Our Team

Carmen is a visual artist, singer, and interdisciplinary performer. She has a long history of initiating art projects and creative community integrated projects. In 2010 Carmen received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, and in 2012 the Queen’s Jubilee Award for her art with the community. She has an Art History degree from UBC and a diploma from Emily Carr Institute. Carmen is the founder and artistic director of Still Moon Arts Society: inspiring vibrant and connected communities by creating art and nurturing a passion for nature. Through Still Moon and in collaboration with many community partners, she creates the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival, and other projects and special events shedding light on Renfrew Ravine, Still Creek, salmon in the city, and the community’s creative capacity. She leads art workshops including Colour Me Local natural dye workshops, lantern making workshops, giant puppet and costume workshops, art workshops with schools and community groups such as Sarah Ross House Temporary Modular Housing, and a six year residency with Arts, Health and Seniors.

Previous to Still Moon Arts, Carmen was also the founder and co-artistic director of Mortal Coil Performance Society for 10 years – creating shows, designing costumes and giant puppets, performing, and booking stilt-dance shows all over North America.

As a singer, Carmen performed, recorded and toured with Elektra Women’s Choir, the Slavic Soul ensemble Zeellia for 20+ years, and currently performs with Zlatna Mountain.

In 2016 Carmen created a major public art installation Still Here at Skyway Towers Plaza on Kingsway. In 2017 she was an artist in residence at CACIS Centre for Art and Sustainability in Spain. In 2018 she collaborated with artists Paula Jardine, Cathy Stubington (Runaway Moon), and Robi Smith as Birds in Residence and Birds on Parade spending over a year to create a giant bird parade with hundreds of community members in costume performing as birds on stilts for the opening of the International Ornithological Congress and the Vancouver Bird Festival.

Carmen’s visual art can be seen in the stone mosaic pathways around Renfrew Ravine, giant puppets and stilt walking characters at festivals and community parades, giant lantern installations at several lantern festivals, and living mushroom sculptures, Fruiting Bodies, in Renfrew Community Park.

Learn more about her work by viewing her TEDx talk.

Clea has extensive experience in nonprofit management, environmental stewardship, and community engagement. Her past work has included surveying remote old-growth forests in northern Ontario and managing collaborations between scientists, government and First Nations representatives, and others to improve the management of salmon and their habitat in the Skeena watershed. As a community advocate, Clea has brought new services and infrastructure to her neighbourhood and has worked to build social capacity and connections. In her spare time, she is an avid gardener and enjoys organizing community events and travelling near and far with her kids.

Ada (she/her/they/them) is a visual artist, writer, photographer and professional jack-of-all trades. Born shortly before the tumult of the Romanian revolution in Bucharest, and currently living in the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood, she works across media, feeling most at home somewhere between spoofed youtube videos and serious sculptural objects. Ada holds a BFA from Emily Carr University (2020). Her practice primarily addresses questions of productivity, value, and labour, but underneath, is about living a life of joy, creativity, and connection.

Outside of work at Still Moon, she’s sewing a quilt, weaving wool on a loom designed in the neolithic age, constructing several ceramic plant pots, learning to ride a motorcycle and trying her best to point to life. Ada loves people and wants all of us to live lives filled with dignity, play, and love. Her favourite sounds are wind-chimes and friends laughing. You can check out her work at adadragomir.com.

Shahir (he/they/she) is a multidisciplinary artist who is currently focused on completing a master’s degree in Contemplative Education at SFU. His focus is on cultivating spiritual development and emotional intelligence within the self and the collective through community-based arts inquiry. His creative practices weave directing, sacred clowning, contemporary dance, poetic ramblings, classical Indian voice, natural textile creations, painting and sculpture into a grand cosmic inquiry about trauma, healing and liberation. More recently, he has worked as a counsellor for LGBTQ+ sexual assault survivors, a holistic arts educator at a Buddhist wisdom high school, and an art therapist with refugee youth.

