ARTS & CULTURE
DESERVE
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The A&BC has empowered artists and organizations with the tools and services they need to grow their practices, gain influence, seek justice, and thrive.

Marsha Parrilla, founder of Danza Orgánica. Photo credit: Ernesto Galan.

How we
serve
Legal Services

For over 30 years, we have been dedicated to protecting the rights and creative works of artists and organizations through direct service, workshops, and legacy planning.

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Board Services

We believe that successful nonprofits require healthy, thriving boards of directors. To that end, the A&BC’s Business on Board program has been providing board service training for executives as well as board development consulting resources since 2002.

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Artists' Practice

Through our fellowship programs, we help artists and creative entrepreneurs grow their artistic practices and businesses. Through direct services, coaching, workshops, and investment, we help these talented solopreneurs set and meet their unique goals.

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Creative Space

Our Creative Campus initiative is dedicated to developing and owning creative real estate projects. We seek to eliminate barriers for smaller organizations and individual artists to access safe, affordable, long-term, flexible space.

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UPCOMING EVENT
Get on Board! | February 4 (Live Online)
February 4, 2021
1:00 pm - 4:00 pm $275

Boston-area nonprofit organizations are in need of experienced business professionals to share their unique expertise and passion for important causes. Business skills, enthusiasm, and the desire to make a positive difference can have a huge impact on any organization. If you have always wanted to serve on the board of a nonprofit, now is your chance to learn what is required and to find the organization that’s right for you.

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Valerie Coimbra on Boston City Singers and the Power of Choir

January 15, 2021

Valerie Coimbra is an educator and the chair of Boston City Singers, an organization that provides underserved young people with opportunities through a strong foundation of choral singing. Valerie has been with Boston City Singers…

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Zack Chomz on “Watching Netflix while the World Burns”

December 26, 2020

Zack Chomz is a Boston-based artist who works in painting and new media. He is also one of our 2020 Walter Feldman Fellows. We are excited to share an excerpt of the conversation we had…

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So You’re Planning a Webinar: Copyright Concerns for the COVID Era

December 19, 2020

As the world has moved to address COVID-19 through social distancing, more and more events are being moved to online formats. This method of presenting over the internet has its advantages, allowing for geographically disparate…

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FUNDERS & PARTNERS

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jewelry designer

Aaisha Anwar

Aaisha Anwar is a Boston-based jewelry designer specializing in wire wrapping and bead crocheting, and loves to utilize different techniques and textures into her pieces. She is a self-taught artist and works mostly in gold, silver, gemstones, and pearls, taking inspiration from her cultural roots and nature. Aaisha previously worked at Women's Craft Corporation at Rosie's Place for ten years where she taught jewelry making skills to other women. During her time there, her designs were featured in J. Jill’s catalogue. Currently, she works at Bead + Fiber in the South End where she continues to teach jewelry making classes. She enjoys selling her unique handmade pieces at craft shows and open studios in the Boston area such as SoWa Open Market. Immigrating from Pakistan to Boston, Aaisha fell in love with the city and has been a resident for over 25 years. In her free time, she enjoys walking along the Charles River and spending time with her three kids and two cats.  
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Mixed media artist

Chanel Thervil

Chanel Thervil is a Haitian American artist and educator obsessed with all things art, community, and history. She has a BFA in Painting from Pace University and MA in Art Education from MassArt. Recently, she's been making a splash in Boston via her public art, portraiture, and joyful collaborations with institutions like the Urbano Project, Museum of Fine of Arts, DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and the Boston Center for the Arts.

www.chanelthervil.com
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Photographer, musician, actor

Colgan B. Johnson

Colgan B. Johnson was born and raised in Dorchester, MA.  After graduating from Amherst College with a B.A. in Classics in 2003, he returned to Boston to teach in the Boston Public Schools for about ten years on and off while trying to find out what really sparked his interest along with education and helping others. Fast forward life, trying to start a music company, producing a couple hip hop CDs, hosting a karaoke night, some film and stage acting, and a bunch of creative collaborative jobs, he's found himself in love with photography and cinematography. He's currently working at a local charter school. When he is not teaching or engaged in the exchange of ideas, Colgan is heavily involved in making 1981andCo a success. If he's not taking pictures, he's probably reading, writing, or filming this beautiful and interesting place we call Earth. 

