Dymin Ellis (they/them) is a 29-year-old Black, nonbinary femme, poet, musician, visual artist, and community organizer from New Haven, Connecticut. They have been writing since they could hold a pen. As a child, Ellis filled composition notebooks with handwritten short stories and chapter books. They wrote their first poem written in sixth grade for a writing competition at the New Haven Free Public Library, where it received second place and encouraged them to pursue poetry more seriously.
Ellis studied Creative Writing at the Educational Center for the Arts and Business & Technology at Hill Regional Career High School, graduating in 2015. Their education in both the arts and business shaped their interest in arts advocacy and eventually led them to pursue it professionally.
After leaving college in 2018 as an English major, Ellis worked full-time as an artist and activist while gaining experience through collaborations, internships, apprenticeships, and employment with New Haven arts organizations including Artspace, the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, International Festival of Arts & Ideas, and Creative Arts Workshop. Through The Pride Network’s Leadership Initiative, they were mentored by an accomplished festival producer, whose guidance helped bring the inaugural Punq Noire festival to life in 2022.
Ellis is the founder of Punq Noire, a Connecticut-based grassroots organization that produces music events centered on the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ histories that shaped music genres, particularly alternative music. Through the festival, local independent musicians who carry those traditions forward receive opportunities to perform, collaborate, and connect with audiences.
Ellis is also your neighborhood punk star, Indigaux The Fae, a rap artist whose work delivers raunchy, seductive calls to action against patriarchy and capitalism. They use dry comedy, sass and rhyme to make audiences boogie and mosh while feeling confident and entertained.
Ellis returned to college in 2025 and now studies Art History with a minor in Arts Administration & Cultural Advocacy at Southern Connecticut State University. Their experience with synesthesia inspired them to begin making music as a way to translate the colors and textures they experience through sound. Their early music was experimental and instrumental, with texture, sound, and memory used as tools for image-making.
The Bitsie Clark Fund will support the continuation of this exploration through a transmedia project incorporating Ellis’s original music, poetry, and visual art, allowing the different parts of their artistic practice to be developed as one body of work.
Julie Francois is a Haitian American interdisciplinary artist and museum worker driven by history as it relates to the present to drive her work and practice. Based in New England, she holds her BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and currently works as the Art Bridges Fellow at the Mattatuck Museum, focusing on diversifying museum leadership and curatorial work.
Art has been a constant in her life since childhood. Growing up, it became a place where she could retreat into her imagination, explore her love of fashion and design, develop fine motor skills, and spend quiet time reflecting on self and the world around her. Creating gave Julie a sense of purpose and curiosity long before understanding that it could become a career. As she grew older, Julie became determined to pursue art seriously.
She attended Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School to demonstrate—to both herself and those around her—that she was committed to making art every day and preparing for a future in the arts. That experience provided the foundation needed to continue her education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, where her practice expanded from technical exploration into research-driven work centered on photography, archives, and Black visual culture. While studying the history of photography, she became increasingly aware of the ways the medium has historically excluded or misrepresented Black communities. In response, she turned toward her own family's photographs and Black archives as spaces of truth, memory, and self-representation. Since 2021, her work has focused on digitizing, preserving, and reimagining family and institutional archives through photography, collage, and mixed media. These projects have reinforced her belief that art can preserve histories that might otherwise be lost while creating moments of recognition and belonging for others.
Julie's work has been showcased regionally across the Northeast. She has led collaborative community workshops at the Tufts University Archive Center and Tufts Africana Center, given speeches relating to her interdisciplinary art practice at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and has been a visiting lecturer at Quinnipiac University. At the Mattatuck Museum, she works in the curatorial department to support a variety of Art Bridges initiatives and collaborates across the institution to promote public accessibility and engagement.
Bitsie's Story
Bitsie Clark, who stood four foot eleven, has been described as seeming to be six foot six. Others simply say she was larger than life. What is clear to all who knew her is that Bitsie was a powerhouse. Bitsie was a giant in this region, especially during her two decades as the Executive Director of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. She was central to the launch of the Audubon Arts District and helped establish the arts as a driving economic force in Greater New Haven.
Many of Bitsie’s most meaningful actions at the Arts Council, however, stemmed from her everyday interactions with the constant stream of people who sought her advice. She gave counsel to individual artists, nurtured their talents and helped them achieve their dreams. The Bitsie Fund aims to do the same.
The Bitsie Fund is managed by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. If you are interested in making a donation you can do so here.
The Bitsie Fund has been awarding grants to extraordinary artists in the community since its inception in 2018. Meet them here.
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2027