the voices of her people and showcase their culture, contributions, struggles, and vibrancy. To her, art is medicine.

Oscar J. Romo

San Diego County

Oscar Romo graduated as an architect with master's degrees in urban planning, social housing, and computer science and doctoral studies in environmental sciences. His concentration is art, reflecting scientific discoveries and exemplifying his academic research. An advocate of sustainability, he has created hundreds of art pieces made entirely from repurposed materials. He has worked in several countries on sizeable public art structures down to miniatures, always inspired by natural systems and resource conservation. Committed to education since he was in college, he has led thousands of students to appreciate science.

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.

Cat Chiu Phillips

San Diego County

Cat Chiu Phillips creates installation work in public spaces, often using traditional handicraft methods, including crochet, weaving, and embroidery. She often uses discarded materials, including plastic and electronic waste, to create large-scale installations and public art projects.  Growing up in Manila, she was inspired by resilience through tragedy and a sense of resourcefulness. Phillips has received numerous national public art commissions and artwork in the Civic Art Collection of the City of San Diego and Redmond (WA) and has been awarded the California Arts Council's Established Artist Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts.  She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Master of Science in Special Education.  She has been an educator in public schools for over 23 years, a Filipino-Chinese American, adjunct professor, public artist, USMC veteran wife, and mother.

Jordan Verdin

San Diego County

Jordan Verdin is a visual artist, portrait photographer, and storyteller passionate about promoting social awareness. He uses a camera to build bridges, and since receiving a degree in negotiation, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding from California State University, Dominguez Hills, Verdine combines photography and storytelling to dismantle stereotypes and stigmas and humanize people by sharing their stories. Jordan intends that everyone sees the shared humanity we all have. His focus is to bring attention to the issues faced by people experiencing homelessness and marginalized communities while advocating for sustainable solutions. Through his work, he has photographed and interviewed over 700 people experiencing homelessness in San Diego County, which paved the way for him to found Humanity Showers. Humanity Showers provides mobile showers for communities in Southern California.

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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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