Who We Are

As the Deputy Director of the Painted Bride, Nina has over 25 years of experience as a cultural curator, educator, writer, producer, and outspoken advocate for all marginalized communities. An award-winning lyricist and voiceover artist with a strong background, nationally and locally, in creative strategy and administration, Nina artfully stands at the intersection of many worlds. Her work empowers, challenges and inspires through the compelling marriage of lived experience and multiple art forms. Paired with a strong work ethic and unwavering integrity, Nina’s outgoing and resourceful nature make her a marked professional and creative mind from vision to execution.

Mary is a writer, dancer, and visual artist. They have received creative support from VONA/Voices, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Brooklyn Poets. Their written work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and is shared in The Rumpus, The Offing, Foglifter, and ANMLY. They have also performed at the Asian Arts Initiative and Fringe Arts and exhibited work at Icebox Project Space. Art and community are driving forces of their life, and they’re proud to be a part of the Bride’s work of collaborating with marginalized artists and creatively supporting Philadelphia communities.

Lenny is a tabla player, composer, and teacher. His work focuses on the application of tabla within a wide range of intercultural and interdisciplinary collaborative settings. He has toured throughout the Americas and Europe with Spoken Hand Percussion Orchestra, Atzilut, Rennie Harris’ “Facing Mekka,” Philip Hamilton’s “Voices,” and Group Motion. He co-founded The Shamanistics, Splinter Group, founded a Tabla Choir, co-directed Spoken Hand with Daryl Burgee, collaborated with filmmaker Nadine Patterson and many choreographers, and was a guest artist at Swarthmore College’s department of music and dance for 12 years.

His work has been supported by lengthy residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA, Asian Pacific Performance Exchange at UCLA, and Millay Colony for the Arts in upstate NY, as well as by The Pew Center For Arts & Heritage, Independence Foundation, Pa. Council on the Arts, William J. Cooper Foundation, and Meet the Composer. He conceptualized and was the artistic director of “ARC,” a full evening suite merging the drumming traditions of tabla and taiko with Asian-Pacific & West African diasporic dance that premiered at Swarthmore College, and was made possible by a grant from PCAH.

Amalia is a farmer and multi-disciplinary artist that loves to move. She joined as a founding member of Dirtbaby Farm in 2021. She works for the Painted Bride as the project manager for the Resistance Garden Project. This project works with urban farms/gardens, artists and foragers to expand agricultural knowledge and our relationship with the land. Her passion for urban agriculture stems from the deep belief that we must heal our severed connection with the land on both a personal and political level in order to save our planet from the existential threat of climate change. She is noticing cycles of change and moving through life infusing her love for nurturing the earth with her passion for dance, care, play and sensation.

Allison Smith (she/her) is a dance artist based in the Philadelphia area, graduating with a BFA in dance at The Ohio State University in 2023. Her current artistic interests are in storytelling, organic expression, multifaceted conversations, and distorting perceived boundaries within the current concert dance world. She is drawn towards multidisciplinary art, with the belief that intentional merging of artistic styles can allow for a more comprehensive and visceral approach to artistic expression. Passionate about qualitative research and emergent processes, Allison is honored to be a part of an organization that nourishes this mindset.

Surf is a West Philadelphia-born and raised multimedia Black storyteller. Their practices include tattooing, graffiti, and video production. Their work is based in Abolition, Black Liberation, and self-actualization. They’re part of a Black Queer & Trans Tattoo collective known as Blood N Stone that hopes to serve the Black queer community with a safe and affirming space for exploration and actualization within the body art realm.

Miranda M Watkins (they/them) is a Philly-based stage manager and production assistant who recently earned their BFA in Technical Production and Management at Temple University. Miranda enjoys contributing to theater arts in any way they can and are thrilled to be joining the Painted Bride team! When Miranda isn’t making theater, they can be found watching a horror movie or being out in nature.

Amalia is a farmer and multi-disciplinary artist that loves to move. She joined as a founding member of Dirtbaby Farm in 2021. She works for the Painted Bride as the project manager for the Resistance Garden Project. This project works with urban farms/gardens, artists and foragers to expand agricultural knowledge and our relationship with the land. Her passion for urban agriculture stems from the deep belief that we must heal our severed connection with the land on both a personal and political level in order to save our planet from the existential threat of climate change. She is noticing cycles of change and moving through life infusing her love for nurturing the earth with her passion for dance, care, play and sensation.

Jordan Deal, also known as ROSEKILLJUPITER, is a Philadelphia based multidisciplinary practitioner and alchemist. Their investigative practice uses performance, sound, film, and their BODY as a conduit between unseen forces and the materializations of socio-political structures and mythologies. They have shown work with Judson Memorial Church (New York, NY), the Center for Performance Research (BK, NY), Fringe Festival (Phila, PA) The Brick Theater (BK,NY), Cafe OTO (LDN, UK), Icebox Project Space (Phila, PA), Protocinema & Protodispatch (NY, NY), Fleisher-Ollman gallery (Phila, PA), Vox Populi (Phila, PA), amongst others. They have recently been selected as a 2023-2024 Artistic Fellow at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art and was a Fall 2022 research fellow at Amant Foundation in Brooklyn, New York, where they continued their investigations of chaos force. Deal’s films have been part of selections in Blackstar Film Festival (Phila, PA), Vox Populi, Grizzly Grizzly, Center of Performance Research, Indie Short Fest, and Paris Film Festival. They have been included in press such as ARTNews, ArtBlog, Titled House Review Spring 2021 issue and Grizzly Grizzly: In Dialogue.