1981andco.myportfolio.com
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Multimedia artist, filmmaker, and designer

Daniel Callahan

Daniel Callahan is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, and designer. Merging various disciplines including painting, digital photography, film, music, writing, and performance, Daniel seeks to create immersive experiences incorporating story, ritual, and the human form to explore aspects of human resilience and mysticism. A graduate of the UPenn School of Design and Emerson College, where he received an MFA in Film and Video, Daniel is a recipient of the Donor Circle for the Arts and NEFA Creative City Grants. His work has been featured in the Museum of Fine Arts, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Queens Museum, and The Bay State Banner.

www.DanielCallahan.com
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Painter and mixed media artist

Laura Palmer Edwards

Laura Palmer Edwards returned to the studio and art class in 2002 after a 25-year hiatus. She was lured back into painting in response to loss & grief and as she did throughout her early years, used art as therapy and in the process awakened a long-repressed dream. Influenced by a class called ‘Art as Process,’ the philosophy and freedom unleashed an emerging artist. Involvement in ‘Art As Process’ set in motion a dramatic life shift where her focus became making art. Her first major sale was during the Annual December Sale Fundraiser at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, in 2003 generating sales in excess of $1500, and was named a Medici Scholar. She has produced and sold original paintings and mixed media images since 2002. Her works hang in numerous institutional and private collections in the U.S. and abroad. She works from her home studio and shows her work through private showcases, select vendor opportunities, and juried group exhibits. She is interested in representation.

yessy.com/Palmeredwards
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Multi-disciplinary artist focusing on leather jewelry and accessories

Lisa Lee

Lisa Lee is a multi-media Maker who dances between many disciplines.  Among these are literary, performance, sculptural, audio, video editing and wearable.  It’s not unusual for these to join forces in the form of poignant, even controversial installation. Lisa was raised in Boston, Massachusetts. At the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts (The National Center of African American Artists), is where her early experience was saturated in creative instruction and inspiration.  She later graduated with departmental honors from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Lisa’s current focus is on building multiple, strong and steady streams of revenue. The sale of her sustainably handcrafted leather rings, and that of her stunning, collectible paper art pieces, are among those streams.

www.behance.net/artisanlisaleeboston
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Video artist and photographer

Stephanie Houten

Stephanie Houten is a Boston-based multidisciplinary artist who explores artistic storytelling in social justice movements and community-led spaces. Her practice includes filmmaking, photography, video installation, and musical performance. She graduated from Bunker Hill Community College in 2014 and from Massachusetts College of Art & Design in 2018, and was an exhibiting artist at Boston's Illuminus Festival in 2018. She currently works from her studio at Humphreys Street Studios in Dorchester.

www.stephaniehouten.com
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Filmmaker and multimedia artist

Maria Servellon

Maria Servellón is an award-winning filmmaker, multimedia artist, educator, and arts advocate from Boston, MA. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art and Japanese from the University of Massachusetts Boston and her Master of Fine Arts in Film and Media Art from Emerson College. Her focus is film and photography, frequently dabbling in video installation art, digital art, drawing, painting, and design as well. A recurring theme in her work is the exploration of relations between art, music, and dance in a synaesthetic approach. Maria's latest and most successful short film is Hyphen (2018). Her work has exhibited and screened in Boston, New York, California, and Mexico thus far. Along with art, she enjoys singing, dancing, acting, martial arts, and traveling. She was named one of 2018's "Latinos 30 Under 30" by El Mundo Boston and was a New England Film Star Award Finalist for 2019. 

mariaservellon.com
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Musician, spoken word artist, and music producer

Timothy Hall

Tim Hall is an educator, artist, and entrepreneur from Detroit, MI, and moved to Boston in 2013. His poetry draws inspiration from his lived experiences - charting the nuances of blackness, masculinity, and the beauties of life. He has performed at Boston's Hub Week, The Museum of Fine Arts, Berklee College of Music, Outside the Box Festival, Bridgin' Gaps Festival, and many other venues and poetry slam communities around the Boston/Greater Boston area. As a musician, Hall has shared stages with world-renowned recording artists such as The Nappy Roots, Carolyn Malachi, Bilal, Chris Turner, and Aloe Blacc. In 2016 he released his spoken word EP - Colors Of My Soul and self-published book, Trust The Process. He is a 2019 Boston Foundation Lab Grant Recipient, was nominated for Session Musician of the Year by the Boston Music Awards (2018, 2019), received a 2019 Artist Luminary Award from local youth arts non-profit Zumix, and was honored by WBUR’s Artery 25 as 1 of 25 millennials of color impacting Arts and Culture in Boston. 

