Nicole Rupersburg

Co-op organizers and participants (from left) Karon Smith, Courtney Bowles, Faith Barton, Keenan Jones, and Mark Strandquist

People's Paper Co-op rewrites the narratives of those with criminal records through papermaking

This is the third in a series of artist profiles featuring the work of artists around social justice, policing, and activism. Click on the links to read previous stories on Detroit's…


Katy Rubin

Theatre of the Oppressed NYC uses theatre to address social justice issues

This is the second in a series of artist profiles featuring the work of artists around social justice, policing, and activism. The first, on Detroit's Allied Media Conference, can be…


Morgan WIllis

Allied Media Conference incorporates all varieties of media to incite social change

This is the first in a series of artist profiles featuring the work of artists around social justice, policing, and activism. Look for more profiles in the coming weeks.  The Allied Media…


Karen Walters

Karen Walters reinvented herself by reinventing Cuyahoga Valley's independent music scene

Karen Walters is a lifelong resident of Peninsula, Ohio, located in the heart of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. She worked in advertising for 17 years before her job got sent to the Dominican…


Alex Cruz

Charlotte Arts Center promotes inclusion, independence and growth for resident artists

The Charlotte Arts Center offers adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities a means of creative expression, integrating with the community, and even earning some income. "We look at what…


Ashley Hanson and Andrew Gaylord

PlaceBase Productions builds rural communities through participatory theatre

Ashley Hanson grew up spending much of her childhood in Aitkin, a small town of fewer than 2,000 people in northern Minnesota. Like many young people who grow up in small towns, she was dying to get…


Sam Rodriguez

Sam Rodriguez explores cultural hybridity and identity through a plurality of mediums

San Jose artist Sam Rodriguez doesn't fit neatly into any one particular category. You can't look at his body of work and say, "Oh, he's a graffiti muralist," or "Oh, he makes mixed-media pop art,"…


Jami Duffy

Denver-based Youth on Record is an innovative music education program with national relevance

Youth on Record was formed in 2007 by members of Denver hip hop and rock band Flobots as a platform for youth and youth-adult organizing. It has evolved significantly since those early days, and is…


Michael Strand

Michael Strand affects change in social systems through pottery

Archaeologists and anthropologists alike use pottery to better understand a culture. Pottery tells us about a culture's history, from everyday domestic routines to trade practices, even rituals…


Lindsay Tucker So

Write Your Block relates poetry and place in Philadelphia

Philadelphia has a rich heritage of poetry reflected in a diversity of poets and a vibrant poetry culture that includes respected institutions like the Kelly Writers House at the University of…


Vinson Muhammad

As Allah's Apprentice, Vinson Muhammad leads his 'be yourself' motto by example

Oscar Wilde once said, "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken." Vinson Muhammad embodies that ethos and lives it every single day. Muhammad is known by the stage name "Allah's Apprentice," or…


Haleem Rasul

Haleem Rasul is teaching the world to Jit

Haleem "Stringz" Rasul is a dancer, designer, and filmmaker born and raised in Detroit. The dancers in his family were on his father's side, and Rasul was inspired by his late cousin who, he says,…


Hattie Mae Williams

Hattie Mae Williams brings guerrilla dance performances to public places with Tattooed Ballerinas

Hattie Mae Williams grew up in Miami and attended the New World School of Arts magnet high school where, she says, she learned a lot about how to use art as a way to promote social change. She then…


Liz Miller

Liz Miller creates installations that explore the beauty in devastation

Liz Miller is a Minnesota-based artist who describes herself thusly: "I'm an artist who is currently fascinated with weapons, invasive species, and pattern/ornament/decoration. My installations…


David Swirsky

David Swirsky has such Big Love for Akron, he's even leading an Intervention

David Swirsky is the Chapter Leader of the Akron League of Creative Interventionists, a global network that creates shared experiences in public space that break down social barriers and catalyze…


