Michael Gill is a writer and editor. Currently he is Executive Director of the Collective Arts Network, and Editor and Publisher of CAN Journal. Previously he was writer and eventually Senior Editor / Arts at the Cleveland Free Times (2002-2008) and Arts Editor at Cleveland Scene (2008 – 20011); staff writer at Lakewood Sun Post (2001 – 2002) and marketing director at Beck Center for the Arts (1994 – 2001). He has won multiple awards for coverage of the arts and cultural affairs in Northeast Ohio. A native Clevelander, he attended St. Ignatius High School and earned a BA at Hiram College (1986), followed by an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University (1988). He lived in England, Wales, Washington, DC, and Quito, Ecuador before returning to Cleveland. He has conversational fluency in Spanish. He is a wood block and letterpress printer, and his small edition artist books for children have been exhibited at William Busta Gallery, Tregoning and Company, and elsewhere.

 

Daniel Gray-Kontar is a poet, teacher, youth mentor, rapper, journalist, and education activist. He has worked as an advocate for social transformation in the city of Cleveland for more than 25 years. Gray-Kontar is an education consultant for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; writer-in-residence at MOCA Cleveland; the former chair of the Literary Arts Department at the Cleveland School of the Arts; and a former graduate school fellow at UC Berkeley’s College of Education. His work in arts education has been showcased on PBS Newshour. Gray-Kontar has lectured at universities, public schools, arts organizations and scholarly conferences across the US. His Ted Talk discussing youth leadership in public school education has affected the ways public school administrators think about the inclusion of youth and their families in the process of re-making school cultures and curricula. 

 

Nancy Heaton has been the Executive Director of BAYarts since July 2005. She graduated from Kent State University in 1978 with a degree in Marketing Communications;  she has taken fine art classes at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco Institute of Art and at BAYarts. She has lived in lived in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC and England where she ingratiated herself into the art communities and spent endless hours in the great museums. She was a guest lecturer at Newcastle Polytechnic in Newcastle England where she worked on grant funded film projects. She is active in arts advocacy efforts in greater Cleveland. She lives in Bay Village and has 3 daughters.

 

Wally Lanci is an owner and Corporate Counsel of Consolidated Solutions, a comprehensive producer of marketing initiatives. Consolidated has the brightest minds and the most advanced equipment to bring a clients brand to market. From full-color printed marketing materials, branded uniforms and direct mail, to electronic solutions for client efficiency, Consolidated helps their clients to push their brand in the marketplace. Wally is a lifelong Clevelander and is a graduate of Cleveland State University with a BS in Marketing and a law degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Wally has previously served on the boards of Near West Theatre, Recovery Resources, Inc., Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, St. Clair Superior Development Corporation, HRC Cleveland Steering Committee, a Partner with Cleveland Social Venture Partners, and the VP of Member Involvement at Sales & Marketing Executives of Cleveland. He currently serves as the Board Chair of the Equality Ohio Education Fund Board

Elizabeth Maugans is an artist, co-founder and Executive Director of Zygote Press, a non-profit printmaking studio located in Cleveland, Ohio. She is co-founder of the Collective Arts Network, a quarterly journal and arts network that works to promote Northeast Ohio artists and organizations to a greater audience through a quarterly journal and collective events. She has organized one-person and thematic exhibitions featuring regional, national and internationally known artists. Her curatorial specialization is her devotion to emerging art, social justice and local experimental practices that broaden access through social networks and community-building initiatives. An advocate for artists and the visual arts, Maugans has served as a consultant for numerous organizations and art business start-ups. Her passion for cross-disciplinary partnerships includes collaborations with the North Shore Federation of Labor, The AIDS Taskforce, and Community Assessment and Treatment Services. She is an adjunct faculty member in printmaking and drawing at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She received her BFA in printmaking from Kent State University and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1992. Maugans work is included in the Progressive Art Collection, BF Goodrich (Charlotte, N.C.) and The Riffe Center for Government and the Arts, (Columbus, OH) collections. She received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in 2000 and a 2005 Artist-in-Communities Grant for “Drawing It Out”, a program that introduces creative experiences for women (reentering the community from the criminal justice system) in chemical dependency programs towards their recovery. Maugans was awarded an Ohio Arts Council’s International Residency to Dresden, Germany in 2009. She was honored, along with her Zygote co-founder, the Martha Joseph Prize for Distinguished Service from the Cleveland Arts Prize in 2012. In 2013, she was awarded a $20,000 Creative Workforce Fellowship from Community Partnership for Arts and Culture.

 

Karen Petkovic is an artist and serves as Gallery Director at BAYarts. She has a BA in advertising from Kent State University.