Jaime Carrejo’s sculpture installations force viewers to see “the border” differently
Jaime Carrejo has been making art since before he even knew what “art” was. He just knew he liked to make things, experiment with different materials and surfaces, maybe do some painting, maybe burn some things in the backyard (as curious kids do).
As his art education progressed through high school, college, and graduate school, his creative motivation came from exploring the idea of…
Photographer Xavier Tavera documents the Latinx community from one border to the other
Xavier Tavera remembers picking up a camera when he was 11 or 12 years old and fell in love with photography immediately. To this day, he says, that “magical feeling” he gets from photography still hasn’t gone away.
His family immigrated to Minneapolis from Mexico City in 1996, and after that his photography changed completely.
“Just the sense of being here as a Latino and as a Mexican…
Collective Magpie explores the concepts of race and identity in cultural borderlands
“Collective Magpie = Tae Hwang & MR Barnadas + Participants”
So says the equation at the top of the Collective Magpie website, and it is meant to underscore the fact that they function as a “collective” outside of just themselves as the leading artists. All of the work of this nomadic collective is in the public domain, created in collaboration with community participants.
Hwang and…
Photographer Tom Kiefer documents the things that are carried across the border
In Tim O'Brien's short story "The Things They Carried," the items each of the soldiers choose to carry with them through the grueling jungles of Vietnam become an allegory for the human cost of the war itself. Photographer Tom Kiefer's project El Sueño Americano ("The American Dream") similarly looks at the human cost of war through the items people choose to carry with them across impossible…
The Mexican Woman’s Post Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the Southwest and other stories of life on the border from M. Jenea Sánchez
Photographer M. Jenea Sánchez grew up in Douglas, Arizona, a city that shares a border with Mexico. She remembers crossing the border to and from Agua Prieta multiple times every day as a child – to go to school, to visit her cousins. The border itself was less a barrier and more a region of its own: a person is not "from" one side of the border or the other, but from the border itself.
M.…
A Whole Life: A Portrait of Sharon Mansur
Sharon Mansur describes her childhood home as a place of collaborative creativity. “My dad used to draw,” she says. “We’d look at the Sunday comics, and if there was one strip we liked, he drew it on a bigger sheet of paper. My brother and I would color it in. We were always building things with Legos and Tinker Toys to create these worlds. I played violin; my brother played clarinet and drums.…
Duaba Unenra: Black People Exist In The Past, Present AND Future
Duaba Unenra comes from a family of creators. He can trace his own career path back to teachers, architects, musicians and entrepreneurs. He attributes many of his creative impulses to his mother, who is a painter, tailor, and textile designer. It was in her reference books that he learned to read at an early age and began learning about African art and mythology.
“Where I’m from, culture and…
Ricky Collins builds from parties to profit-sharing
Ricky Collins’ entrepreneurial mindset took hold when he was just 15, while growing up in Minneapolis’ Northside.
As a young rapper, he and his brother Nino were known for throwing outrageous parties, sometimes with guest lists of up to 1300 people. Nino would shoot videos of the parties as well as music videos for Ricky.