Lenka Clayton

Lenka Clayton, An Artist in Residence in Motherhood

Since 1860, in the afterglow of the Industrial Revolution and on the eve of the Civil War, the number of working mothers has risen 800 percent. For as long as women in contemporary Western society…


Scott Galloway

100 Words Film Festival is a democratizing film fest for the Twitter generation

In today's 140-character cultural climate, it can be quite a challenge to hold an audience's attention. The 100 Words Film Festival in Charlotte, which made its debut last November, is a film…


Joi Sears

Joi Sears leads the Theatre for the Free People on the world's stage

Joi Sears is a lot of things; stationary isn't one of them. She started out as a dancer, starting with the Cincinnati Ballet then moving on to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in New York and…


Adam Buehler

Reach Studio reaches artists homeless and in transition, treating them as artists first

Art therapy is a well-established practice that uses the creative process to help improve a person’s physical, mental, and emotional well-being. RedLine Denver, an "urban laboratory" that fosters…


Jonathan Harwell-Dye

Jonathan Harwell-Dye helps the Macon Arts Alliance get a seat at the table

Jonathan Harwell-Dye's career in the arts didn't start out in the most obvious way. The Director of Communications for the Macon Arts Alliance began as a science illustration major at the University…


Rocio Cabello and Renny Molenaar

iMPeRFeCT Gallery celebrates artists with commitment and the collision of high and low art

The concept of "perfection" in the art world is almost impossible to attain, yet that doesn't stop artists from trying or critics from criticizing. It was the rejection of this nebulous idea of…


Sam White

Sam White makes the Bard's enduring themes on the human condition relevant to Detroiters

Shakespeare…in Detroit? Sam White not only thought it could happen, but also that it should. So, in 2012, she founded Shakespeare in Detroit. White – an actor, comedian, journalist, marketer,…


Pilar Agüero-Esparza

Pilar Agüero-Esparza is an artist, teacher, and mother who explores themes of labor and domesticity

It is natural for artists to continuously return back to recurring themes in their work throughout their career, and Pilar Agüero-Esparza is no exception. Agüero-Esparza is a visual artist based in…


Ariana Hernandez-Reguant and Ernesto Oroza

HICCUP creates positive disruption to bring visibility to Hialeah

The souvenir is as much a time-honored vacation tradition as is taking photos standing awkwardly next to world-renowned historic landmarks and tuning out the kids in the backseat as they continually…


Toni Pierce-Sands and Uri Sands

TU Dance makes modern dance accessible to a diverse community in St. Paul

TU Dance, a professional dance company and dance education center located in St. Paul, was founded by Uri Sands and Toni Pierce-Sands in 2004. Initially called Space TU Embrace, the organization…


Erik Urycki

Erik Urycki of The Speedbumps bolsters Northeast Ohio's singer-songwriter community

Erik Urycki is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist with the Akron-based indie folk band The Speedbumps. That's his "day job," at least; when he's not writing for, playing or recording with the band,…


Barbara Luderowski

The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh creates a world of immersive, interactive installation art

The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh is a museum dedicated to installation art. But to put it that succinctly doesn't nearly do it justice. More fittingly, the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh is a…


Nathaniel Chaitkin

Bach and Boombox declassifies the classics, mixing the Beastie Boys with Beethoven

Nathaniel ("Nat") Chaitkin grew up in the music world. Both of his parents were musicians and he grew up about a mile from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York. "My idea of living…


Kirsten Stoltz

M12 Collective brings experiential art to the American High Plains

M12 is an artists' collective based in Byers, Colorado, a rural town in the American High Plains. The work of the collective inhabits rural places, and explores the aesthetics of those rural cultures…


Gayle Isa

Asian Arts Initiative shepherds community engagement and integration in Philly's Chinatown North

Gayle Isa started working at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia in 1993. This was in the aftermath of the infamous Rodney King verdict and the riots in Los Angeles that followed. Racial…