Majinn  is a queer, disabled, mixed Black dance artist and educator who utilizes their training in multiple dance forms to find and express their whole self. They believe that to be the best dancer and person they can be they need to continuously push their own comfort zone. Majinn works to help guide people in becoming more confident and connected in their bodies, find joy in their movement and be able to speak their voices primarily through Black social dance forms. One of Majinn’s biggest goals in dance is to spread the histories of Black social dance forms in and out of academia so that the cultures are learned and more respected. They also aim to give back to the communities that these art forms were created from through any way they can.  Majinn’s art is for them and the communities they come from, always striving to be authentically themselves in their movement and work You can find Majinn under Majinn_Mike on Instagram

Courses Taught

Zoe Crago is the co-founder of Duo Design + Media. A partnership of two creatives specializing in graphic design, social media, and video production for individuals and businesses/organizations looking to expand their visual presence. As the lead graphic designer and illustrator, Zoe's project list includes (but is not limited to) the 2023 Festival Design for NFFTY (National Film Festival for Talented Youth), illustrator for The Rise Book Project, event campaigns for TEDxSpokane, and social media marketing for Washington Filmworks and Seattle Creates! Her love for illustration and hand-lettering often finds its way into her regular projects creating a beautiful hybrid of traditional and digital art.

After 6 years in the design world, Zoe hopes that her work, collaborations, and community involvement will ultimately impact those who want to grow and succeed in the creative industry!

Genna Carey is an interdisciplinary artist working at the
intersection of dance, choreography, and film. With a BFA in
Dance from Western Michigan University, she integrates her
movement background with cinematic and multimedia elements to
explore new dimensions of storytelling. Her performance career
includes dancing with companies such as Conteur Dance Company
(Toronto, ON) and LED Dance Company (Boise, ID). Genna’s
choreography has been presented on renowned stages, including
the Ailey Theatre, Peridance Capezio Theatre, Center for
Performance Research, and 92nd Street Y in New York. Beyond the
stage, her work has expanded into dance film, where she blends
movement with visual composition. Recent highlights of her film
work include movement direction for Seattle-based musical artist
Yellacatt and an upcoming immersive collaboration with new-media
a r t i s t M a j a P e t r ić. I n a d d i t i o n t o h e r p e r f o r m a n c e ,
choreographic, and film work, Genna is the co-founder of AETHER,
a multidisciplinary arts space that fosters creative
experimentation within both her own practice and the Seattle
community.

I have been making art my whole life in one form or another. I fell endlessly in love, over and over, with the process of making. This led to my role as a teacher, first with young children and later with teens. More facilitator and guide than anything else, being able to participate and witness someone’s creative journey and awakening is an awesome gift. It demands that I remain nimble and bring all my best to working with youth and helping them discover and share their voices. I am both an arts educator and a working artist. As a member of Side Rail Collective, I co-curate shows throughout the year and participate in exhibits. My work as an artist is based in storytelling. I work in a variety of mediums, including clay, found materials, wood, fiber, as well as 2D mediums. The story informs the material.

Sarah Bixler is a painter and educator living and working in Seattle Washington.  She began her artistic studies focusing on the figure and observation, at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle Washington.  There she was able to deepen her understanding of the human body through intensive focus on long-form sculpture, anatomy and drawing from direct observation.  In 2011, Sarah received a BFA from the University of Washington where she studied contemporary drawing and painting, with a focus on paint language, form and color.

Winifred Westergard is a Seattle based fine art and commercial photographer with degrees from the University of Washington and Cornish College of the Arts in Creative Writing, Journalism and Art. Her art making foundation is rooted in the early processes of photography, fully embracing the slow processes of 19th century photography. She is a visual creator with a strong base on human emotion and storytelling. She has managed the photography studio at Cornish College of the Arts since 1999 and has taught Photography and Portfolio Development through Summer@Cornish since 2003.

