Previous CAC Cohorts

CAC Cohort 2018-19

CAC Cohort 2018-19

Dominique Butler

Dominique Butler is a painter who primarily works in gouache and oil. She grew up in a small farm town in northern Vermont and currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland. She received her Bachelor’s of Art in Drawing, Painting, and Art History from Drew University in 2017. Her recent work revolves around viewing nature through the eyes of a person of color. Her paintings are captured images of the environment that are often overlooked. These pieces touch upon the distinct disconnection between black bodies and the great outdoors; prompting the viewer to question why nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism are white dominated. Dominique is currently serving at the Baltimore Orchard Project.

Baltimore Orchard Project

E Cadoux

E Cadoux is a facilitator, multimedia performance artist and chef. They are passionate about artwork and education that center bodily autonomy and liberation. In their first year serving in CAC at Wide Angle Youth Media, they taught middle school and high school groups video and audio production, and facilitated conversations about racial identity and unlearning racial bias. In their second year in CAC, they serve as the Youth Coordinator and Artist in Residence at FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture they organize and co-facilitate Youth Voices for Consent, a youth-led devised theater group that envisions a world without rape culture. They received their BA from the University of Michigan in Women’s Studies and Comparative Literature, with a focus on trauma studies and performance, and their certificate in social justice facilitation through the Program on Intergroup Relations Education. E is also a member of Call Your Mom, an interdisciplinary performance collective consisting of Sophie Goldberg, Emma Bergman, and Mia Massimino. (http://www.call-your-mom.com/) Known for interdisciplinary, immersive works, Call Your Mom uses video, installation, movement, and participatory performance to facilitate spaces of reflective vulnerability. The collective engages the public in conversational work that responds to local perspectives.

FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture

Jonathan Chamberlain

Jonathan Chamberlain is an artist and educator using photography as a means to connect with place and space. Akin to his work with community bicycle projects in Boston 10 years ago, he concentrates efforts to redistribute cameras and curriculum as vehicles for freedom and exploration. Through the camera’s lens they aim simply to focus, informing an evolving visual awareness and finding opportunities in the periphery to make positive social bonds. Jonathan is currently serving at OrchKids, where he is leading a youth Photography course and establishing a youth ceramics course.

OrchKids

Ebony Evans

Ebony Evans is a musician, performing artist, arts instructor, lightworker, and radical activist centering her work around the freedom, agency, empowerment, and self-expression of Black Womyn and girls. Ebony holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Urban Arts from Coppin State University. She is a 2019 Community Art Collaborative MICA fellow and currently serves as resident artist and education coordinator at the Modell Performing Arts Center at the Lyric. With years of experience in cultivating spaces of spiritual empowerment and body positivity for Black Womyn, she fosters growth and healing in the face of unchecked misogyny; and in her years-long work as an arts instructor specializing in African Folklore and theater for children in grades K-8, Ebony continues the work of dismantling white supremacy in our most vulnerable populations.

The Modell Lyric Performing Arts Center

Sara Golden

Sara Golden is an artist interested in art education, community organizing, and outdoor education. She has enjoyed teaching art and outdoor education to wide age ranges. Sara's loves trying new food, cooking, meeting new people, petting animals, going to the aquarium, and exploring. She grew up in Maryland and is excited to have returned, and has loved living in Baltimore while studying in the MFA Community Arts at MICA. This year, Sara is serving at Access Art, where she is co-leading an after-school arts program at the Morrell Park Elementary/Middle School, and co-teaching in the Youth Assistants program at the main Access Art center.

Access Art

Keyarra Johnson

Keyarra Johnson is a college sophomore who is currently working as the Program Assistant for Jubilee Arts' Youth in Business through the CAC AmeriCorps program. Being born in Baltimore and raised as an artist, Keyarra recognized the strong relationship between art and politics. She feels it is important to use the skills she’s learned as an artist to strengthen and improve her city. She spends her time she working on developing her skills as an entrepreneur, animator, and graphic design artist and collaborates with different organizations to help clean up the streets of Baltimore. She hopes to one day be able to give back and rebuild her community, and run a successful game developing company.

