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.

Thelma de Castro

Thelma de Castro

Thelma de Castro

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Thelma de Castro

San Diego County

Filipinx playwright Thelma Virata de Castro lives in San Diego, and her writing explores identity and belonging. She's a Hedgebrook alumna and a commissioned artist with The Old Globe Theatre. With Asian Story Theater, she won The San Diego Foundation's Creative Catalyst Fellowship and collaborated on multiple California Humanities projects. Access Inc. awarded her the Esperanza Award for extraordinary commitment to eradicating domestic violence in San Diego County. Playwrights Project produced The TAG Project with support from the William Male Foundation. She founded San Diego Playwrights, serves the Dramatists Guild on the Regional Affairs Committee, and builds community with United AAPI Artists. She chairs the DEI committee and sits on the Board of Directors for San Diego Writers, Ink. She works as a teaching artist and dramaturge. The San Diego Union-Tribune included her in its list of Phenomenal San Diego Women: Creators and Performers.

Cat Chiu Phillips

Cat Chiu Phillips

Cat Chiu Phillips

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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.

Thao French

Thao French

Thao French

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Thao French

San Diego County

Thao Huynh French is an artist, muralist, and street photographer. Born in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, she lives and works in San Diego. She is best known for co-founding Mindful Murals™, a creative social enterprise with the mission of bringing communities together through the power of art. Since launching it in 2018, she and her husband (and business partner) have painted over 400 interactive murals for schools and public spaces, reaching places as far as Hawaii and Vietnam. French’s artwork explores different varieties of flowers and her Asian American heritage. Her art is an eclectic mixture of abstract and figurative concepts using acrylic and spray paint as primary mediums with no limitation of color. Her work continues to evolve, using years of practice to experiment with more modern ways to create art styles that are uniquely hers.

Jose "Eduardo Kintero" Quintero

Jose "Eduardo Kintero" Quintero

Jose "Eduardo Kintero" Quintero

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Jose "Eduardo Kintero" Quintero

Imperial County

Jose Eduardo Quintero is an artist who has worked in many mediums, including large-format metal and ceramic sculpture, curatorship and museography of exhibitions, development, and dissemination of visual arts programs, and art workshops helping different groups of people from adults to children with special needs. He's worked for the Autonomous University of Baja California, the Baja California Government, Casa de Cultura Mexicali, and the City of Calexico Recreation Department, among other places, focusing on murals,  exhibits, cultural programs, art activities in public spaces.

Marcos Duran

Marcos Duran

Marcos Duran

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Marcos Duran

San Diego County

Marcos Duran channels intersectional imaginations into embodied performance. His approach to directing is informed by craniosacral integration, political reflection, and the desire for personal and collective evolution. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Marcos was in the final days of completing his Master of Fine Arts in Dance Theatre at the University of California San Diego. He took refuge in creating "Acts of Togetherness," a social media series that cultivated international, digital dance collaborations. In 2021, his short film "Minced" won Best Performances at the LA Experimental Film Festival, and his evening-length solo, "Shapeshifter," debuted at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in 2022. Marcos is currently in post-production for his autobiographical dance film, "Best To Move," and "Guardians of Water," a short featuring Donal Hord's sculpture at Waterfront Park. Marcos works to educate and uplift diverse voices as a University of California San Diego and San Diego City College Lecturer.

Isaac Artenstein

Isaac Artenstein

Isaac Artenstein

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Isaac Artenstein

San Diego County

Isaac Artenstein is a filmmaker and educator who grew up in Tijuana and Chula Vista, studied at the University of California Los Angeles, and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from CalArts. He founded Cinewest to create documentaries and indie features focusing on the border and Latin America, such as "Break of Dawn," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Artenstein produced the comedy "A Day Without a Mexican" and created internationally distributed documentaries such as "Ballad of an Unsung Hero" and "The Hidden Jews of the Southwest." A founding member of the Border Arts Workshop, he produced and directed "Border Brujo" and "Christmas at the Reservation" with performance artists Guillermo Gómez Peña and James Luna. His recent "The Journeys of Harry Crosby" premiered on PBS and Canal 22 (Mexico's Cultural TV). He's currently producing "Border Noir" about crime fiction writers in the region and teaching film at the University of California San Diego.

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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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