“So he would shoot my videos but he wouldn't edit them,” said Ricky.…
Za’Nia Coleman’s Tangible Collective, Tangible Impact
A community baby turned community organizer, Za’Nia Coleman is creating space for cultural expression in a way unlike what is typically reflected at the center of the Twin Cities arts scene. The multi-talented creative, though typically behind the scenes, does not lack in terms of creative abilities, doing everything from film, textile printing, costume designing, to artist engagement. This young…
DejaJoelle Brings Forth Prayers for Healing
Webbed in DejaJoelle’s full-bodied silhouette is the ancestral story of a Black woman’s ability to transmute pain into purpose through healing, love and resilience. Just as all colors of the rainbow evoke an expression, a feeling, a song; DejaJoelle is a weaver of the various pastels and deep blues that have coated her life in pain, beauty, peace and joy. She has evolved from the confinement of…
Elisha Marin: Making Place, Fostering Connection
The Rural Regenerator Fellowship brings together individual artists, makers, and culture bearers, grassroots organizers, community development workers, public sector workers and other rural change-makers who are committed to advancing the role of art, culture and creativity in rural development and community building. In 2022, we asked a collective of local writers to sit down with current Rural…
Artists Respond Q&A: DejaJoelle
In 2021 the City of Saint Paul launched the People’s Prosperity Guaranteed Income Pilot program, and Springboard for the Arts launched a Guaranteed Income for Artists pilot program to go alongside the City’s pilot. To deepen the impact of these pilot programs, the City and Springboard partnered on Artists Respond: People, Place, and Prosperity, a cohort of artists creating public projects that…
Atlese Robinson’s Journey Toward the Divine
When she was in elementary school, Atlese Robinson started journaling and writing letters to her mother. Robinson’s childhood included times of adversity and some traumatic experiences. She wanted to do well in school and valued her education, and, at the same time, she was quick to anger. She attributes her fast temper to a kind of post traumatic stress that resulted from early childhood…
Create new worlds with Chamindika Wanduragala
Chamindika Wanduragala can turn paper bags into papier-mache. She can sew cloth into creatures. She stirs ingredients into food for family and peers, and she has converted many rookies into full-fledged puppet artists. Her appetite for transformation — for iteration — has shaped her life and others’, creating community out of curiosity.
Wanduragala is the founder and artistic director of…
Ditch your comfort zone with Ka Oskar Ly
In a publicity photo for Ua Si Creative, three Hmong women pose against a pink background. Christina Vang smiles in dark red lipstick on the left; next to her, Ka Oskar Ly wears a dark brown sweater, yellow wide-leg pants, and huge tassel earrings; Teeko Yang crouches between them in a peach dress. White lines curve around the trio, with short messages inscribed in small caps. “Proudly women…
Imagine futures with heather c. lou
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay tried — and failed — to buy art from heather c. lou. She was strolling through Appleby Hall at the University of Minnesota, where both women worked at the time, exploring an exhibition of lou’s art. “I was like, ‘Wow, I really want one of these,’” Vongsay said. But that art wasn’t for sale. “What can be for sale?” she countered. “I'll make you something,” lou said.…
Ayolanda Mack Builds Up Black Families
Ayolanda Mack is a rebel and an idea generator. She didn’t always see herself that way.
Mack comes from a long matrilineal line of artists, and art is one way she reveals her rebellious side. It’s a common channel for the ideas she generates too. Mack’s maternal grandmother was a seamstress. When Mack speaks of her mother as an artist, she says “my mom is an artist, but she doesn’t like to…
Zaraawar Mistry is in Dreamland
Zaraawar Mistry gets the job done. In India, he says, his last name translates to “worker” or “laborer.” “Sometimes it's used for a carpenter,” he explains, “but if the electrician comes, you might refer to the electrician as a ‘mistry.’ Or the bricklayer.”
At Springboard, Mistry helps run the Artist Career Consultant program; coordinates schedules; processes payments; and more. In his…
Maia Maiden’s Golden Brain, Dedication to Dance
Maia Maiden has a golden brain. People with golden brains are said to be equally adept at right hemisphere (creative thinking) and left hemisphere (logical thinking) functioning. As proof of her aptitude for analytical thinking and rational processing, Maiden is an accomplished lab scientist. Her right brain facility is evident in her work as a hip-hop artist.