timvhall.com – website coming soon
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Jeanne Ciravolo

Jeanne Ciravolo’s mixed media paintings and altered domestic textiles are initiated from family narratives; they are informed by art historical representations of women and the relation of gender to power structures in domestic and societal contexts. In 2019 Jeanne earned an MFA and was awarded the Joan and George Cole Award from the University of Connecticut, with her work acquired by the William Benton Museum of Art. In 2019 she exhibited work in New York at Odetta, LMAK Gallery and Site:Brooklyn. Other recent exhibitions include ART NOW: Painting (Ann Arbor Art Center, MI) Social Justice in the Misinformation Age (Albright College, Reading PA), Truth as a Contested Concept (Woman Made Gallery, Chicago), Art in Times of Anxiety (University of North Carolina Pembroke) and Emerging (ARC Gallery, Chicago). Jeanne was an artist in residence at the Byrdcliffe Guild in Woodstock, NY in 2018 and was a Resident Fellow at the Anderson Center in Redwing, Minnesota in July of 2019. She is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut.
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Jewelry designer

Keyse Angelo

Keyse Angelo moved to Boston with her family from Brazil when she was 6 years old. Shortly after arriving in Boston, a neighbor gave her some costume jewelry that she took apart and rearranged into new pieces using fishing wire and safety pins. During her Sophomore year at Umass Amherst, Keyse participated in her first craft fair which was a success. From there, Flauxy Jewelry was created and Keyse has not stopped making jewelry since. Flauxy Jewelry incorporates many styles to create beautiful pieces that utilizes new and vintage materials. In addition to making jewelry, Keyse is a licensed clinical social worker with a Master in Social Work from Boston College. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she majored in Women Studies.  

Website: https://flauxy.square.site
Instagram: @flauxyjewelry
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Recording artist

Stephanie Mckay

Stephanie Mckay is a Medford based recording artist, educator, and arts advocate whose artistic practice lies at the intersection of art, community, education and social justice. She has published four albums of original music and toured internationally as a solo artist, bandleader, and performer in over twenty-five countries and five continents. As a dancer she was a company member of the Jane Comfort Dance Company for seven years and a guest artist with Urban Bush Women. Born in New York City, Stephanie has a BFA in modern dance from the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia, PA and a M.Ed in Art, Community and Education from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Her music is inspired by the relationships, history and life experiences of the people in her community. Through observation, interviews and improvisation she composes and interprets stories through music, words, and movement. As an educator Stephanie is passionate about using integrated arts to promote self agency, critical thinking, and creative self-expression. In Massachusetts, she has worked with afterschool youth art organizations such as Zumix, Raw Art Works, and Citizen Schools. Stephanie loves to co-create with youth using integrated art strategies and aspires to create a culturally reflexive curriculum through which she can share her passion for arts education with others.

www.stephaniemckay.com
Website: www.stephaniemckay.com
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Author, actress and singer

U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo

U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo is a Leominster, MA born Zimbabwean American grown author, actress, singer, and educator who has performed nationally and internationally in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, Portugal, and Ireland. She was a featured storyteller on GBH Suitcase Stories for her immigrant story “Seeds, Soil & Water.” Her poetry collection Soul Psalms (She Writes Press) was described by David Updike as “written in a fearless female voice tempered with optimism and healing possibilities of love.” Fall of 2019 she was featured as a Performance Poet on Resistance Mic!, part of the A.R.T of Human Rights series, an ongoing collaboration between the American Repertory Theatre and Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy alongside distinguished academic Dr. Cornell West. Her work was featured Fall 2019 - January 2020 in the exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration Through Contemporary Art, which is a home-coming in a way since she performed in Ten’s the Limit, the opening dance performances at the ICA in 2006. She is a member of the New England Poetry Club and an advisory board member of Write On the Dot. She is currently working on a multi-modal poetic one-woman experience “Roots & Revelations” about identity and belonging stemming from family roots in Leominster and Zimbabwe/South Africa - an incredible history of her family connected to the Civil Rights Movement and Independence in Zimbabwe. In August of 2020, she founded the MAOKO PROJECT, an arts-based holistic creative consulting group guided by indigenous Ndau principles of self-determination and community. When not performing her work she is a fitness advocate and marathoner who was interviewed on Emmy Award-winning Basic Black on WGBH. Mhlaba-Adebo is often running 5Ks and marathons with her spouse and young son for charity. 

