Mike Wirth is a visual artist, illustrator, and graphic designer, best known for his thoughtful murals and large public art installations that focus on major social justice issues and his identity as a Southern, Jewish-American. Over the past 20 years, Wirth’s murals, published works, and digital museum exhibits have appeared in New York, Miami, Charlotte, NC, and internationally in Croatia, Poland, and Germany. Wirth is an avid educator, serving as an Associate Professor of Art and Design at Queens University where he collaborates closely with the Greenspon Center for Holocaust and Social Justice Education and the campus chapter of Hillel. He is a founding member and board mentor for the Talking Walls Festival, Charlotte’s first annual, citywide mural and public art festival. Recently, Wirth was one of 10 artists-in-residence selected for Charlotte’s wildly successful Immersive Van Gogh Exhibition.

Jewish Futurism An evolving philosophy and conceptual framework for affecting long-term change in the present day from a Jewish lens on legacy and ancestry. Judaism is an inherently future-thinking culture. From the call to Moses to lead the next generation to the Land without him, to the words of the Shema, or exclaiming, “Next year in Jerusalem”, Jewish people demonstrate acts destined for a time to come. Jewish Futurism is an empathy-based movement by shifting the current general futurist lens of technology evolution into one based more on spiritual evolution. Jewish Futurists are not oracles or soothsayers, instead, they advocate for self-determination through the process of the positioning of one's self to build a legacy and ancestry. Asking the key question, what kind of ancestor do YOU want to be for future descendants and what steps will you take today to make that desired future occur?