2025 Art for Good Finalist Artists
Carla Keaton
IG @Keaton Fine Art
keatonfinearts.biz
Carla Keaton earned her degree in Painting and Physical Anthropology from Arizona State University in Tempe. Her artwork has been exhibited in numerous galleries across Arizona, Washington, and Mississippi. She works as a commissioned portrait artist, children's book illustrator, magazine illustrator, and public artist, with several of her designs adorning outdoor structures in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Timothy Bakthy
IG @bakthyisdrawing
My work focuses on oil paintings where the horse acts as a grounding force — a symbol of strength, stability, and charity. I see the horse as an archetype of generosity: a creature that carries, supports, and sustains others with quiet resilience. It anchors the viewer in something familiar and real, even as the world around it begins to change.
Diego Perez
IG @artofdiegoperez
Diego Pérez (1987) is a Mexican artist who specializes in humor, irony, and traditional techniques. He began painting as a teenager and earned his Bachelor’s degree at La Esmeralda, Mexico’s top art school, founded in 1927 by Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and other Mexican artists. His main influence is Caravaggio’s Baroque style, which features realistic depictions of everyday life combined with dramatic lighting using chiaroscuro.
Bryson Bost
IG @brysonbostart
brysonbost.com
Though spending his early years on California’s Central Coast, Bryson became a Bay Area artist. He debuted in Oakland, with subsequent exhibitions in San Jose, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco. His detailed abstractions have since been shown in galleries from Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, to Phoenix, Arizona.
Bacpac
IG @bacpac_live
Bacpac is an aerosol muralist from New York City, a 3-D digital artist, and a former Union scenic artist, painting sets and backdrops for major feature film studios in L.A. She worked as a designer for John M. Storyk Associates as a young architectural designer in New York City and as an intern for Foster Associates, London. Bacpac has a BA in Industrial Design from Carnegie Mellon and a diploma from The Architectural Association of London, where she worked with Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid on their book. Bacpac’s work has appeared in galleries in Phoenix and NYC, but mostly on walls as realist murals. Bacpac identifies as an urban artist, focused on the industrial and the built environment.
Jimmy Descant
IG @jimmydescant
DeluxeWest.com
Jimmy was born in Michigan, grew up in New Orleans, lived in Colorado for 12 years, and has been based in Tucson for 7 years. As a Severe ReConstructivist, he started creating assemblage art in 1996 in New Orleans using vintage vacuum-cleaner rocketships, entirely self-taught, after a 15-year career as a roadie for major and minor recording acts—serving as a tour manager, guitar tech, sound engineer, and more. Descant has been a full-time, self-taught professional sculptor since 1996, without any college or art school education.
When he moved to Colorado in 2006 and started creating his version of the West through environmental and socio-political current events, along with his rocket ship sculptures, he became adept at handling large-scale commissions, installations, and on-loan programs. He has also evolved into a live assemblage art performance artist, creating art in front of crowds with bands, DJs, poets, other artists, and more during exciting, spontaneous, and often intense events that speak to the place or current events.
Cristoff Keyonnie
IG @cedarspringstudio
cedarspringstudio.com
Cristoff Keyonnie is from a small community on the Navajo reservation called Teesto, AZ. He started painting at an early age under his father's influence, who is a silversmith. He mainly draws inspiration from his cultural heritage. He also enjoys integrating modern influences into his art. I work primarily as a painter, but I aspire to become proficient with many media, such as silver, stone, and textiles.
Bekah Unsworth
IG @the_crescent_cat
bekahunsworth.com
Bekah Unsworth is a muralist and painter based in Mesa, AZ. Her distinctive and illustrative style often blends various influences to craft playful and unique compositions. Her artwork typically features animals, the night sky, women, and the environment.
She has created murals in Columbus, OH; Fraser, CO; Memphis, TN; and Goodyear, AZ. Additionally, her work has been exhibited nationwide, including at Vision Gallery in Chandler, AZ; Yavapai College Art Gallery in Prescott, AZ; MVA Gallery in Pennsylvania; Coconino Center for the Arts in Flagstaff, AZ; and at Tohono Chul in Tucson, AZ.