Website: www.u-meleni.com
Instagram: @theumeleniexperience
Twitter: @UMeleni
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Playwright

Alexis K. Morgan

Alexis K. Morgan is a playwright, educator, and advocate who desires to use her art to create healing spaces for communities of color and for people with disabilities. As an African-American woman who has worked with students with special needs for fifteen years, she seeks to address issues faced by these two groups throughout her writing. Morgan's plays have recently been produced by Boston-based theatre companies, Company One and TC Squared. Her past projects addressed voting rights and discrimination (Show Me), maternal morbidity among black women (Birth Pains), and wealth inequality (The Art of Trying). Upcoming work projects include a project about race and policing in the United States and a piece about the lack of solutions for adults with disabilities. She is looking forward to having her first play, Concrete Dreams, a story about a young black man who is willing to risk it all for his brother with an intellectual disability, performed across the Commonwealth in 2021. Finally, she continues to develop her craft as a playwright. Recently, she was part of Company One's Season 21 Playlab that develops the work of new and veteran playwrights. In addition, she has served as both a playwright fellow and board member with TC Squared.
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Puppeteer

Tanya Nixon-Silberg

Tanya Nixon-Silberg (she/her), is a Black mother, puppeteer, educator and racial justice facilitator. She is the founder of Little Uprisings, a consultancy service that through curriculum design, workshops and practical pedagogy focuses on deeper relationships with schools to make racial justice an everyday goal. As an artist in Puppet Showplace Theater’s Incubator program, she produced and co-created a puppet production of Innosanto Nagara’s My Night in the Planetarium funded by The Boston Foundation and The Jim Henson Foundation. She was also a participant of the Black Puppeteer Empowerment Grant in 2020 and produced a short piece called "Feeling Good=Feeling Black=Feeling Free”. Her liberation work with children has been in many arts institutions in Greater Boston including the Boston Public Library, Institute for Contemporary Art, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the Peabody Essex Museum. You’d mostly find Tanya playing, radicalizing and learning from her 8 year old daughter, dreaming up fun ways to engage children in racial justice through puppetry and radically imaging how we all get free together. www.littleuprisings.org.

Website: www.littleuprisings.org
Instagram: @tanyaohtanya, @littleuprisings
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Violinist

Jordan Celeste Pettis

Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Jordan Celeste Pettis has had a deep love for music and performance since her childhood. Jordan received her Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance with a minor in voice performance from Illinois Wesleyan University. While at Illinois Wesleyan, Jordan began managing her quartet and a capella group introducing her to the business side of the music industry. In 2013, Jordan moved to Boston to study Jazz Voice and Jazz Violin at the
New England Conservatory of Music- receiving a Certificate of Jazz Performance in January of 2015. Since her arrival in Boston, Jordan has had the opportunity to perform for Gospel Night with the Boston Pops, be a featured soloist for several churches, manage four artists in the Boston area, and become a member of the Ill-Harmonic Orchestra which has taken her to the Tobin Center, the Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall. As a member of the Ill-Harmonic Orchestra, Jordan plays violin, provides background vocals, and arragnes music for the group. Jordan is looking forward to taking her music career to the next level as a Creative Entrepreneur Fellow.

Instagram: @jceleste12
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Visual artist

Merlo Philiossaint

Merlo Philiossaint is a young professional artist living in Boston, MA. He received a Bachelors in Arts in Studio Art at Umass Boston and a graduate certificate in 3D Animation from Northeastern University. He grew up watching cartoons, reading comics and visiting art museums. All three of these factors greatly influenced his love of art. A lot of his artwork takes a less realistic approach as a tribute towards his admiration for cartoons. Also having been blessed to have friends from many different backgrounds his art is influenced by elements from various cultures. He strives to respectfully represent the cultures that have influenced him while putting a piece of his personality within each piece. He currently has public art pieces in both Boston and Chelsea. https://www.merlophiliossaint.com/
Website: merlophiliossaint.com

Instagram: @merlo_concepts
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Poet, musician

