Women artists investigate public space in The Invisible City, Tucson, AZ. Photo by Krista Niles
I consider myself to be a public artist. I am committed to community engagement and believe that public participation can often expand, enhance, and make more relevant my own art practice.
I believe that art plays a critical role in how we see and experience reality and, lucky for us, also has the power to transform those visions and experiences. I’m drawn to work and practices that tackle challenging, complicated and contentious issues—ones that we as a society tend to ignore, avoid, or overly politicize. And while I don’t think art is obliged to involve the community or address some such issue, I sure like it when it does.
The projects highlighted here encompass multiple disciplines and illustrate my interest in collaborating both with other artists and the general public to ask critical questions about critical issues.
+/-92: Downtown Master Plans, 1932-2009 is a collaborative, interactive exhibit and performance featuring over 100 master plans for the development of downtown Tucson.
Sabores Sin Fronteras/Flavors Without Borders is an alliance of farmers, ranchers, cooks, chefs, historians, folklorists, artists and other advocates working to document, preserve, and celebrate food and foodway traditions in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
The Invisible City, a collaboration between NEW ARTiculations Dance Theatre and Kore Press, brought together over 20 women artists to explore public space in downtown Tucson.
We Are What We Eat, a collaboration between NEW ARTiculations and the Community Food Bank, explored the food we eat and the systems that feed us through dance and stories.
Re:Configurations, a NEW ARTiculations production, shared stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender relationship and partnership through modern dance.
Action Down There is a group of women artists and writers who create and “perform” public literary acts to bring attention to unnecessary violence, injustice, and over-consumption of resources.
The All Souls’ Procession is an annual Tucson event commemorating the cycle of life and death. I usually create a costume of some sort and march in the parade.
I heart Downtown Tucson is a project I developed with Josh Schachter and VOICES, Inc., in which teenage artists documented people’s love stories about downtown through interviews and photography.
110 Degrees is a Tucson-based youth magazine I co-founded and ran for five years with Josh Schachter at VOICES, Inc., mentoring teenagers in research, interviewing, writing, and photography so they could share their own and the community’s stories.
A Path to the River/Un Camino al Rio is a bilingual a children’s book, the result of a year-long project I conducted with children and neighbors in one Tucson neighborhood about its relationship with the Santa Cruz River.