Our Team

Barbara Jirsa, Partner

Barbara Jirsa has over 30 years of experience in the cultural arts. As a consultant, she provides expertise to arts organizations in public affairs and with individual artists to increase visibility and marketability.  

As member of the City of Sammamish Arts Commission, Barbara has served as the curator of the City’s Commons Gallery for the past 11 years mounting over 45 exhibits and numerous related programs.

Barbara is a partner in Storyboards, a 501(C)(3) organization, developing exhibits and podcast episodes related to the Misty Poets of China.

Cheryll Leo-Gwin, Partner

Cheryll Leo-Gwin is a well-established visual artist and “maker of things’. She earned her MFA in metal design at the University of Washington in 1977, and since has created work in a variety of materials from jewelry scaled 2 and 3-D work to large scale public art. 

Exploring new materials and processes, she uses images from her own sculpture, painting, and photographic images which she isolates, recombines, then translates into large digital prints. As an arts administrator in higher education as well as a state, county and local arts commissioner, her work reflects a sensitivity to public consciousness and social justice. 

Her current work focuses around issues relative to the US Chinese Exclusion Act of 1883-1943; China's Cultural Revolution; and the Civil Rights Act of 1965 as she compares and contrasts the cultures of East and West.                                                                           

Hummie Mann, Composer

Two-time Emmy-award winning Canadian composer/arranger Hummie Mann has collaborated with some of Hollywood's most celebrated directors in both theatrical and television films. His motion pictures projects have ranged from Mel Brooks' “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” to Peter Yates' “Year of the Comet”, the children’s film“Thomas and the Magic Railroad” to “Wooly Boys” directed by Leszek Burzynski, starring Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Keith Carradine and Joe Mazzello.

Arlene Naganawa, Editor

Arlene is a writer and teacher, currently with Seattle Arts and Lectures Writers in the Schools, Hugo House Scribes, and Pongo Teen Writing. Her publications include three chapbooks and poetry in such literary journals as Waxwing, Washington 129, La Piccioletta Barca, The Inflectionist Review, all the sins, The Telephone Project, Crab Orchard Review, The Seattle Review of Books. She received literary grants from Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and Artist Trust in 2020. 

Meridian Smith, Production Assistant

Ann Kousin, Research Intern