Abria Smith

Abria Smith is a Boston native who has worked for over 20 years as an actor, musician, and writer. She attended Berklee College of Music, where she earned a degree in music business/management, and Cambridge College, where she earned a master’s degree in psychology. Currently the associate director for community engagement at Berklee, Smith has spent her 18 years there working with programs that empower communities through the sharing of institutional resources. Her professional life is driven by her desire to serve and express herself. She regularly performs community service both at work and personally, serving on Berklee’s Gracenotes faculty and staff volunteer committee and as a volunteer leader for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts. She has published a book of her poetry, Somebody Soup, and recently released a single, "We Shall Rise." Her signature statement—“When I cease to create, I cease to exist.”—sums up the importance of the arts in her life.

Instagram: @abria.introverted, @abria_the_wannabe_artist, @abrias.kitchen
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Painter

Robyn E. Thompson-Duong

Born, living and working in Boston, MA, Robyn E. Thompson-Duong is a contemporary realist painter whose work deals with challenging the societal perceptions and stereotypes of Black femininity and beauty by depicting women of color as Mother Goddess, grand, graceful, and beautiful. Robyn Studied visual art at Syracuse University earning a BFA in 2002. She later went on to earn an MEd from Lesley University. Robyn is a lover of nature and all things magical, which is represented in her figurative paintings including mysterious landscapes and magical realism. Her small work still-lifes are a glimpse into the beauty and simplicity of everyday life and activities. Robyn has participated in several juried, non juried, and solo shows in and around the Boston area. She has been a participant of Dorchester Open studios for several years. Recently, Robyn was named the Museum of Fine Arts Emerging Fellow for 2019. Her work is included in private collections and she has created many commissioned works of art.

Robynthompsonduong.com
Website: www.robynthompsonduong.com
Instagram:@robynthompsonduong
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Marla McLeod

Marla L. McLeod was born in 1981 in San Bernardino, CA.  She received her B.S. in Studio Art form Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) in 2014.  She graduated with her M.F.A. from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA) in 2020. McLeod explores black identity and social constructs through her portrait paintings, textiles, and sculptures. Work from her MFA thesis featured on the MFA, Boston 2020 Takeover Fridays social media project, the 2020 Area Code Art Fair StoreFronts Projects, and she was featured as one of the Boston Globes “5 Outstanding Art School Grads”. In 2019 she received the Will and Elena Barnet Painting Award, a Tisch Library Graduate Research Fellowship, and presented at Black Portraitures, NYU. In the Summer of 2020, McLeod co-curated the Special Exhibitions section of the 2020 Area Code Art Fair and is currently an Adjunct Professor at SCSU and a Post-Graduate Teaching Fellow at the SMFA at Tufts University.

https://www.marlamcleod.com/
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Brooke Stewart

Brooke Stewart (b. 1994) received her MFA in 2018 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She earned her undergraduate degree in Art and Art History from the College of William and Mary. Currently she is a lecturer at Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media and Design and Brandies University in the Department of Fine Arts. Prior, she was a Painting and Drawing Teaching Fellow from 2018 to 2019 at SMFA @ Tufts. She has recently shown work at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Contemporary Print in Austin, TX, the St. Louis Artist Guild in St Louis, Missouri, and at the North American Print Biannual at the Jewett Art Center at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA. Stewart is part of a travelling collective, Pictures Stories III, shown at the Edinburgh College of Art, UK; The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, USA; The University of Johannesburg/ Artists Proof Press, SA; Tokyo University of Arts (Geidai). Stewart is published in edition #41 and #42 of New American Paintings. She was selected by the Art Department at Wellesley College for the 2020-2021 Alice C. Cole ’42 Merit Grant in Studio Art.

https://www.brookestewartart.com/
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Zack Chomz

Zack Chomz is a Boston based Artist born in Massachusetts in 1992. He received his BFA at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2015, and his MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in 2017. Zack has been published in New American Paintings North East Issue 134 (2018) and has been Artist in Residence with the Royal Drawing School at the Dumfries House, Scotland (2016). His work has been shown in New York in the group show, Playbook, at On Stellar Rays (2017) – curated by Didier William and Josephine Halvorson. As well as in the group shows, “Emerging Talent Exhibition” at Seraphin Gallery (2017) and “Neighborhood Watch” at Works on Paper Gallery (2018) both in Philadelphia. In 2018 he was included in the group show “Above and Beyond” at AREA Gallery – curated by A. David Guerra.
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Molly Kaderka

