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.

Miki Vale

Miki Vale

Miki Vale

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Miki Vale

San Diego County

Miki Vale is an international Hip Hop performing artist and U.S. cultural ambassador, teaching artist, Old Globe-commissioned playwright, and founder of SoulKiss Theater, an arts education organization for queer Black womxn. Her work serves to amplify community consciousness around relationships, wellness, and justice. Vale has performed and participated in panels at landmark venues and festivals in the US and internationally, from Hollywood and Washington D.C. to Mumbai and Cairo. For her contributions to Hip Hop culture, Vale has earned a San Diego Hip Hop Honors Award, a Female Perspective Award, and the 2021 San Diego Music Award for Song of the Year for "Bad Wolves," a song condemning anti-Black racism. For her work within the LGBTQIA+ community, she was awarded the 2017 Bayard Rustin Civil Rights Honor.

Maria Patrice Amon

Maria Patrice Amon

Maria Patrice Amon

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Maria Patrice Amon

San Diego County

Maria Patrice Amon is a director, producer, scholar, and leader. Maria Patrice Amon is a director, producer, scholar, and leader. Directing: Hoops (Milwaukee Chamber Theatre), A Skeptic and a Bruja (Urbanite Theatre) Group! The Musical (Passage Theatre) Hoopla! (La Jolla Playhouse POP Tour) Azul (Diversionary Theatre), Mojada (UCSD),  A Zoom of One's Own (CSUSM), Ich Bin Ein Berliner (Theatre Lab) DREAM HOU$E (CSUSM/TuYo Theatre) Fade (Moxie Theatre), The Madres (Moxie Theatre), Lydia (Brown Bag Theatre Company). Dramaturg: Manifest Destinitis (San Diego Rep), Beachtown (San Diego Rep). Patrice was a 2020 National Directing Fellow and an Associate Artistic Director at San Diego Repertory Theatre. She is currently a Latinx Theatre Commons Steering Committee member and a National New Play Network board member. Patrice is an assistant professor at California State University, San Marcos.

Olivia Quintanilla

Olivia Quintanilla

Olivia Quintanilla

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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.

Samuel Valdez

Samuel Valdez

Samuel Valdez

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Samuel Valdez

San Diego County

Samuel Valdez is an actor, playwright, director, and producer who has worked with several groups around San Diego, such as Sledgehammer Theater, Chronos Theater, Los Amigos del Rep., and currently his own performing arts bi-national company CARPA San Diego. Valdez graduated from San Diego State University with a bachelor’s degree in theater arts and has served on the National Performance Network board, the Alternate Roots Executive Committee, and the National Disability Theatre board. In 2016, he received the Ashley Walker Social Justice Award from the City of San Diego for his community theater work. Valdez directed several Latino plays, including “Roosters,” “The Conduct of Life,” and “The Guitarron.” He has also directed and produced his plays such as “Soy Yo/It’s Me,” “P-13-VIVE,” “Ambos/Both,” and “And He Became Man."

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.

Carlos Uribe

Carlos Uribe

Carlos Uribe

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Carlos Uribe

Imperial County

Carlos Antonio Uribe is a 4th generation mariachi musician and director of Mariachi Acero Del Valle. He was born in Portland, Oregon, with roots in Guadalajara, Jalisco. He lives and works in Niland, California. He has performed with Mariachi Los Toros, Mariachi Espectacular, the 2022 Summit of the Americas, and Mariachi Acero.

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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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