On-Ramp Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator

Alicia Thomas

Marion County

Alicia Thomas’ main creative work centers on using accessible, process-based crafts as an artistic medium for connection, healing, socialization, and self-expression. Through facilitated workshops and creative gatherings, Thomas designs creative art experiences that invite participants of all ages and abilities to engage in art making as a shared and affirming practice. Craft Connections operates throughout Central Indiana, with a strong focus on Marion County, serving youth, adults, seniors, families, and individuals who face barriers to traditional art access. Thomas works primarily with materials such as mixed media, ceramics, wood, mosaics, and textured elements that allow room for flexibility, experimentation, and personal interpretation.

Brailon Wolfe

Marion County

Brailon Wolfe is a pianist who has performed at  gospel events, services, concerts, and community gatherings. These experiences strengthened Wolfe’s musicianship and deepened his understanding of music’s impact. Wolfe is committed to creating opportunities for others to experience that same transformative power of artistic expression, with the goal of establishing a creative hub where artistry and personal development intersect. Workshops, open mic sessions, collaborative jam sessions, and mentorship opportunities could help individuals strengthen both technical skills and self-confidence.

Claire Pendleton

Marion County

Claire Pendleton is a pianist and educator passionate about welcoming new audiences into the world of classical piano through experiences grounded in hospitality, community building, and accessibility. From the living room to the concert stage, Pendleton designs musical events that invite people to connect with the music, with one another, and with their own stories. Her artistic practice spans areas including the activation of third spaces through thematic music experiences, investing in future artists through educations, and writing and performing original music.

Elizabeth A. Guipe

Marion County

Elizabeth A. Guipe is a visual artist who has been creating work using encaustic and collage materials for over 10 years. Guipe combines paper, digital imagery, image transfers, gold and silver leaf, and drawings with pigmented and clear encaustic to create layers that have a visible depth to them. For the last two years, Hall’s work has incorporated birds and their sound, enlarging and printing sonographs of birdsong accompanied by drawings of birds and geometric designs of birds, paired with QR codes that all viewers to both hear and see the birds.

Emily Mellentine

Marion County

Emily Mellentine is the founder of Writings From Her Corner, a creative collective curating writing sessions and creative community events. Mellentine’s main creative work focuses on community engagement through writing, crafting, and experiential creative programming. Mellentine designs and facilitates workshops, pop-up activations, and interactive art experiences that invite participants into reflection, storytelling, and shared creative practice. Her work positions creativity as both a personal discipline and a communal act, building accessible spaces where art becomes connection.

Eric Baker

Marion County

Eric Baker provides music and music education to communities and schools in the Indianapolis area, providing workshops and lessons during the school day to local students. Baker previously served as a public-school orchestra director and nonprofit leader and is now transitioning into working independently as an instructor, composer of educational materials, and is developing an extra-curricular chamber music program for students throughout the Indianapolis area.

India Hines

Marion County

India Hines is a visual artist whose main creative work consists of paintings created with watercolor, ink, gouache, and oil. Hines create dreamlike organic shaped faces that feel rooted in nature, memory, and ancestry. Her work blends abstraction and representation. Hines aims to create space for reflection and connection through her work, inviting viewers to slow down and consider their own inner world and lived experience.

Jennifer Castoe

Marion County

Jennifer Castoe is a potter who designs and produces handmade, wheel-thrown pottery for the home. Castoe throws small batches of functional items, focusing on the intersection of form and function. Her intention is to produce work that lasts generations, offering an alternative to overconsumption and waste.

Jordan Rivers

Johnson County

Jordan Rivers is a filmmaker and screenwriter based in New Whiteland, Indiana, transitioning from a career in corporate management to full-time creative production. Rivers’ work is rooted in the belief that the American Midwest is a rich, untapped landscape for gritty, authentic storytelling. She focuses on narratives that explore the collision between innocent ambition and harsh reality, often finding humor and humanity in the absurdity of survival.

Julie Xiao

Marion County

Julia Xiao is a visual artist whose primary practice is painting, supported by digital and mixed-media processes. Xiao’s work blends traditional Asian art influences, particularly Chinese painting and Japanese prints, with contemporary visual language drawn from film, comics, and animation. Through fantastical, narrative-driven imagery, she explores themes of multicultural identity, mythology, environmental relationships, and the evolving sense of self.

Leslie Cordray

Vigo County

Leslie Cordray is a stained glass artist. Cordray uses various types of glass to create unique pieces from patterns she sketches himself. Cordray enjoys pushing the limits of traditional Tiffany Method stained glass by incorporating handmade wooden bases, natural driftwood from the beaches of Lake Michigan, and specialty lighting. She has become known for her signature work: stained glass cacti and succulents.

