Who We Are

Beth Ann Whittaker

(Below right) is Associate Director of the Sam Francis Foundation in Los Angeles. She has 18 years’ experience working in archives, catalogue raisonné, legacy building, working with museums and galleries, and community outreach to widen the voices active in the art world and non-profit arts sector.

Richelle Munkhoff

(Below left) is a freelance archivist and writer based in Boulder, Colorado. She has 25 years’ experience working in archives, post-secondary education and research institutions. With a PhD in English literature, she has challenged institutional boundaries, telling new histories based on material hidden in plain sight.

Tulani A. Bridgewater-Kowalski

Tulani A. Bridgewater-Kowalski draws upon over two decades of management experience and a lifetime love of music and the arts to helm her management firm Bridgewater Artists Management. In addition to running daily operations for DDB Productions, a full-fledged international management and production firm and DDB Records, which has put out Grammy award-winning titles.

She has served on the leadership team in development and growth of the forward-thinking online spaces providing community and resources to women globally, including as contributing host for the (R)aging Gracefully podcast, theWoolfer, the Writers Room and now partnered with Fauve Press.

Currently Tulani is the co-Director of The Woodshed Network, which seeks to build community, support and mentorship for Women in Jazz.

Francesca Gabbiani

Francesca Gabbiani is an artist and activist based in Los Angeles. She creates artwork depicting overlooked landscapes, where nature and urbanization collide in their true anarchic state. Combining intricately layered cut paper, mixed media washes, and airbrush, Gabbiani’s paper paintings pair literary influences with her own photographic documentation of environments in disastrous, damaged, and regenerative states. Reminiscent of settings in science fiction, her philosophical approach depicts humanity secondary to the omnipresent force of Mother Nature.

Gabbiani’s work is included in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; National Collection, Switzerland; and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others.

Georgia Powell

Georgia Powell is the co-founder of CURA Art; a platform aimed at supporting art collectors and encouraging patronage with purpose. Having gained experience in London’s museums, galleries and private collections, Georgia specializes in the professional management, research and display of collections. Her interest lies in promoting the importance of the private collector in their support of artists and the wider art eco-system.

Karen Tumlin

Karen Tumlin is a nationally recognized impact litigator focusing on immigrants’ rights. She successfully litigated numerous cases of national significance, including a challenge to the Trump Administration’s effort to end the DACA program and the Muslim Ban, as well as the constitutional challenge to Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law, SB 1070. She formerly served as the Director of Legal Strategy and Legal Director for the National Immigration Law Center, where she built a legal department of over 15 staff who developed and led cases of national impact.

Now founder and director of the Justice Action Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to achieving greater justice for immigrant communities through a unique blend of litigation and transformative storytelling.

Senon Williams

Senon Williams is a lifelong visual artist and musician, and a Los Angeles native. Ranging in media from paintings on paper and canvas, to wood sculpture and assemblage, Williams explores poignant visualization of the inherent human struggle both ancient and contemporary. His love of language play, sounds, textures, and associations of word and object often explore the conflicts inherent in identity, history, and community.

The written word is a consistent part of his practice. He has published two books: Hunted & Gathered (2017) and Words Don’t Mean Much (2021), as well as multiple zines.

A member of the band Dengue Fever, Williams has participated as a cultural ambassador in non-profit work with Cambodia Living Arts and Wildlife Alliance.

Leila Elliott in Memoriam

Leila Elliott worked as researcher and archivist for the Sam Francis Foundation, and co-founded Plain Sight Archive. Her support and dynamic curiosity was instrumental in our formation. Her spirit and passion continue to animate what we do every day.

“I am compelled by mysteries, be they in literary form, those of artistic motivation, or open questions of history. The appeal of working to divine how such puzzle pieces connect in forming the more fully realized picture, and often simply identifying the pieces themselves, is central to my desire to do research-related work.”