Adrian is an environmental technician, percussionist, sound artist, recordist, and interdisciplinary artist based in Surrey-Vancouver, Canada [stolen lands of the q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie), q̓ʷɑ:n̓ƛ̓ən̓ (Kwantlen), Semiahma (Semiahmoo), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Peoples].  He holds a Diploma of Technology from BCIT’s Forest and Natural Areas Management program which has enabled him to work in many public institutions around the Lower Mainland.  He has volunteered for the Government of Chile’s – Ministry of Agriculture: National Forest Corporation in Torres del Paine National Park, creating their invasive plant management plan.  In addition he has studied music at Vancouver Community College and has been mentored in many sound initiatives in Vancouver, Peru and Chile (VIVO Media Arts Salmon Sounds, Memorias Sonoras del Cusco II, and Tsonami’s International Sound Art Festival).  He is an emerging performer in Vancouver’s creative music scene and is constantly engaging in collaborations across the experimental sound communities locally and abroad. He is interested in the intersection of ecology, sound thinking, open-source technology, community engaged art, and ecological restoration.

Amanda (she/her) is an award-winning, emerging filmmaker, writer, and cultural producer with her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Film Production and Creative Writing from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. She humbly works on the unceded, stolen  territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. Her creative work explores nuanced, socially relevant topics, often in the form of hybrid documentary, experimental, and narrative dramas, and is most interested in stories that are deeply character and/or people driven. In her professional career, she loves lifting others up by engaging with various cultural organizations, historically of which being the Chutzpah! Festival, PuSh Festival, Inlet Theatre, and The Cinematheque. She takes great joy in her current role as Production Manager for the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival with Still Moon Arts Society. When not creating words, images, or spreadsheets, she can most often be found playing various role-playing board or video games, climbing up a mountain, or petting her well-deserving dogs, Juno and Marty.

Alayna (she/her) is an Artist, Animator, and Assistant who’s interested in Gourmet, Girls, and Gaming. She also likes alliteration a lot, too. Graduating from Emily Carr University in 2021, Alayna received an award for Community Engagement regarding her works.

Of particular mention is her animated LGBTQ grad film, Macaroni Soup (通心粉湯), which has seen success in festivals across Canada, the United States, and even Hong Kong. When she is not busy at her job as an assistant, Alayna will be drawing, eating, archiving… Or sleeping. Alayna’s work takes place on traditional q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie First Nation) land.

Masa (she/her) is a Traditional Syrian Storyteller, Leadership & Growth Coach, and an Equitable Justice Activist from Damascus, Syria, who’s commitment to social justice & shifting the narrative of the Syrian context from war & distraction, to also include her culture’s rich art & heritage. She has been involved in supporting and advancing diverse causes for the past 15+ years, regardless of where she’s residing in the world, including refugee rights, education for youth, women rights, economic empowerment & mental health of refugees, and the rights of equity-deserving human beings, like herself.

Kateb’s background is in Economics, Business Administration, Journalism, Marketing & Promotion, Communication, Leadership, Basketball Coaching & Professional Playing, Career Mentorship, Neuroscience of Coaching, Activism, and holds a Purpose Mastery of Business Actions [Purpose MBA]. She’s a Community Developer, Events Planner & Host, Writer, Public Speaker, Traditional Syrian Storyteller, Syrian Culinary Artist, and a Refugee Advisor.

When she’s not working for Still Moon, she’s either observing a sunset, or investing her time and energy in growing Quantum Care, an Educational Coaching & Consultancy business she co-founded during the COVID-19 pandemic to support the overall wellbeing of individuals and communities.

Katherine is a trained professional opera singer who has worked in the Vancouver arts community for the last 20 years as a soloist, ensemble singer, and teacher. During that time, she has worked as a bookkeeper for various groups and individuals, and understands the multifaceted needs of non-profit organizations. Katherine is passionate about facilitating efficiency, ease, and transparency in her clients’ financial operations, so that organizations are freed up inspire people and change lives. Katherine is excited to contribute to the good work that the Still Moon team is doing in our community.