Kim Irvine is the executive creative director of Walt Disney Imagineering’s Anaheim office for the Disneyland Resort. She creatively leads a diverse team  who oversee the constant care and enhancement of Walt Disney’s original theme park. In her role, she directs the team’s design concepts, from attractions, architecture, and interiors to lighting, area development, and landscape. Some of her projects include the Rancho del Zocalo Restaurante, additions to the “it’s a small world” attraction, the Disney Dream Suite, the Jolly Holiday Bakery Café, The Disney Gallery exhibits, the remodel of Club 33, and the recent redevelopment of the Rivers of America. Her latest projects include Tiana’s Palace restaurant and the Adventureland Treehouse inspired by Walt Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson.

Jesse Colin Jackson is a Canadian artist and designer based in Southern California. He explores the architectures we construct—from buildings to landscapes to virtual worlds—through objects and images made with digital visualization and fabrication technologies. His interactive Marching Cubes performances and installations (2016—present) have been featured in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Mexico City, Stockholm, Tehran, and across America. Solo exhibitions of his work, focused on the places we live, have been reviewed in Canadian Architect (2023), the LA Review of Books (2021), The Globe and Mail (2009, 2014, 2019), and Espace Art Actuel (2017). At the University of California, Irvine, Jackson is an Associate Professor of Electronic Art & Design in the Department of Art, the Associate Dean, Research and Innovation for the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, and the Executive Director of the Beall Center for Art + Technology.

Salamon has exhibited widely for 30 years. He has had 5 solo museum shows, over 30 solo gallery shows and is in over a dozen permanent museum collections. After being the official artist for the Grammy Awards in the 1990s, Salamon began painting more personal work of his family, friends, and fellow artists. Portraiture has remained a significant interest throughout his career. His subjects currently vary widely from narrative scene paintings to allegorical compositions, historical objects and still-lifes of every-day pleasures. His most recent works are large portraits of artists and societal trailblazers using drafting pencils on multiple sheets of vellum paper or charcoal on unstretched, unprimed canvas. Salamon has produced dozens of short films, creates figurative sculptures in various mediums and is also a museum curator and punk rock musician. Salamon has been a long-time Southern California resident, and graduated summa cum laude from California State University, Los Angeles.

John D. Spiak is the Director/Chief Curator of California State University Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center (GCAC), Santa Ana. His curatorial emphasis is on contemporary art and society, with a focus on works in socially engaged practices and video. Through the GCAC Artist-in-Residence initiative, GCAC hosts national and international artists as they develop projects, including Paul Ramirez Jonas, Adriana Salazar, Carmen Papalia, Daniel Tucker, Lisa Bielawa, and currently artists Yumi Janairo Roth and Chris Kallmyer. Prior to his appointment at GCAC, he was Curator at the Arizona State University Art Museum, joining that staff in 1994. Spiak founded the ASUAM Short Film and Video Festival and was acting curator in charge of the ASU Art Museum residency series Social Studies, originating project by Julianne Swartz and Ken Landauer, Jillian McDonald, Josh Green, Gregory Sale, and Jennifer Nelson. Through solo exhibitions, he has worked directly with artists Pipilotti Rist, Shirin Neshat, Brent Green, Tony de los Reyes, Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle, and Adam Chodzko. His projects have received support from The British Council, Polish Cultural Institute, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), (MAP) Fund, and four grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Zayas was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and grew up in the West Coast city of Mazatlán. He came to San Diego in 1977 as a high school student, going on to receive his BFA there at United States International University. He continued his education at Art Center College of Art and Design in Pasadena, graduating with a second BFA in 1986, and taught art at Loyola Marymount University. He began practicing plein air painting by the L.A. River, hauling large canvases to the concrete riverbank and painting in the back of a pickup truck. Living for 29 years within sight of the L.A. River, Zayas has made Los Angeles infrastructure his main subject, exploring from his studio steps downstream from the Main Street bridge. His most recent paintings and sculptures address Los Angeles County‘s presence as a global city, the logistical hub and point of entry for 40% of the goods shipped into the United States and a crossroads for people and ideas from everywhere. Zayas, in his new location at Newport Beach, continues to celebrate the emotional and aesthetic potential of the region and its layered forms and shifting moods through paint and sculpture. His works have been shown in solo exhibits at MOLAA (Long Beach, CA), Latino Art Museum (Claremont, CA), Tacoma Art Museum, the Contemporary Museum of Art (Mexico City, Mexico), Laguna Art Museum, and the Orange County Museum of Art, and are collected around the world.