MING Studios is a contemporary art center and international artist in residency program.

Our mission is to exhibit, experience and explore contemporary arts and culture. Our purpose is educational, non-profit, community driven, multicultural, collaborative, participatory, public and relevant.

We provide exhibition space and resources for featured international artists, whom we support through our Artist In Residency Program and encourage to create new work that is influenced by their experience and collaborations at MING Studios.

We also serve our community by hosting innovative programs including workshops and cultural activities, performances, screenings, readings and artist talks.

MING Studios Board of Directors & Team

Officers

Jason Morales, President
Jason founded MING Studios to introduce international artists to Idaho through an Artist In Residency program, to host art installations and exhibitions that would not otherwise be accessible to Idahoans, and to offer new opportunities for regional artists. Jason also works for Microsoft on the Worldwide Education team as a Strategy Leader for Data and AI, and as Professor at Boise State University in the College of Business & Economics.

Alina Nisanova, Secretary
Alina lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and two children. Alina earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Potsdam in Berlin Germany with an emphasis on Jewish Studies and Russian History.  During that time Alina worked at the Jewish Museum where she provided educational and entertaining presentations in 3 languages (German, English & Russian), led museum Educational programs aimed at children ages 6-15 years old and supervised and supported VIP events and symposiums for government officials.

Mark Pemble, Treasurer
Mark has lived in the Boise area his entire life. He regularly visits many of the local museums and galleries in his spare time. Mark also enjoys being involved in the local music scene. He serves on various boards and committees in the area including the Friends of the Library, the Train Depot, and the Historical Preservation Committee. Mark enjoys skateboarding, snowboarding, and casually riding his bicycle through new neighborhoods.

Directors

Lindy Foust
Lindy Foust is a communications and project management professional with a passion for building connections, streamlining systems, and helping people thrive. She holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership and is a certified PMP, blending strategic expertise with a people-centered approach. Lindy has volunteered with organizations from Wings for Autism to the Hawaii Wildlife Fund, and she enjoys bringing communities together through service, creativity, and shared experiences. She is dedicated to fostering collaboration, equity, and growth, and is excited to contribute her skills and energy to the MING community.

Asia Davis
Asia Davis holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Idaho and works at a local architectural firm in Boise. Her creative practice explores how folklore, memory, and identity translate into spatial narratives and built form. Rooted in both architecture and art, her graduate thesis reimagined folklore as spaces that hold cultural and emotional resonance. As co-founder of Sapphic Spaces, an ongoing research project, she documents and reinterprets queer women’s bars and gathering places across North America as vital sites of community, care, and design history. Through her work, she examines how design can foster belonging, visibility, and sustainable, community-driven narratives.

Rebecca Ann Evans
Rebecca Evans writes the difficult, the heart-full, the guidebooks for survivors. Her work includes a full-length poetry collection, Tangled by Blood (Moon Tide Press, 2023) giving voice to childhood sexual trauma and healing, and a collection-length poem, Safe Handling (Moon Tide Press), weaving disability and medical industry challenges. Her forthcoming collection of flash essays, AfterBurn (Moon Tide Press, 2026) offers social commentary on surviving sexual assault. Her teachings combine visual art and empowerment and include over 20 years of working with teens in the Juvenile System. Evans is a disabled veteran and co-hosts Radio Boise’s “Writer to Writer” show each month.

MaryK Johnson
MaryK Johnson is an artist, community builder, and a founder of the Treasure Valley Community Gardens Cooperative. Through her practice, A Creative Asset, she explores art’s role in collective imagination and systems change. At MING Studios, she serves in an advisory capacity and facilitates participatory dialogue sessions through a community-based game often referred to as the "SUM Game".

Lena Walker
Jake Saunders


  

MING Team

Matt Bunk, Program Curator
Matt Bunk is a multimedia artist of the American West. His work is centered around loops, parallels, and reflections. He is a founding member of the Address Book collective and a proud Field Worker for the Ecogeogplyphic Observatory. He has directed, acted, sound designed, and otherwise meddled in theater all over the place. Matt’s body of musical work includes scores for podcasts, installations, and live performances, as well as albums with the bands All Around Cowboy and Sage Country Fragments. His writing has also appeared in Elsewhere: A Journal of Place, Oroboro, and Paper Plane Press.
[email protected]

Kristen Cooper, Artistic Director 
Kristen is a conceptual artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. She has traveled extensively; collaborating with artists and curating exhibitions. Kristen received a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute, College of Art and a M.F.A. from the Dutch Art Institute, in the Netherlands. She currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
[email protected]

Sequoia Solmorales, Outreach & Community Engagement
Sequoia Solmorales has worked at the intersection of education, the arts, and event coordination since 2019. A community builder and operations specialist with a background in nonprofit leadership, he currently serves as Operations Manager at City Club of Boise. In addition to his professional work, Sequoia is a multi-instrumentalist who plays and studies the guitar, kamale ngoni, and handpan. He travels regularly to experience the music of artists who inspire his craft. He holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Boise State University.
[email protected]