Gary Snyder is a poet, environmentalist, Zen Buddhist, and educator who was involved in the Beat movement, and read alongside Allen Ginsberg at the famous Six Gallery reading in 1955. He has published numerous books of poetry and prose and in 1975 received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection "Turtle Island." Additionally, Snyder has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, an American Book Award, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times, and many other accolades.

Snyder was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2003 and in 2012 received the Wallace Stevens Award for lifetime achievement by the Academy of American Poets. He is a professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

Ray King is an artist who uses light and color to create luminous sculptures that project and reflect light chromatics into the surrounding space to animate and activate the environment. King designs geometric structures that function as optical instruments to interact with light sources. His art embraces the physical, the aesthetic, and the spiritual. King began his artistic career working with stained glass and has exhibited his work internationally since 1976. His work "Connections" was installed at the Rockaway Blvd subway station in 2015.