“Molly Kaderka monumentalizes the ordinary and turns it into extraordinary. Kaderka explores the sublime around us as a transformative experience. Her work allows encounters with nature that help us reframe our existence and the lives of others in our planet. Through painting, printmaking, and drawing, the artist creates with the curiosity of those researching various geological and astronomical phenomena and with the integrity of those protecting endangered species.” — David Guerra
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Anthony Peyton Young

“Anthony Young paints to immortalize the gaze of marginalized people with black and brown skin and the social issues they face in America today. The artist abandons traditional painting and drawing techniques to develop an innovative language that is achieved through unconventional materials such as bleach or gunpowder. These materials, inherently destructive, expose identities damaged violently by racial discrimination. Young’s work opens necessary conversations at domestic and public spaces to strengthen inclusivity at any level.” — David Guerra

anthonypeytonyoung.tumblr.com
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Arghavan Khosravi

Arghavan Khosravi was raised in Tehran, Iran. She graduated from Islamic Azad University with a Bachelor of Graphic Design and completed an MFA in illustration at the University of Tehran.  After practicing in both fields for nearly a decade, she came to the U.S. to pursue her life-long dream of becoming a painter. She completed a post-baccalaureate program in studio art at Brandeis University in 2016, and is currently enrolled at Rhode Island School of Design pursuing an MFA in painting. She has exhibited work at various galleries in Tehran, Iran, including the Hena Galler and Atbin Gallery; in Providence, RI at the Gelman Gallery, Sol Kaufler Gallery, and Woods Gerry Gallery; and most recently at the the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. In 2016, she received the Sandra Shea ’56 Fisher Prize for Exceptional Achievement in the Creative Arts from Brandeis University.
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Katherine DiRico

Katherine Mitchell DiRico is a Boston-based artist working primarily in drawing, video and installation who considers the instinctual gestures of everyday life in an age of big data. In 2013, she earned an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She also holds  a BA in Cultural Anthropology and Performance from Smith College and studied abroad at the University of Dakar, Senegal. Her work is practiced internationally in venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art, September Gallery, SomArts Cultural Center, 66balmy Gallery, Crucible Steel Gallery, Grossman Gallery, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), 57Delle Project Space, the Massachusetts Campus Compact Conference on Civic Engagement, the Edinburgh College of Art, and Stockwell Studios, London, England. Publications include the Vincent Curtis Educational Register: Interdisciplinary Art Education: Creativity in a Culture of Choice and HESA inprint, Helsinki, Finland. In 2013, she received a Carrickfergus, Ireland Grant, and President’s Research Grant Award. She is currently serving as Director of Career Services at the Montserrat College of Art where she also teaches a Senior Fine Arts Seminar.
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Gabriel Sosa

Gabriel Sosa is an artist, linguist, and curator based in Somerville, Massachusetts. Born into a Cuban family in Miami, Florida in 1985, he earned an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2016. He also holds a degree in philosophy from Boston University as well as a diploma from New World School of the Arts in Miami. Recent exhibitions include Boston Young Contemporaries at the Boston University Art Gallery, SKIN at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, and the Independent Artist Fair in London. Some of his curatorial projects include Stark Naked at Gallery Kayafas and Drawing Connections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was an artist-in-residence at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, California in 2016. His work will be featured in the upcoming Yud Video Project at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, California.
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Jessica Tam

Jessica Tam was born in Sacramento, California and has exhibited work in New York at Schroeder Romero, The Painting Center, and Slag Gallery as well as in Chicago at LG Space. She has been an NEA Fellowship Recipient at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and was the Al Held Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Most recently, she has shown at The Box at Knox College, the Oxbow Gallery in Northampton, and the Joanne Toor Cummings Gallery at Connecticut College. She received a BA from Dartmouth College, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MFA from the Yale School of Art.
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Julia Traub Csekö

Julia Traub Csekö received her MFA from the school of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University in 2013. Though she has lived in the Boston area for five years now, she previously worked and resided in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Cseko’s primary artistic focus explores the relationship between the artist and the viewer through painting.