Xinyu Zhang
IG @xinyu_zhang_art
xinyuzhang.com
Xinyu Zhang is a mixed media artist with a Law degree from Peking University and an MFA from the University of Arizona.
In 2019, Zhang held her first solo museum exhibition, "Wander Around," at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Featuring installations, paintings, and CGI videos, it earned critical acclaim and was highlighted on the television program Arizona Illustrated. Zhang was an artist-in-residence at Centrum in 2025 and a finalist in the 2025 Artlink Juried Awards Exhibition, the Taiwan International Artist Grand Prize (2019), the Arizona Biennial (2018), and the Chelsea International Fine Art Competition (2015). " Silent Divides #6"
Nicole Mae Adams
IG @_maedin_
nicolemaeadams.com
My work navigates the intersection of art, craft, and design while being grounded in the traditions of women’s work. Quilts, often found in private domestic spaces, embody both comfort and warmth while holding deeper stories of labor and lineage. My sewing practice has been passed down from my grandmother and mother, whose knowledge I carry through every piece.
Nick A. Erickson
IG @nickaerickson
nickaerickson.com/portfolio
A native Phoenician, Nick A. Erickson is a lifelong creator of visuals that stimulate the human senses. Earning his BFA in Animation from Savannah College of Art and Design, Nick started his career as an artist in the entertainment industry, working on several TV and film projects for Nickelodeon, Fox Entertainment, Bento Box Animation, and Hasbro Inc. A pop artist at heart, Nick also explores realism through what he calls a high-fructose universe. The nostalgic, Americana-inspired temptations are rendered so realistically, you can almost taste them. Nick’s passions for visual art and storytelling often blend—whenever he aims to capture a piece of the visual world, he tends to pair it with a story, whether through animation, illustration, or an eager canvas.
May-ling Tang
IG @Goremay_
May-ling is a metal fabricator and sculpture artist. She is deeply drawn to time and the cycles of life. She explores how birth, life, death, and decay occur not only in plants and bodies but also through objects like metal and concrete. Fascinated by how the beauty of time is expressed through rust, the crumbling of walls, and the deterioration of bodies, she uses this inspiration to create dark, surreal dreamscapes of texture and color through sculpture.
Dedicated to reusing and repurposing, she uses found objects and materials. Combining those items with mixed media to emulate the colors and textures she is drawn to in nature. Using a variety of materials—metal, clay, plaster, paper, wax, plants, concrete, and acid—to express through sculpture the magic and dreams she feels through the cycles of life and death.
Ashley Macias
IG @ashleymacias_
Ashleymacias.art
Phoenix-based artist Ashley Macias creates surreal imagery that explores the depth of human connection and experience. With over a decade of artistic practice, her work combines bold line work, fluid organic forms, and dreamlike symbolism inspired by nature and the cosmos. Drawing from influences such as psychedelia, human psychology, and natural elements, Macias crafts visual narratives that reflect the balance between inner and outer worlds, including ourselves. Her art encourages viewers to question perception, explore consciousness, and find harmony within the constantly evolving relationship between humanity and the universe.
Alexis Francisco Mancio
IG @Alexis.Quetzal
Alexis Francisco Mancio is a multidisciplinary artist inspired by self-expression, emotions, authenticity, and the transformative power of imagination — moments of beauty captured through darkness and light. Through color and lighting, Alexis invites viewers into their world, creating genuine works that speak from the heart.
Raised amid the beauty and complexity of real life, Alexis discovered that art was more than just expression — it was a language of truth, a way to turn emotion into form. Their work celebrates individuality, connection, depth, and the courage to embrace one’s full, authentic self.
Emma Florance
IG @emmalflorance
emmaflorance.format.com
Emma Florance (b.2000) is an artist born in Austin and based in Phoenix. She grew up in England and Switzerland before earning a BFA in Painting from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2022.
Florance combines her likeness with both natural and man-made landmarks of Phoenix to express a personal connection to the environment. In this dream-like alternate reality, her doppelgangers quietly move through the landscape as both residents and intruders, bringing life to a mysterious desert fairytale.
She won first place at the 2025 Artlink Juried Awards Exhibition and is currently preparing for a solo show at Shemer Art Center this coming summer.