First Friday: Dunu Artists in Residence, Joy Waldinger and Lee Bird

J. Eliza Wall (Joy Elisabeth Waldinger) is a storyteller (artist/writer/filmmaker) and educator from Philadelphia. She writes, produces, directs, films, and edits her short films. Her work explores various topics—the human condition, family dynamics, relationships, nostalgia, connection to nature, and mental and physical health—in an attempt to restore connections in a fractured world. She believes that art is a powerful tool that can generate change and healing on a local and global level. Her short films have won awards in national and international film festivals and she has been published in a variety of literary magazines. In 2020 she published her children’s book Like The Sun Holds The Moon: A Children’s Book and her book, Like The Sun Holds The Moon: A Novel was published during the lunar eclipse of May 2022 by Little Creek Press. Her newest children’s book (TRASH CRAB) was published by Little Creek Press on Earth Day 2023.

Lee Bird is a queer trans artist, writer and wonderer in Philadelphia. His work explores themes of joy, love, grief, compassion, pleasure, and community care as resistance to dominant culture that devalues all life. Evoking wonder, curiosity and hope, Lee makes art that centers reclaimed materials, as well as homemade and Indigenous-made natural pigments. A self-taught illustrator and painter, he has more than a decade of experience creating with fibers and textiles, with a focus on botanical dyeing and natural printing techniques with homegrown plants, and his practice today combines all of these passions. Lee has also owned his own boutique business making sustainable, naturally dyed and printed ribbons, and has been a doll maker and a fashion designer. Lee has a professional background in national nonprofit animal and environmental advocacy, as well as degrees in poetry writing and literature, with a focus on ecocritical theory and environmental philosophy.