Queer Spectra

Artist Residency

2026-27 Cohort

We are thrilled to have this talented group of artists as our 2026-27 Queer Spectra Artists-in-Residence. Check out their bios to learn more about them and stay tuned for information on their upcoming show in January.

 
Denyse is a brown, femme-presenting person with long hair, jewelry and makeup, wearing an oversized white button up under a blue jumpsuit with gold lining. They are standing in front of their art hanging atop a black background.

Denyse Davis

Denyse R. Davis is a queer, Filipino American artist with a focus on vibrant, layered acrylic paintings. Based out of Salt Lake City, Their fast, gestural pieces highlight intimately human moments through bold color.

Before becoming a full-time artist, Davis worked in the Community Health sector. That background continues to inform their practice, with much of their work quietly referencing the often-invisible systems that shape perception and influence the health outcomes of our communities.

Davis has exhibited throughout the American West, including Exhibitions on Main through The Blocks, Joshua Tree Music Festival, and their 2025 solo exhibition, Eclipsing Erasure, at DTLA Proud. They are a recipient of the 2026 Utah Division of Arts & Museums Individual Artist Advancement Grant and are included in Salt Lake City's Pre-Qualified Artist Pool. A self-taught multidisciplinary artist, their practice also includes murals, structural installations, live painting, and community-centered creative work.

 
A closely-cropped b&w picture of Meagan, a white woman with soft shaggy hair, gazing into the camera and smiling softly, resting her temple against her closed hand. Light pours in across her face from the window behind her, in which hangs a plant.

Meagan Bertelsen

Meagan Bertelsen is a queer florist and dancemaker in Salt Lake City. As an artist of ephemeral mediums, she handles various types of living bodies and their deeper meanings. With a special interest in both floristry and dance for site-specific pieces, large-scale installations, and active viewership, she enjoys crafting ecologies that immerse participants and performers alike. Recent public works include an interactive floral sanctuary on gender for Red Butte Garden's Blooming With Pride, and a fully-foraged portrait of the Jordan River headwaters for Queer Spectra Arts Festival. She performs new collaborations for Shoreline Swell each year: "Murmuration Magnetic" (2025) with multi-instrumentalist Amelia Diehl and poet Jerald Lim on the Great Salt Lake, and "Plucking Season" (2023) with cellist Lissa Reed, a meditation on the monocultures found in cishet romance and the global rose industry. You can see her botanical armor in the screendance film "SISSY" by Constance Anderson (2025), and her philosophy and seasonality in Ryan Ross's anticipated documentary following a full calendar year of her company, GALOREfloral. She also co-produces the local class series Dance Class For Humans. 


 
Pablo is a cis gender male with long, dark hair and black rectangular glasses. He wears a blue button-up shirt and dark textured cardigan and smiles gently at the camera against a softly blurred gray background.

Pablo Cruz-Ayala

Pablo Cruz-Ayala is a Mexican-born, Utah-raised interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores immigration, queerness, labor, cultural memory, and belonging. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, and experimental materials, Cruz-Ayala transforms concrete-like surfaces, Great Salt Lake materials, textiles, and digital technologies into sites for examining visibility, displacement, and the construction of identity and place.

Cruz-Ayala earned a BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Painting and Drawing and a BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Utah, where they are completing an MFA in Studio Art. Their practice extends beyond the studio through community-engaged research, public art, education, and advocacy. Their work has been exhibited throughout Utah and presented internationally, including representation of the University of Utah at Biennial Art Days in Mexico City. They have received fellowships and awards including the Utah Artist Fellowship, CFA Finale Fellowship, and Mary Blair Award for Art.

 
Sarah is a queer brown woman with curly brown hair. Sarah is wearing a blue demin jacket with a multi-colored scarf. She is sitting in her car with the carseats visible in the background.

Sarah May

Sarah May is a queer Salvadoreña American artist, poet, educator, and bruja. She has her BFA in Photography & Digital Imaging from the U of U, and her MA in Community Leadership from Westminster University. She has been making cyanotypes, an alternative photographic process, for 15 years and creates work on paper, fabric, and ceramic. As someone who lives in the in-between of multiple worlds and identities, the natural world is a sacred place where she cultivated her magic into the artist and storyteller she is today and is a huge component of her work as a place-based artist. Sarah is a co-founder of Making Waves Artist Collaborative, a community of artists, organizers, and vigilkeepers who cultivate lake-facing culture through participatory art and demonstrative love for Great Salt Lake. Sarah released her debut poetry collection last year, Our stories are our bodies, a body of poetry and cyanotypes in conversation with Great Salt Lake.