On the first day of my TAP internship this winter, a visual arts and creative writing residency at PS 171 in Queens, my mentors, Chelsea Asher and Yael Ben-Zion, began class by asking our third graders to share what color they were feeling. Halfway through the opening ritual, the range of emotions, and the individual interpretations of how those feelings translated into colors, had already formed a rainbow: nervous greens, sad yellows, calm greens, happy yellows, just-okay bl

Presenting the Graduates of the 2019-2020 Teaching Artist Project (TAP) Class. This anthology is a compilation of their work, experiences, and the fun we've all had together during this academic year. Community-Word Project's TAP is in its 22nd year and is the longest-standing professional development program open to the Teaching Artist field by a non-profit organization in New York City. TAP is a collective of diversely experienced arts educators training emerging and workin

Vika Adutova is a research-based visual artist working with the semiotics of landscapes. Her practice combines drawing, photography, poetry, and film. She is currently making an essay film on landscapes and their narratives based on the coastal Barents Region in Norway. Vika was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and lives in New York. She holds a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology, the State University of NY, and an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She has

Vidya Cowsik Santosh is designer, artist, and educator based in New York City. She is committed to building user-centered experiences that help people creatively integrate their experiences, values, and identities. As a senior designer at Local Projects, she worked with the Equal Justice Initiative to create and launch The Legacy Museum in 2017. She continues to pursue equity and healing through her work as a teaching artist with organizations like City Lore and as a training

Hailing from East New York to Queens, Topaz Rodriguez is a local poet with a concentration in the poetic dialects of spoken word, and prose. Topaz’s work mainly focuses on the perspectives of being marginalized in many communities, the aspects of love in marginalized cultures, as well as the exploration of self actualization, and defining one’s humanity from labels to ideologies. Topaz’s love for poetry stemmed from the discovery of a local organization known as Urban Word NY

Şima Utku is an artist based in New York, born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. She holds a BFA in Illustration from School of Visual Arts in New York and a previous BFA in Visual Communication Design from Istanbul Bilgi University. Her work examines the relationship between personal and collective unconscious and draws inspiration from psychology, archetypes, mysticism, nature and storytelling traditions. Her current practice focuses on painting, drawing and printmaking. Şima

What it seemed to be a curiosity driven push, toward exploring new experiences, turned out being for Salvatore an existential journey to find himself. During his existence he has been a track & field athlete, a lifeguard, a consultant for energy markets, a passionate Jazz music listener, and a traveler: by hitchhiking, driving cars and picking up hitchhikers, riding trains, planes and buses. As a matter of fact, it has been his desire of preserving memories from live concerts

Moréna Espiritual is a cuir Afro-Taíno teaching artist, performer, and organizer based in NYC. Their work focuses on ancestral healing, re-imagining societal structures to create black/brown utopias, & inquiring about all emotional bodies that can live through the “self.” They created an event series that uses experimental performance, exhibitions, workshops, and vendors to encourage the spiritul autonomy of the NYC queer community, called “In Honor of Our Roots," which just

“Make honest art and let the world decide what to do with it.” - Madame Gandhi (Kiran Gandhi) Mintzu Chen is a Taiwanese American multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They hold a BFA from VCUarts in kinetic imaging, a major that encapsulates emerging digital media and new media arts. Mintzu’s art practice includes but is not limited to: poetry, animation/video art, Muay Thai (aka Thai boxing), and music. It’s important to note that their creative practice is fluid and bou

Minerva Diaz was a painter with DC-9, an HVAC engineer at Disney ABC, and a road-producer in the auto-industry until its collapse in 2008, which led her to pursue her passion of being an artist. It all started when then Senator Obama signed her work. Now, she has a growing collection signed by other influential individuals. Her work is permanently displayed at the Rosa Parks School and the Atomic-Bomb Museum in Nagasaki, Japan. It has also been published and featured at multi