Jubilee Arts Youth in Business

Mia Massimino

Mia Massimino is a performer, painter, comedic writer and creator based in Baltimore Maryland. Mia is a graduate of the University of Michigan and received a BFA Interarts performance and minor in gender and health. Currently, Mia is serving in her second year in CAC as the community artist in residence with middle school youth at Access Art. Mia is also a member of Call Your Mom, an interdisciplinary performance collective consisting of Sophie Goldberg, Emma Bergman, and E Cadoux. (http://www.call-your-mom.com/) Known for interdisciplinary, immersive works, Call Your Mom uses video, installation, movement, and participatory performance to facilitate spaces of reflective vulnerability. The collective engages the public in conversational work that responds to local perspectives. Learn more about Mia's personal artwork at: http://www.miamassimino.com/.

Access Art

Theresa Montiel

Theresa, often called by her nickname, “Nacho,” was formally educated as a Painter and Illustrator and evolved into a graphic designer and art director. She had a 15 year-long career in corporate, in-house, and freelance platforms, working on projects that spanned branding and website design to social media and marketing strategies. Even with all the success in that field, she was not satiated and went looking for more. She believes she was pulled into Community Arts as a calling. Currently, Nacho is in the second year of her CAC artist-in-residency at Open Works, a Baltimore City makerspace, and is also a second year student in the Masters in Fine Arts in Community Arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art. While at MICA, she has honed her own pedagogies as an art educator and an activist, which she directly applies to her residency at Open Works. Focused on agency, autonomy and empowerment, she has cultivated a Teen program focused on skills acquisition (through the studios at Open Works), that can either apply to a college application or a job application. She has graduated three cohorts through the program since its inception in early 2017 and has programming structured through 2020 (and beyond).

Open Works

Maia Owen

Maia has lived many places but mostly calls Tennessee home. They earned their bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology at New College of Florida in 2017. As an artist, Maia uses a variety of mediums, including writing, printmaking, film, and photography. During college, they worked with various non-profits, museums, and grassroots organizations. Through their community work, they became interested in the intersection between art and social justice. Before their third year of college, they participated in a film course in Berlin, Germany, where they spent a summer collaborating on a film project with a theatre organized by refugees. Together they conceptualized and produced short films discussing what the future of Berlin looks like from non-citizen perspectives. Maia continued to work with the group and went back to Berlin the next summer to assist with a play the actors wrote and performed for an international theatre festival. During that time, Maia used photography to document the theatrical process and later wrote their undergraduate thesis about theatre and art as tools for storytelling, community building and empowerment. Before moving to Baltimore, Maia spent a year teaching preschool arts and music in Florida. Maia decided to join BCCC Refugee Youth Project as CAC Artist-in-Residence in order to gain a better understanding of how refugee resettlement operates in the United States and to share skills that encourage their students to feel welcome, confident, and to realize how powerful they each are. When Maia is not making their own art or teaching, they like to discover new music, go camping, or take care of their plants.

Refugee Youth Project

Nathan Paluzzi - CAC Program Assistant

Nathan Paluzzi, a Baltimore native, is an arts educator, community artist, glass/mixed media artist, photographer and musician. He earned his BFA from Temple University - Tyler School of Art with a concentration in Glass Arts. After graduating he returned to Baltimore to pursue a career in arts education. During this time he was a K-12 classroom art teacher and resident artist in several after school and summer arts programs. He is currently serving his fourth year within the CAC AmeriCorps program at 901 Arts in Better Waverly. At 901 Arts Nathan serves as the Program Coordinator as well as Art Instructor. In Fall of 2017 Nathan was awarded grant funding through MICA’s OCE Grant program, which allowed him to establish Baltimore Community Glass Arts (BCGA) based at 901 Arts. BCGA is a project developed to bring glass arts classes such as stained glass and glass fusing to Baltimore communities that may not otherwise have access to the medium. In Spring of 2017 Nathan also began as a Site Coach and Workshop Facilitator with Ramapo for Children, providing on site coaching to teachers in schools and leading professional development inclusion workshops for teachers and administrators in Baltimore. Since Winter of 2018 Nathan has served as Program Assistant within the Community Art Collaborative (CAC) AmeriCorps Program at MICA.

