CO-directors

Here since the beginning,  Dhira and Julia started Holes in the Wall Collective five years ago . . .

Julia Meeks -Co-founder & Director

Julia is a designer through and through. She comes from a materials background, with a history in product & sustainable development, media studies, farming, and organization building. She studied Fashion Design and Sustainability at San Francisco State university and La Nuova Academia di Belle Arti in Milan. With extensive training in garment making and natural dying, she was Co-Designer/Owner/Founder of Eclissi clothing co. in Milan Italy, a not-for-profit concept brand, Costume Designer for We Players site specific Theater Productions and Seamstress for cooperative manufacturing space Made in Oakland. Her focal areas center around social mobility, new economic models and supply chain re-development. She has acted as Staff Director for 50 plus youth, worked as assistant and administrator to the Camp Director, and consulted with the Board in building an operations manual for the first queer family camp in the country- Camp it Up! in Northern California. After growing up in the city, she began her relationship to rural spaces as farm hand at Fable Farm’s organic vegetable production in Vermont– she deeply values the (opposite) diversity found in city and country. Digging for roots (causes, and literal, reconnecting lost links and building new systems that better serve the whole is where her work lives.

Dhira Rauch- Co-founder & Director

With a background in creating new theater, divining dream circuses, and wrangling impossible visions in multi-disciplinary happenings, Dhira Rauch has performed throughout New York (Galapagos, Danspace, Ontological Theater, Brooklyn Lyceum, 80 St. Marks, Brooklyn Museum…), on giant boats in San Francisco (WePlayers), and in various media and mediums in Scotland, Los Angeles and Kansas City. In the interest of asking the questions with no marks, Dhira has led paratheatrical research in Iceland, eaten popcorn nearing the speed of light, and corrupted academic conferences by transforming podiums into performative slinkies. She is deeply connected to the shared experience of food, and sometimes moonlights as a sushi chef, performing the precision of the palate with an extremely large knife.  She holds a Masters in Creative Inquiry from EPI at New College and a BFA from NYU Tisch Experimental Theater Wing. 

our board

Bibi Calderaro

Bibi Calderaro is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist and researcher whose work has circulated internationally since 1995. Her participatory sensorial walks explore ideas of hybridity within epistemological and ontological grounds. Her collaborative work with the Coastal Reading Group explores the intersections of the body, the psyche and the social within the frame of post-phenomenological thinking. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships internationally. Bibi holds a Sustainability and Education MA from The Graduate Center CUNY and a MFA from CUNY Queens College. She is currently a PhD Candidate in the Urban Education program at CUNY’s Graduate Center. She is also a certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide and trained Leave No Trace Leader.

bibicalderaro.com

Damian Kelly

Damian Kelly is a Los Angeles Native who attended San Jose State University and received his Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Design. His passion for honest design helped earn creative relationships with environmentally sustainable clients, local entrepreneurs, and inspiring artists. Introduced to art handling at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (SJICA) in 2012, fabricating art installations underlined a desirable intersection of art and design. In 2014, pursuing an opportunity at Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA), magnified the chance to engage the diverse local community of Downtown San Jose in new ways. Today, Damian is the Visual Arts & Engagement Coordinator at MACLA delivering thought-provoking culturally specific art installations, vibrant graphics and signage, and multi-media that documents cultural progression. After 6 years of collaborating in the creation of 50+ visual art exhibitions and 70+ live performances, Damian's focus has evolved to develop a solo visual art practice, social justice-centered community engagement, and a life full of international travel photography. To view Damian's personal ongoing photography collection called eyesgonewild, visit:

eygowi.com

Natasha Corbie

Natasha Corbie tackles projects with an entrepreneurial spirit, helping create timeless spaces that reflect their singularity with her extensive background in visual and performing arts & design. Native to Trinidad, Natasha walk in many worlds and is home in all of them. She studies drawing, painting and art history with artist Simon Dinnerstein, and has worked with Haitian choreographer, Peniel Guerrier, both as a dancer and teacher for many years. Natasha was Assistant Aerial Choreographer for the Broadway production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and has worked with Kids for Positive Change. She is also a certified Participatory Arts and Somatic Research Educator, and once raised $10,000 for Haiti just by selling cookies.  Really good cookies.

www.linkedin.com/in/natasha-corbie

Leandra Burnett

Leandra Burnett is a multidisciplinary designer based in Brooklyn. She is currently the Archivist for the Estate of theoretical architect Lebbeus Woods and an architectural designer at Hatchet Design Build. Previously, she founded Front/Space, one of Kansas City's (now) oldest artist-run spaces and recipient of a 2013 Rauschenberg Foundation SEED Grant. She is a former Urban Design Fellow at Kansas City Design Center and recipient of a Charlotte Street Foundation Rocket Grant for "Civilian", a year-long magazine, newsroom, and research center for civic literacy and art in the public interest. Since relocating to New York, she has established a quieter practice of making functional objects in glass, ceramics, textiles, and paper.  She also loves rocks and moss.

cargocollective.com/leandraburnett

Catherine Grau

Catherine Grau is an artist, facilitator, and curator based in New York City. Often blurring process and product, she creates and holds participatory spaces, facilitates community actions, and fosters intimate encounters. All of these practices are deeply imbued with critical approaches to de-colonizing and unlearning anthropocentric paradigms. She has co-founded multiple artist/curator collectives, including Process Institute, Chance Ecologies, and EPA – Environmental Performance Agency. She is currently Special Program Coordinator for the Queens Museum and holds a BFA in sculpture from Pratt Institute and a MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from the Bauhaus University of Weimar in Germany.

catherinegrau.tumblr.com