Loretta Hord
Loretta "Maps Bolt" Hord is an artist, innovator, technoshaman, and paradigm changer focused on interspecies collaboration. With a background in biodynamic farming, environmental education, and reiki healing; Maps Bolt creates realistic pathways for humanity to manifest deeper connections with the earth.
Whether traveling across the country via train hopping, woofing, hitchhiking, environmental education tours, or the circus; Maps Bolt looks to be eclectic in her experiences and use them to facilitate her work. Constantly learning new skills such as coding, energy healing, alternative farming methods, and AR/VR development, Maps Bolt looks to connect all of these disciplines into the pioneering of plant music applications and provides a unique user experience that makes plant vitality evident through sound.
As founder of Biotunes, she uses multi-media, multi-sensory applications that translates bio-rhythmic energy of the plant into musical notes and a cymatic visual projection. Maps Bolt loves to share and create new experiences that involve interspecies collaboration.
Bugz Fraugg
Bugz Fraugg is an artist, educator, organizer and clinical herbalist born and raised outside of NYC on Kitchawanc tribal lands, she is of mixed Irish and european ancestry, and currently lives in eastern Kentucky. She creates safe(r) communicative environments and novel platforms for healing, sharing stories and co-creating projects. As a clinician and organizer she has provided care for people during moments of political unrest and in the wake of natural disasters. She practices harm reduction and does her best to meet people where they are at, respecting that many people’s lives are far from safe and far from stable, and health interventions are best when they are accessible.
As an artist and organizer her work has taken her around the country and the world. With her art she explores participatory and collaborative practices in both improvised and longform settings. She uses puppet making techniques and reimagines them into a variety of forms, using art for contemplation, as well as rabble rousing. She aims to make all of her new projects with close to 100% materials gathered from either the earth or the waste stream, including paints. With every new project she is closer to realizing that 100% goal.
Vanessa Bolin
Vanessa Bolin is an Indigenous mother, grandmother, community organizer, artist, medic and founder of the Eyes Wide Open Project.
She studied Paramedic Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University. She served as a medic in Standing Rock ND, Charlottesville VA in 2017 & 2018, and Houston after Hurricane Harvey.
Most recently she has been doing Mutual Aid Disaster Relief in Robenson Co after hurricane Florence.
She is deeply passionate about preserving the environment for her grandchildren and the next 7 generations as is her traditional beliefs.
She spends her time in multiple communities across the country helping to build grassroots organizations. She also works in marginalized communities educating about food sovereignty, freedom schools, decolonized and integrated medicine, transformative justice, environmental racism, murdered and missing Indigenous Women among other topics.
Believing that it is everyone’s responsibility to defend this sacred earth she sets out each day to make the world a better place and is striving to help build the world we want to live in.