Her most recent series of paintings, titled “Straight from the Heart: The Rant Series” hold a conversation with each other while also including the viewer in the discussion. These works question the necessity of art making, address Cseko’s origins as an artist, and evoke the insecurities and faltering faith that pervades the artistic process. With these written paintings, Cesko says she “is able to share thoughts and ideas that [she] finds extremely beautiful and of utmost social, philosophical and emotional importance, but that would otherwise reside exclusively in the privacy of [her] own thoughts”. Julia Cseko’s work can be viewed in mural form around Boston and abroad, as well as at Emerson College.
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Sarah Hulsey

The work of Sarah Hulsey combines an interest in the structure of language and a fascination with the visual forms of maps and scientific diagrams. Through prints and artists’ books, she explores ways of adapting the visual systems of various historical diagrams to use as a metaphor for language. Hulsey is most interested in drawing attention to aspects of language that often go unnoticed by speakers such (i.e. syntax, phonology, etymology) and presenting some of the more intriguing patterns that emerge.

Hulsey’s artwork is strongly influenced by her educational background in Linguistics. Prior to becoming a full-time artist, she received a Bachelor’s and Doctorate in Linguistics, focusing on the fields of Syntax and Semantics.
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Kelly Carmody

Kelly Carmody has exhibited at venues including the Portrait Society of America and the Art Students League. Most recently, she was selected for the 2015 BP Portrait Award Show at the National Portrait Gallery in London and the 2016 Outwin Boochever Award at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.  In addition, the historic Guild of Boston Artists elected her to become a member in 2015,  she won the Edmund C. Tarbell Award in her first juried members show. The winning portrait is on the cover of July/August edition of Fine Art Connoisseur.   In June of 2015 she received the Blanche E. Colman Award.  She was invited to exhibit in the 2016 American Masters show at the Salmagundi Club.
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Sarah Meyers Brent

Sarah Meyers Brent is featured as a 2016 Best of Boston artist by The Improper Bostonian magazine. Brent has exhibited works in numerous venues, including her recent exhibit, Seep, Spill, Grow, at The Danforth Art Museum in Framingham, which was featured in Artscope Magazine. She was the recipient of the 2015 Walter Feldman Fellowship, culminating in an exhibit at the Walter Feldman Gallery in Boston titled Primal Garden, which also received critical acclaim in Artscope Magazine and The Boston Globe. Brent was awarded the Fay Chandler Emerging Artist award through the City of Boston.
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Michelle Evans

Michelle Evans is a metalsmith and creative spirit of continuous transformation guiding in the healing of the mind, body and spirit through her handmade jewelry, visual arts and ancient and modern holistic practices. Michelle loves working with metals and is fascinated with how it can be transformed from flat sheet, wire or tubing into functional pieces of wearable art. She uses different techniques as she designs and creates jewelry from metals embellished with natural and organic gemstones, healing crystals and found objects. She gathers her inspiration from nature and surroundings for abstract shapes, sculptural forms and textures to create jewelry with an organic flair. 
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Beatrice Greene

Beatrice Greene, born in the South Bronx to African American parents, is a poet, composer, pianist, trumpeter, and dramatist. Beatrice delights in convening community open mics with themes such as Images Outside the Box: Defining Beauty for Ourselves, Place and Transitions. Her poems include social justice, humor, theology, science and nature themes and can be found in numerous publications. Beatrice performs a one woman show presenting the poetry and life of Frances E. Watkins Harper, nineteenth century black woman abolitionist, lecturer, and author. https://beatricenotes.com/
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Lana Jackson

Born in Arlington, VA, a suburb of Washington, D.C., Lana migrated to Boston with her family in the 1960s to escape Jim Crow segregation laws of the South. Lana is a mixed media fiber artist, arts administrator, and educator. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Massachusetts College of Art as well as a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Maryland Institute College of Art. She is a recipient of numerous awards including the Hall of Black Achievement for Excellence from Bridgewater State College, the Art School Associates Trust Fund Award (Mass Art), the Phillip Morris Fellowship Award (MICA), the Distinction in Paint Award (MICA), and the Camille Hanks Cosby Fellowship Award, which enabled Lana to attend the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in its 50th Anniversary year, where she studied with renowned international artists Anish Kappor, Jessica Stockholder, Sam Gilliam, Nan Goldin, Joyce Scott and Jacob Lawrence. Recent awards include the CreateWell Fund Award (2016) and the Fellowes Athenaeum Trust Fund Award (2016—2018). 
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Vernell Jordan

