Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution with MAP2020: The Further We Roll, The More We Gain (MAP 2020), was an arts festival at locations throughout Dallas - Fort Worth (DFW), produced through my organization, Make Art with Purpose (MAP). A core component of MAP 2020 was the commissioning of female artists to design flags visualizing themes connected to the Nineteenth Amendment. In total 19 women (artists and writers) participated in MAP2020 in an array of programs that included exhibitions, public talks, workshops and education programs. In addition to commemorating women’s suffrage, MAP2020 critically examined various aspects of the amendment, such as the role of woman of color in the movement, and who received the right to vote and who did not, according to race and other factors.

It is well documented that women, especially women of color, are under-represented in the arts. While there is nearly a 50/50 split in the number of female working artists and number of MFAs earned, 25% of projects and exhibitions are produced by women, 4% by women of color. Using the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, MAP 2020 provided funding and space for female artists and proposed ideas and actions for the sustainability of this effort over the long term.

MAP 2016: Use Your Voice was a series of monthly pop-up events throughout North Texas featuring visual and performing artists around the theme, Use Your Voice. MAP 2016 aimed to connect people and ideas across race, cultures, ethnicities and neighborhoods through the arts.  Additionally, MAP 2016 provided creative opportunities for established and emerging artists of color; to amplify positive, creative voices; and to reach new audiences at the edges of the urban centers and in communities that may not get to the Dallas' central Arts District or other areas with a concentration of cultural centers.  

At the invitation of ARTMargins, I guest produced a special issue of the on-line edition of the Journal, which investigated historical and contemporary environmental art in the former Eastern Bloc countries through the lenses of capitalism, globalization, climate change and the legacy of Socialism. Traveling through Central Europe I had conversations with artists and curators about the connection of art, ecology and dissidence in the former Socialist Bloc, a topic that I first became interested in as a Fulbright Scholar in Slovakia in 2006. Participants included Nina Czlegledy, Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Tamás Kaszás, Marjetica Potrč and Rudolf Sikora. The material produced for ARTMargins included transcripted interviews, video, photography, archival art and other forms of interaction with artists and cultural producers concerned with the idea and the material reality of what goes by the name of the "natural environment."

Six curators investigate how contemporary society visually registers and address concerns of vulnerability, struggle and crisis. Whether through direct or indirect action, humor, irony, or empathy via documentation, data, graphic depiction, media manipulation and social engagement. Organized by Greg Metz.

Kael Alford: Perceived Threat: The Texas Survivalists – Spike Johnson and Optic Nerve – by the women of Resolana, a program of Volunteers of America Texas.

Janeil Engelstad: Zone of Resistance – Tomáš Rafa, Rudolf Sikora, Václav Vašků and Jana Želibská

Mona Krasa: NØTABle SelFleS$$ AFFeCT – Andrew Blanton

One of the defining events of the twentieth century was the momentous fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. For many Central and Eastern European artists the political and social changes that followed the break-up of the Soviet- bloc, fundamentally changed the subject and style of their work. UNFREE FREEDOM examined how blacklisted artists
responded to the restraints imposed on them under communist regimes and how their worked changed when those systems fell apart. Featured artists include former dissidents who took the view that being blacklisted was a refuge away from the government mandate of making work in the Socialist Realism style ... a place and state of being that Slovak artist Rudolf Sikora termed an “unfree freedom.” The exhibition also includes artists' books and other works by young, emerging artists who are responding to a new set of freedoms and constraints, brought about by democracy, capitalism and globalization.

Image: Brochure, UNFREE FREEDOM featuring Exclamation Mark, Rudolf Sikora, Photo Collage. Paper. 1974

Art Works grew from my time volunteering at The Education Project (TEP) in New York City.  Looking to create a program that included homeless youth from an after school program I was teaching, Art Works began during a staff meeting at TEP, where I suggested approaching Polaroid about have the teens work with the 20" x 24" Camera. Ten teens were matched with professional artists to create work on the giant camera, which was hand built by Dr. Land, the inventor of Polaroid.