Visual Arts

Adrienne Doyle headshot – a Black woman with glasses and a lip piercing, with teal and lilac braids, wearing a black hoodie

Adrienne Doyle: Burn Something, Build Something

Which is more important: art or the people who make it? Some say art eclipses its creators, and some artists sacrifice themselves for their work. But Adrienne Doyle, a curator, writer, and zine…


Community Heroes display

Community Heroes

Through Creative Exchange, we are always excited to share toolkits from creative community projects – especially ones created by artists, and using resources from Springboard for the Arts like the…


Amber Hansen: Process and Place

The Rural Regenerator Fellowship brings together individual artists, makers, and culture bearers, grassroots organizers, community development workers, public sector workers and other rural…


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,…


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,…


Amoke Kubat in Black and White

Amoke Kubat is Still Exploring

An Artist Inhabits Her Identity Amoke Kubat begins at the very beginning. “I always loved making art as a child,” she says. In her formative years, after Kubat saw the Beatles movie “A Hard Day’s…


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…


Jessica Lopez Lyman Knows la Cultura Cura

Jessica Lopez Lyman names her influences: Chicana feminist scholar Aida Hurtado. Writer/theatrical jazz artist Sharon Bridgforth. Artist/scholar Omi Jones. Performance artist/scholar Stephanie…


Candida Gnozalez headshot

Candida Gonzalez; Experimenter, Traveler, Adventurer

Candida Gonzalez is unafraid. They are not only a lifelong adventurer but a jewelry maker, an arts administrator, a teacher, and a visual artist. Committed to racial justice, Candida collaborates…


A woman in a tank top and shorts paints a bright mural with a butterfly

Dana Sikkila Flies Her Flag for Creativity

According to Dana Sikkila, she graduated high school “by the skin of [her] teeth.” Months later, she earned a 4.0 in her first semester of college. She attributes the drastic change to the…


Isabel Velsaco Gomez (right) displays her sculptures in a Poughkeepsie business.

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…


Building Partnerships to Lead the Work

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…


A building with a large poem, Ode to East End, on its wall

Using Art to Keep a Neighborhood’s Culture in Place

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…


A group of people in spooky and glamorous costumes.

Don't get spooked! Dominic Facio is here for you

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…


Jes Reyes, a woman with short brown hair, paints a colorful grid

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…


Work of Art: Business Skills for Artists

Developed by Springboard for the Arts, Work of Art: Business Skills for Artists is based on a series of professional development and entrepreneurship workshops that have been taught at arts…


Black and white photo of A woman writing, with a box and tin of art supplies in the foreground

Alison Bergblom Johnson's career builds on fruitful partnerships

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…


Handbook for Artists Working in Community

In this day and age of continued disparities, injustices, pandemics and systemic racism, artists are critical agents of change in our communities. More than ever, we need artists to be catalysts and…


In Las Vegas, artists, businesses, and the city worked together to create joy during lockdown

Over the last several weeks, Creative Exchange has been highlighting artists responding practically to the COVID-19 pandemic with creative solutions to this unprecedented problem. If you know of an…


Amplifier supports artists and communities in creative social activism

Over the coming weeks, Creative Exchange will be highlighting artists responding practically to the COVID-19 pandemic with creative solutions to this unprecedented problem. If you know of an artist…


Remaking a Jail in Rural America

When Calvin Phelps first met Nik Nerburn at the inaugural Artists Working in Community Intensive training in Fergus Falls, Minnesota in September 2018, he knew immediately that he wanted to bring him…


Counting Toe Tags: Hostile Terrain 94 documents the humanitarian crisis of migrant deaths

As the 2020 presidential election bears down on us and we find ourselves looking ahead at what is going to most assuredly be a very long, frustrating, emotionally exhausting campaign season, some of…


Leslie Barlow is working to build community, capacity, and equity in the arts world, 9 artists at a time

Leslie Barlow says she's always been interested in art from a young age, then laughs as she adds, "A lot of creative people probably say that, but it's true." The Minneapolis artist says she was a…


Creating space for Somali artists to thrive

As hundreds of thousands of refugees fled Somalia over the last 30 years, Minnesota, and the Twin Cities in particular, was quickly established as a welcoming place with ample work opportunities for…


These New Orleanians use poems and portraits to create deeper connections in their community

Jose Cotto and Christian Davenport come from very different backgrounds, and both have very different practices: Cotto is an architect, educator, and photographer raised in Worcester, Massachusetts,…


Razi Jafri documents the Muslim experience in America

Razi Jafri is pretty new to the world of filmmaking. After working as an engineer for 10 years, the Detroit resident quit his job in 2015 to pursue work that was more meaningful to him. He just…


Sioux Falls' Zach DeBoer loves to paint street lines

When Zach DeBoer graduated from the University of South Dakota with a degree in art education and an emphasis in print making, he just assumed he would be a teacher. Even when he worked at the…


Baltimore gallerist and fashion historian Joy Davis on Black spaces and Black stories

Joy Davis attributes her love of "old stuff" to her father, who worked as an antique buyer in the Baltimore area when she was growing up. "Through him I learned the value of material culture, but at…


Reflections on Springboard's intensive trainings

For over a decade, Springboard for the Arts has been offering business skills workshops to artists to help them build a living and a life. Since 2017, we have offered an annual series of intensive…


Michael Dantzler maps the interconnectedness of Eastover, South Carolina

Michael Dantzler is a full-time photographer, creative, and budding community organizer living in his rural hometown of Eastover, South Carolina, a town of only about 800 people that is predominantly…