Episode Nine

Liz Maker is a full time landscaper and part-time florist living in coastal North Carolina. Liz started their floral business After The Bloom in the fall of 2020 after receiving much community support to help fund their top surgery.

This success sparked a desire to help other members of the gender-expansive community on their gender journey. Through After The Bloom, Liz has bought binders, helped pay tuition, and most recently ran a gender-affirming surgery campaign which involved a GoFundMe and community-wide raffle. Liz is transgender non-binary, but feels most connected to the word genderqueer. Liz uses they/them pronouns, Colgate toothpaste and a Nissan Frontier.

Discussed: the agriculture industry, queer representation, dried flowers to fund top surgery, creating safe community spaces, and learning to bloom into the person you needed when you were younger.

Episode Eight

Sol Ramirez is a 19-year-old artist, activist, musician, and puppeteer. Throughout his young career, he has worked with Paperhand Puppet Intervention, Tarish “Jeghetto” Pipkins, the Hillsborough Arts Council and Orange County Arts Commission, and is the creator and director of 1, 2, 3 Puppetry, a puppet theatre company based in Chapel Hill, NC. He currently is attending school at the University of Connecticut where he is majoring in the Puppet Arts BFA program.

Discussed: the historical and modern field of puppetry, using your art as a form of activism, starting your own production company as a student, and why good art requires good community.

Episode Seven

Skylar Simmons is an artist and zine creator from Clinton, North Carolina. Throughout high school and summers home from college, she created various public works for the city, ranging from murals and sculptures to a painted community piano. Skylar attended the North Carolina Governor’s School for art, which greatly influenced her interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. She recently graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts with a BFA in Painting and Printmaking and a minor in Art History.

Skylar moved to the Southern Pines area in January of 2021 with her partner, musician Sean Diesfeld and their dog, Freckles. Although she is trained as a fine arts painter, it has been the music community in the area that truly inspires her and helped guide her into graphic design and the launch of her art account, @PAPR.text on Instagram. There, she continues to help artists explore mediums, collaborate with others, and tackle DIY projects they may have thought were out of reach. Accessible art is highly important to Skylar, and has always been a part of why and how she creates.

In August, Skylar released S!Ck, a monthly zine project to promote the music and arts scene of the Southern Pines and Aberdeen area. S!Ck prides itself on accessible, creative, and thoughtful designs that bring people together to form stronger bonds within the community and grow the arts that define the culture of the Sandhills area.

Discussed: zine making, building creative community, what defines a good artist, the power of DIY, and how to tell the stories of the places important to you.

Episode Six

Axel graduated with his bachelors in English and Secondary Education from UNC Greensboro in 2021, and is currently at UNCG earning his masters in English and Women's and Gender Studies. He currently works in rural North Carolina, and has worked with all high school grades and academic levels in the past 2 years. He is an advisor of the LGBTQ+ club on his high school campus, and advocates for the creation of diversity and inclusion within a community that may not be so accepting of such ideas.

Much of Axel's current work involves teaching the relearning of emotional wellbeing to teens, both through literature and through general discussion. His classroom is full to the brim of colorful posters that advocate for women in STEM, feeling your feelings, and the fine arts, promoting careers and hobbies many rural students might not have known of. Axel recognizes the positives and negatives that come with being LGBTQ+ in a rural and conservative setting, and aims to get more teens to simply consider other opinions. He also has a cat.

Discussed: the education system, working as a queer educator in rural spaces, teacher shortages, finding work-life balance, and leaning into difficulty.

Episode Five

Trash Tape Records is a youth-run worldwide DIY record label founded in March of 2020 and, until recently, run primarily out of the triangle area of North Carolina. Nathan and Evren going to college, in Chicago and Asheville respectively, will lead to the label being run from multiple different places. Trash Tape strives to support young and unknown artists by distributing and promoting their music, as well as doing physical releases of some projects in the form of cassette tapes.

Discussed: pursuing big ideas, finding your community, how the internet is changing the creative landscape, and debunking the myth of the solo artist.

Episode Four

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Nia J moved to NC at a young age and has been living there ever since. She attended UNC Charlotte, where she began making music with a producer and friend— Ike Byers. Together, the pair have collaborated to release several singles and a debut EP comprised of 7 songs, “Rabbit Hole.”

Singer-songwriter, Nia J's melodic music infuses sultry vocals and rich harmonies into contemporary R&B— producing a unique and introspective sound.

She aspires to use both her pain and joy to create music that helps others.

Discussed: making it as a musician, returning to your roots, finding home in different places, learning how to trust your voice in artistry, and making beauty out of the chaos.

Episode Three

Dacia Green is a multimedia artist, performer, Floridian, and child of the African diaspora. As a graduate from Williams College with an Honors B.A. in Women's, Gender, and Sexualities Studies and Africana Studies, Dacia relies heavily on the audio-visual form to repair and disrupt the intricate intersections of identity. At Williams, Dacia published an audio-visual zine entitled Our Home Will Be Underwater By 2040.

Discussed: coastal climate change, art and activism, the unique role of Florida in our understanding of the South, land stewardship, documentation, and the belief that people are good.

Episode Two

Alexis Lawson is a poet, storyteller, and author of the poetry collection The Beauty in my Bare Bones (2019). She is passionate about making arts more accessible to youth, while writing through the black voice, incorporating her culture into narratives that some otherwise may not see representation.

Discussed: rejection fatigue, the education system, moving beyond genre in writing, hope as a radical force, and how to write poetry in a burning world.

Episode One

Victoria Landers is an artist and photographer based in Moore County, North Carolina.

Discussed: rural artistry, Southern queerness, identity, home, the education system, storytelling, and the importance of representation.