Vernell Jordan is a primarily self-taught artisan craftsperson/designer working mostly in leather in combination with other media such as wood fabric, paint, metal, beads, and found and recycled materials. Inspiration is drawn from forms, textures, rhythms, and colors that exist in nature, music, and indigenous textiles and cultures. Over the past thirty years, Vernell has marketed and sold her work locally and nationally in juried and non-juried venues and selected craft galleries and retail shops. She has been actively involved in or a member of several organizations or committees that support visual and performance artists, most recently as the lead organizer for the Dudley Greenhouse annual Jazz Under Glass fundraiser, 2015 season UpMarket manager, Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative member of Art and Culture Committee. 
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Bithyah Israel

Bithyah Israel, a Boston native raised in San Diego, returned to Boston 18 years ago.  A cellist for 30 years, she founded a youth-centered cello program, City Strings United, in 2012, which she continues to direct. A teaching artist fellowship through the Massachusetts Cultural Council (2016-2017) increased her interest in professional development as an artist. Bithyah has composed and arranged music and acted in Boston-area theatrical productions. She is a member of the Celebrity Series Community Engagement Committee, Boston International Film Festival, Massachusetts Production Coalition, and is currently scoring for two graduate student films. She holds a BA in health administration and has worked as a Spanish medical interpreter in Boston-area hospitals and clinics. In 2014, Bithyah received the "Women of Courage and Conviction" award from the National Council of Negro Women Greater Boston Section for her work with City Strings United.  https://www.bithyahisraelmusicdesign.com/
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Tim Lorenzo

Tim Lorenzo loves sawdust. It has been a consistent positive in his life. Growing up building and remodeling homes provided a lot of “scrap” material to explore. Tim has celebrated the creation of sawdust in modern penthouses and historic clock towers. The existence (and discovery) of hundred-year old wood shavings hidden safely behind walls and under stairs has inspired Tim to try to capture hidden or temporary moments of life in his work. https://lumbercats.net/
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Porsha Olayiwola

Porsha Olayiwola is the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion. Black, poet, queer-dyke, hip-hop feminist, and womanist, Porsha is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston where she organizes, writes, and teaches. Porsha co-founded The House Slam, Boston’s first poetry slam venue and coaches their award-winning poetry slam team. In 2018, Porsha was named by GK100 as one of Boston’s Most Influential People of Color. She is the Artistic Director at MassLEAP, a literary non-profit organization in Massachusetts serving youth artists, and an MFA Candidate at Emerson College. She has a book forthcoming in 2019 with Button Poetry and is a Luminary Fellow at the Isabella Gardener Museum. Her goal is to maintain a cipher of self that is uncontrollable, undocumented and just plain ole dope. http://www.porshaolayiwola.com/
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Gianna Stewart

Gianna Stewart is Dorchester-based artist with a passion for public art. Her most recent public installation Iceberg, floated in the Fort Point Channel in Boston. She has created site-specific temporary outdoor works for the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA, 8Nights8Windows in downtown Boston, ReCreation on the Boston Harbor Islands, and “The Local” commission on the Rose Kennedy
Greenway. Magical Amass, 122 colorful cast plastic tents hung in a skylight at the Nashville Airport. She received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/ Tufts University. www.Gianna.Works
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Patricia Thaxton

Patricia Thaxton is a Boston based visual artist, fashion designer, and educator. She taught for 35 years and retired as the last home economics teacher within the Boston Public Schools system. Following her retirement, she embraced the opportunity to focus on her artwork. Thaxton’s work is a collection of ideas and images from sketchbooks dated from the 1970’s to the present. She is influenced by moments of everyday life. Her background in family and community development is an evident theme throughout her work. In addition, her experience with fashion design allows for a unique process as well as an interesting mix of media; ranging from cut pieces of paper accented by chalk pastels, crayon, pencil, watercolor and acrylic paint. No material is off limits. Her work has been shown as part of group and solo exhibitions throughout Boston. Thaxton was also a Featured Artist for Future Boston’s Hello Project. https://www.patriciathaxton.com/
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Ngoc-Tran Vu

Ngoc-Tran Vu is a 1.5-generation Vietnamese American multimedia artist and cultural organizer whose practice is rooted in community engagement and social justice. She was born in Vietnam and grew up in Dorchester and South Boston. Tran received her MA in Arts and Politics at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and her BA in Ethnic Studies and Visual Arts at Brown University. www.ngoctranvu.com
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