Caitlin Green is a Philadelphia-based dance artist with a background in dance/movement therapy (R-DMT). In her work, she tends to concentrate on the body’s role in wellness, individuality, and expressions of personal and collective narratives. As a freelance dance artist, Caitlin has choreographed and co-created works featured in Philly Fringe Festival 2019, RAW Artist showcase (Baltimore), EMERGE Earthdance multidisciplinary artist residency, the Painted Bride Art Center’s artist residency, Building Bridges, and Bodymeld’s GWYN artist residency. She is the curator and facilitator of a workshop series “Dancing to Transgress: lessons from bell hooks” that questions traditional educational settings and challenges today’s teachers, teaching artists, activists, and community leaders to re-imagine what a successful and inclusive learning environment can look like, and convener of “Our Embodied Impulses” which is a collaborative project for movement artists to be the co-creators of dances, using movement scores that explore the interconnected nature of individual and collective restoration. Caitlin is a teaching artist with Dancing Classrooms Philly (DCP), The Village of Arts and Humanities, and BuildaBridge International.

Drew Johnson is a film photographer native to and based in Philadelphia, who specializes in portrait and performance photography. His experience documenting club and concert culture has developed a personal philosophy of and passion for ‘capturing fleeting freedom’. He’s established himself as an image-maker whose work cuts through the noise; providing a mirror to his viewers that allows them to access exhilarating memories of their own.

A community builder who views a world with few walls, Johnson hopes to serve the black and queer communities he belongs to, in addition to expanding audiences in other underserved populations, through joyful image-making.

Marángeli Mejia-Rabell’s practice is focused on community media practices, cultural organizing, intersectionality, accessibility and diversity. As Director of the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival and Co Founder/Partner of AFROTAINO she co-curates, designs and executes arts and culture programming, collaborations and multidisciplinary projects. She has served as the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival Director for seven years supporting the groundbreaking work of Latinx filmmakers. Throughout Marángeli’s career, she has centered Latinx creators, stories and culture to bring about positive change and representation. Marángeli also serves as a Coach with the National Arts Strategies Coaching Collective working towards her International Coaching Federation certification.

LaNeshe Miller-White is the former Executive Director of Theatre Philadelphia and has more than 15 years of experience on the Philly arts and culture scene. After graduating from Temple University, Miller-White worked as the marketing manager of Painted Bride Art Center for over ten years. During that time, she also co-founded Theatre in the X, a company dedicated to breaking down the barriers to the theater by providing accessible productions in Philadelphia’s Malcolm X Park for no cost. She is a two-time Leeway Foundation Art & Change grantee, and was the first Philadelphia co-chief representative for the national organization the Parent-Artist Advocacy League (PAAL), of which she is now an advisory board member. She is also an adjunct professor in Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, a board member of the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and the 2022 Story Changers Awardee for the Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival.

Qiaira Riley is an artist and educator, raised on Chicago’s south-side and based in Philadelphia. She holds a dual B.A. in Black Studies and Studio Art from Lake Forest College, as well as an M.F.A in Socially Engaged Studio Art from Moore College of Art and Design. As a founding member of 2.0 art collective, she collaborates with artists to curate free, experimental offerings centering Black femmes, women, and genderqueer creatives.She is currently a youth organizer, supporting the work of young political activists advocating for public education reform. Her arts practice work shifts between painting, ceramics, video, and printmaking. Her work explores and is inspired by Black archival practices, foodways and vernacular interiors, collective memory, virtual diasporic identity, and reality television. She also hosts “Something You Can Feel”, a black art history podcast.

Harriet Rubenstein has been a Painted Bride fan since moving to Philadelphia in 1981. She has served as Board Chair and led the Bride’s New Visions Committee through the transition from its Old City location to its current residence at 52nd and Market Streets. Harriet is retired from her work as a staff person for a union representing healthcare workers. She is honing her skills as a mosaic artist.

Li Sumpter, Ph.D. is a multidisciplinary artist and independent scholar who applies strategies of worldbuilding and mythic design toward building better, more resilient communities of the future. Li’s creative research and collaborative design initiatives engage the art of survival and sustainability through diverse ecologies and immersive stories of change. Li is a cultural producer and eco-arts activist working through MythMedia Studios, the Escape Artist Initiative and various arts and community-based organizations in Philly and across the country. She holds an MA in Art and Humanities Education from NYU and a MA/Ph.D. in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Li has been a visiting professor at Haverford College and Moore College of Art and Design and has taught special topics for youth and adult courses at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Barnes Foundation and Fleisher Art Memorial. She has completed various Philly-based residences for arts and technology, arts and ecology and the literary arts and will begin her term as Afrofuturist-in-Residence with the Village of Arts and Humanities Fall 2022. Li is a recipient of the 2018 Sundance Institute and Knight Alumni grant, a 3-time recipient of the Leeway Art and Change Grant, a 2020 recipient of the Leeway Transformation Award, a 2022 recipient of the Velocity Fund, a 2022 Afrofuturist-in-Residence with the Village of Arts and Humanities, and a 2022 Leeway Media Artist x Activist-in-Residence with the Theatre in the X.

Zoey Toy works for Alta Management Services and serves as the Executive Director of Beacon, an organization that helps executives build life-long networks to foster professional, personal, and community success. Zoey is the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Liaison for the Young Professionals Council of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia and a board member of the Painted Bride Art Center. She is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Communication and Sociology.