Valeska Maria Populoh works as an artist, educator, cultural organizer and facilitator in her adopted hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. She has worked at MICA since 2008, and has served on the full time faculty since 2010, teaching in Fiber, First Year Experience and Ecology, Sustainability and Justice. The connections between the materials we encounter as artists and makers, and the multiple stories they hold, is central to Valeska’s creative practices. Embracing a wide array of tactics, from puppetry and printmaking, to art builds and participatory performance, she is motivated by an interest in healing and repair, in deepening our relationships to each other and all our kin, from heron to dogbane. Valeska’s creative practice seeks rich webs of entanglement and connection with the local and regional, with the multiple dimensions of place, from watershed to time. She has been deeply formed by working with Bread and Puppet Theater, Great Small Works, All the Saints Theater, and other politically and socially-engaged puppet and parade organizations. She has learned from and gives thanks for the Aorta Collective, Peoples’ Institute for Survival and Beyond, White Awake, Baltimore Racial Justice Action and the many community-rooted, justice-oriented organizations, organizers and elders in Baltimore. Valeska also holds a BA in International Affairs and Conflict Resolution from American University, a Permaculture Design Certificate from the Linnaea Ecological Gardening Programme, and an MAT in Art Education from MICA.