About
Michelle Angela Ortiz | Founder
Michelle Angela Ortiz is a visual artist/ skilled muralist/ community arts educator/ filmmaker who uses her art as a vehicle to represent people and communities whose histories are often lost or co-opted. Through community arts practices, painting, documentaries, and public art installations, she creates a safe space for dialogue around some of the most profound issues communities and individuals may face. Her work tells stories using richly crafted and emotive imagery to claim and transform spaces into a visual affirmation that reveals the strength and spirit of the community.
For 20 years, Ortiz has designed and created over 50 large-scale public works nationally and internationally. Since 2008, Ortiz has led art for social change public art projects in Costa Rica & Ecuador and as a Cultural Envoy through the US Embassy in Fiji, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, Honduras, and Cuba.
Ortiz is a 2020 Art For Justice Fund Grantee, PEW Fellow, Rauschenberg Foundation Artist as Activist Fellow, and a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist National Fellow. In 2016, she received the Americans for the Arts' Public Art Year in Review Award which honors outstanding public art projects in the nation.
photo credit Neal Santos
Salina Almanzar | Project Manager
Salina Almanzar (sah-lee-nah ahll-mun-czar)(she/her) is a Puerto Rican and Dominican visual and social practice artist, educator and writer. She is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 2013 with a double major in Studio Art and English Literature. She completed the Arts Administration and Museum Leadership Graduate Program at Drexel University in June of 2017. There, she completed a thesis examining Creative Placemaking in the Lancaster Latinx community. She has since continued her research through continued data gathering via story sharing as well as serving as co-facilitator of the Latino Empowerment Project. Salina also serves as a teaching artist in Lancaster City parks through Lancaster Public Art.
photo credit: Ole Hongvanthong