Lynette Eklund

Fayette County

Lynette Eklund has 41 years of experience behind-the-scenes as a creature effects artists, puppeteer and suit performer for film. Eklund has worked on Oscar-nominated and Emmy-award-winning movies, and has contributed to amusement parks, commercials, live stage productions, and even toy prototyping. Her memoir, WEIRD: A Monster-maker's Journey From Small Town to Hollywood With OCD came out in October. Eklund has also written 2 limited-released picture books inspired by her 14 years owning and operating a haunted corn maze in Connersville, Indiana.

Makenzie Lukas

Marion County

Makenzie Lukas’ primary creative work is through her nonprofit, Dance2Connect, where she uses dance and movement as a tool for creative expression, healing, and overall well-being. Through Dance2Connect, Lukas lead creative movement and dance classes for children and adults, many of whom have experienced trauma, instability, or other life challenges. Her teaching focuses on helping participants feel safe in their bodies and express their emotions in a supportive environment.

Matthew DeLoughery

Marion County

Matthew DeLoughery blends traditional art techniques with emerging digital media to explore social norms, expectations, and the ways we construct identity. DeLoughery works across sculpture, collage, installation, and interactive media, often combining hand-built materials with tools such as 3D modeling, printing, and augmented reality. Across both personal and community-driven projects, DeLoughery’s goal is to blur boundaries between art and technology, artist and audience, present and future.

Morgan Katherine Binkerd

Marion County

Morgan Katherine Binkerd is a visual artist whose current creative practice reflects her dual identity as both a storyteller and painter. Bikerd’s process is slow and internally driven, built through scraping and layering paint over extended periods of time. The resulting surfaces become a meditative response to nature’s ever-changing state and explore the overlap between written and visual mediums, with many of her paintings approached as works of poetry. The titles, which come from her writing practice that informs her painting practice, become a way to enter the painting, tying thematic and symbolic presences together. The writing often references landscape and Binkerd’s internal world-- bridging the barriers between internal and external worlds.

Nancy Fritz

Allen County

Nancy Fritz is a visual artist. Earlier in Fritz’s career, she focused primarily on meditative oil paintings, creating calm, atmospheric works that would invite stillness and reflection. This body of work established the foundation of her practice—using repetition and intention as tools for emotional grounding. Fritz’s current work represents a shift toward larger-scale, community-engaged projects. Weave of Life is an ongoing modular installation that will ultimately consist of 600–700 individual panels. Using encaustic, mixed media, reclaimed materials, and salvaged objects, the project creates a visual archive shaped by collective contribution.

Narvell Taylor

Allen County

Narvell Taylor is a visual artist whose primary creative work focuses on oil and acrylic paintings that highlight growth, spiritual transformation, and the elevation of Black identity. Taylor often works in earth tones and incorporates gold and symbolic elements to reflect resilience, divinity, and inner strength. His style draws inspiration from Renaissance composition while remaining rooted in contemporary culture and lived experience.

Natalee Wright

Whitley County

Natalee Wright’s work centers on visual storytelling through mixed media drawing and painting. Wright creates work that explores transformation, loss, healing, and the emotional spaces people often struggle to put into words. Rather than working in isolated images, her practice unfolds through interconnected series, allowing ideas to deepen over time and inviting viewers into ongoing narratives. Alongside her studio practice, Wright shares art with others through teaching, workshops, and creative support.

Rachel Meiser

Hancock County

Rachel Meiser is a fashion designer with a background in custom garments, dancewear, and costuming, with a strong foundation in patternmaking and construction. Meiser’s previous work has focused on creating one-of-a-kind pieces tailored to individual clients and performers, requiring precision, adaptability, and technical problem-solving. Meiser is developing a sustainable fashion enterprise and creative incubator rooted in apparel design, heirloom craft preservation, and the creation of tangible, industry-aligned opportunities for emerging designers, strengthening Indiana’s creative ecosystem.

Zaria Chandler

Lake County

Zaria Chandler is an interdisciplinary artist centered on storytelling, visual design, material art, and cultural expression. Chandler’s practice includes illustrated children’s books, narrative-based visual projects, curriculum-as-art, original literary work, graphic design, and wearable art (apparel as storytelling). She also creates resin-based artwork and leads collaborative resin art projects with students, using the medium as both an expressive art form and a tool for storytelling, healing, and identity exploration.