Throughout her academic career,…
Laura Youngbird Knows We Need Art
Laura Youngbird’s art isn’t pretty, and she doesn’t want it to be. Her striking pieces convey the reality of many Native people in America in all its harshness. Laura draws inspiration from her Native background (she is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa, Grand Portage Band) as well as from lived experience and family. As a visual artist, she is well-versed in printmaking, drawing, and…
Ka Oskar Ly Creates Connections and Understanding
As a kid growing up in France, Ka Oskar Ly wasn’t sure how to define “being Hmong.” Their parents were refugees, having fled Laos after the Secret War. “My parents didn't talk about who we were,” Ly says. “They just said, ‘You have to be Hmong.’” Now, Ly lives in St. Paul, along with an estimated 60,000 other Hmong Americans. She says being around other Hmong people — seeing them on the bus or at…
Felix Foster has Stories to Tell
In an arts world of critics and gatekeepers, Felix Foster invites artists into his life and sends them off with a knapsack of knowledge. He entered the publishing world as a high schooler, helping select and edit submissions to the Saint Paul Almanac. Since then, he has become the series’ editor-in-chief, and when he’s not creating or editing stories, he is lending his expertise to emerging…
Fair Warning, Herbert Johnson III Is Here to Dance
Herbert Johnson III has a whole persona. He has a moniker he uses when he’s performing, when he’s Krumping. His moniker is “Fair Warning.” He also goes by “JDot Tight Eyex” sometimes. Johnson said his “character is the quiet creative kid in the back of the class that bullies like to mess with but then it backfires on them.” He that his persona “is based on actual experiences.”
Here’s how it…
Dana Sikkila Flies Her Flag for Creativity
According to Dana Sikkila, she graduated high school “by the skin of teeth.” Months later, she earned a 4.0 in her first semester of college. She attributes the drastic change to the availability of hands-on theater and art courses — “classes where I was around creative adults,” Sikkila explains — in college. Ever since that first semester, she has soaked up textbooks’ worth of learning about…
Adaptations to Meet the Moment and Keep Engaged
This profile is part of a three-part series that highlights the work of five NeighborWorks network organizations that pursued new or expanded partnerships with artists or arts-based organizations to better understand, elevate and address issues related to gentrification and displacement in their communities. Using creative methods, the partners developed shared goals and tested new…
Jes Reyes, Artist We Admire
Editor’s note: As the national platform for Springboard for the Arts, Creative Exchange has long been a platform to highlight the artists, resources, and efforts in our national network. In this pandemic, as Springboard for the Arts’ work is increasingly online and accessible nationally, we’ll be turning the spotlight on Springboard staff and our Artist Career Consultants, to share more about who…
Looking back to the Rural Arts & Culture Summit
The 2019 Rural Arts & Culture Summit was held in Grand Rapids, MN, October 3-5, 2019. With over 350 attendees coming together to share ideas and opportunities around rural-based creative and community practice, the conversations were critical, collaborative, and hopeful. After the passing of a year that has brought so many unexpected changes and challenges, we wanted to mark the anniversary…
Adia Morris Swanger connects artists & nurtures family
Editor's note: As the national platform for Springboard for the Arts, Creative Exchange has long been a platform to highlight the artists, resources, and efforts in our national network. In this pandemic, as Springboard for the Arts' work is increasingly online and accessible nationally, we'll be turning the spotlight on Springboard staff and our Artist Career Consultants, to share more about who…
Women of Color in the Arts organizes and mobilizes women of color cultural workers
Women of Color in the Arts (WOCA) just celebrated its 10-year anniversary this past January at the annual Association for Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) Conference in New York, where the organization held its first formal meeting back in 2010. The milestone has had co-founder and founding director Kaisha Johnson doing a lot of reflecting. "It has not been an easy process, but it has been a…
What does it mean to be Black? “The ‘Black Card’ Project” explores ideas around Black identity and belonging
Dominic Moore-Dunson says he was one of the rare boys who started dancing when he was just three years old.
"I was a little hyper. I had so much energy. My mom was like, 'Let's put some tap shoes on this one and hopefully he'll come home tired,'" he laughs. His older sister was also in dance class and he just wanted to follow her around all the time anyway, so he was happy to go off to class…