901 Arts

Laura Sligh

Laura L. Sligh, performer, teacher, director and visual artist, has a degree in performance from Morgan State University and has worked extensively in the Baltimore Washington area for over 20 years. Laura has worked as theater teacher for many years. She has worked as a private coach and with organizations such as Eubbie Blake, Baltimore Cultural Arts, Arena Players, Y.A.T.T.S and Baltimore city and county schools. As a director, Laura’s credits are numerous. She has directed musicals such as Grease, Little Shop of Horrors, The Wiz, Oliver, Once on this Island and Sussical. Laura was an Allen Lee Hughes stage management fellow at Arena Stage, and has worked extensively in the Baltimore area as a stage manager. Laura is also an experienced wig and makeup designer and has worked with the Baltimore Opera and Catholic University Summer Opera in wigs and makeup. Laura has also worked in local theaters such as The Arena Players, Eubbie Blake and Coppin State University were she designed wigs and makeup for Dreamgirls, Checkmates, Longtime Since Yesterday, Bubbling Brown Sugar and Carmen Jones, Laura also does the wig, makeup and costume designs for all of the shows that she directs. Laura’s newest venture into the arts is visual. Her mediums are oil, acrylic, wood, fabric and photography. She is now working on and looking forward to her first showing. Laura is currently serving in CAC at Single Carrot Theatre.

Single Carrot Theatre

Susan Tuberville

Susan was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee and completed her BFA in Studio Art and Art Education at Birmingham-Southern College. With experience teaching young people from preschool through high school and teaching English to adults, she left the U.S. to enter the field of international education. First teaching in Botswana and then South Korea, Susan further pursued her passion for connecting with others around the world! She is thrilled to create with the youth and families of Refugee Youth Project (RYP) while pursuing her MFA in Community Art and serving in the CAC-AmeriCorps program at Maryland Institute College of Art. Susan is currently serving as a second year CAC Member at RYP.

Refugee Youth Project

Frances Wertimer

Frances Wertimer is a painter, mixed media artist and youth educator. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Community Arts program at the Maryland Institute College of the Arts. She grew up in New York City where she attended LaGuardia Arts High School and began getting involved with social justice projects as a teenager. She received her BA in Philosophy from Skidmore College. After receiving her Bachelor's degree, she moved to New Orleans, Louisiana and graduated the TeachNOLA Teaching Fellows program with distinction. There she taught High School English and Middle School Art before moving to Baltimore. She currently serves as the CAC Artist-in-Residence at Jubilee Arts in West Baltimore. She enjoys working with youth because of their fresh perspective and unique ability to influence positive change. Check out Franny's personal artwork at: https://www.franceswertimer.com/.

Jubilee Arts

Sarah Edelsburg - CAC Program Manager

Sarah Edelsburg has served as Program Manager for the Community Art Collaborative (CAC) AmeriCorps program at MICA since 2015. She is an artist, organizer, and educator originally from New York City, but she has been living in Baltimore since 2009. She is an alumna of the CAC program, and the MA in Community Arts program at MICA (class of 2010). Before coming to MICA, she taught art classes to elementary school youth at Jubilee Arts (one of CAC’s long-term partners), and worked with a local artist/community organizer on two city-wide community arts initiatives, Autumn Leaves (a series of intergenerational storytelling events) and the New Day Campaign (an initiative to use art to address stigmas of mental illness and addiction). She also worked as the office manager at Repair the World, a volunteering program focused on education and environmental justice, and at the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, where she planned cultural arts events for public space in downtown Baltimore. It has been an extreme honor for Sarah to work with all the talented and committed Community Art Collaborative members that serve in the program each year. She is constantly impressed and inspired by their creativity, and their dedication to the youth and adults that they serve. She is also honored to partner with many incredible community arts organizations around town, who are working tirelessly with community members to use art as a tool for activism, advocacy, and personal growth. Many of these organizations are led by CAC alumni who are not only colleagues, but also friends. Sarah is grateful to be part of a community arts family in Baltimore (“The Greatest City in America”), that has been established by CAC, by the MFA Community Arts program, and by MICA.

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