Lael Rogers is a Seattle-based writer & director hailing from Juneau, Alaska. Her 2020 short film, The Claw, was produced with the support of Film Independent and received a Vimeo Staff Pick. Her award-winning films have played at top tier festivals around the world including Fantasia International Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, Palm Springs Shortfest and more. Her work has been featured in publications such as Rolling Stone, IndieWire, and The Seattle Times. In addition to writing & directing, Lael’s practical SFX design work is featured in the short film Dream Creep, which premiered at Sundance, played SXSW, and made someone throw up at a screening. She currently teaches film at Cornish College of the Arts.
 

Daniel Goody has been working in the performing arts field since 2001 starting in the UK as a sound engineer. Presently working as the Head of Audio at the Playhouse in Seattle for Cornish College of the Arts, his work has spanned many disciplines over the years including audio, light and video design. His primary collaboration since 2015 has been with the Danish immersive theatre group Sisters Hope.
Following a decade in Sweden as the Technical Director at the culture house Inkonst Malmö, Daniel formed artistic partnerships with a number of performance, dance and theatre groups based throughout the Nordic and European regions. These collaborations, with groups such as; Institutet, White On White, Jon & Juli and Lucie Tuma explored the family, critical whiteness and the relationship to the body on a wholly radical level.

Ellen Forney is the author of the bestselling graphic memoir, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me, and its companion book, Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life. Marbles has been translated into six foreign languages and was the selection for common book programs at the University of Washington Health Sciences schools and UC Davis. She curated an exhibition for the National Library of Medicine on Graphic Medicine, comics about health, and has given talks and lectures internationally at universities, conferences, and institutions, including a recent TED talk. As a visual artist, she created two large-scale murals for Seattle’s Capitol Hill light rail station. She has taught comics at Cornish College of the Arts since 2002 and is currently working on a middle-grade book on making autobiographical comics.

Robynne Raye is a co-founder of the Seattle-based Modern Dog Design Co, an internationally acclaimed design and illustration studio that opened in 1987. Her client list includes Showtime, The New York Times, Coca-Cola, Nordstrom, HarperCollins, Warner Bros. Records, Hillary Clinton, and K2 Snowboards. Her posters have been exhibited internationally, and are collected in the archives of major libraries and museums worldwide, including the Library of Congress, Bibliothèque National de France, Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe, the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Guan Shanyue Art Museum, and the Louvre’s Musee Des Arts Decoratifs, among others.

For over thirty years, Raye has lectured extensively about design issues and led workshops around the world. In 2013, Graphic Design USA Magazine listed her as one of the "50 Most Influential Designers Working Today.” She is the co-author of Modern Dog, 20 Years of Poster Art and Inside the World of Board Graphics: Skate, Surf, Snow, and author of 1000 Dog Portraits.

Alia Swersky is a movement artist, performer and educator deeply engaged in dance improvisation, durational time-based art, film, site-specific work, and environmental installation. She is an artist and an educator with degrees from Cornish College of the Arts and an MFA in dance from the University of Washington.

Her artistic path over the last two decades has been shaped by this yearning for deep and meaningful connections with people and places. As a co-creator, ritual maker, and a “horizontal” director, Alia seeks to touch others through dance, somatic presence, vulnerability, and fierceness. Her work ranges from full audience participation to intimate acts of One-to-One performances, site-specific dances for film and live performance, as well as durational time-based art that includes physical acts of endurance, repetition, stillness, subtlety, singing, soft energetic grace, abstraction, caricature, and a deconstruction of clichés such as extreme high femme expressions. Her teaching and art-making seek to create practices that embrace endurance on stage and in life as acts of resistance, resilience, release, and beauty. 

As a performer, Alia has also toured nationally and internationally as a member of the LeGendre Performance Group and has performed in the works with many Seattle artists, some of which include The Maureen Whiting Company, Khambatta Dance Company, Jurg Koch, KT Niehoff, and Salt Horse.

As an educator, she has taught at Cornish College of the Arts for sixteen years and in the Seattle community at Velocity’s Strictly Seattle Festival, and the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI). She was a long time Co-artistic director of Dance Art Group (DAG), a non-profit organization that promotes the practice and appreciation of dance and somatic education in the Seattle area, including the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation.