make art, be art

I envision a future saturated with loving relationships.

I believe in the arts to take us there.

make art, be art is an educational and spiritual home for healing arts programming based in Chicago. Engaging with study, ritual, and artistry, we tend to the practices needed to be in loving relationships.

Upcoming Collaborations

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Ongoing Offerings

I believe in learning that happens with the whole body.

This healing arts programming includes workshops and educational series that combine ritualized text study, conversation, and creative process through visual art making, storytelling, and/or movement practices.

I collaborate with a variety of organizations, community groups, and cultural workers to make offerings available both online and in person. All programming is either free, donation based, or offers a sliding-scale.

make art, be art

make art, be art
story circle

story circle
new inventions

new inventions
dreamwork towards freedom

dreamwork towards freedom
humor heals

humor heals

Framework

At make art, be art, we experiment with the sacred, the silly, and the subversive.

We embody the roles of the artist, storyteller, mover, visionary, weaver, and builder — even and especially if those are roles we don’t usually claim. That’s because we believe these roles have something to teach us about the practices we need to cultivate loving relationships. 

This graphic is inspired by Edgar Villanueva in his book Decolonizing Wealth where he describes shifting culture from division, control, and exploitation to connection, relation, and belonging.

These are pieces I made after I left teaching high school and decided to dedicate myself to a spiritual, artistic practice.

Our name — make art, be art — is inspired by teachings from Thích Nhất Hạnh. He writes:

“Our quality of being determines our quality of doing.”

make art, be art is about creating the liberatory world we want to live in and becoming the loving people ready to inhabit it.

Yes, we make art to produce beautiful, meaningful, and precious things. I’m curious about the ways we become art — we become beautiful, meaningful, and precious to ourselves and one another.

Previous Offerings

Co-facilitated with Deborah Eliezer, hosted by Aviva Arts

Co-facilitated with Deborah Eliezer, hosted by Aviva Arts

Co-facilitated with A'aron Heard

Co-facilitated with A'aron Heard

Co-facilitated with A'aron Heard for Studio Pathways

Co-facilitated with A'aron Heard for Studio Pathways

Co-facilitated with A'aron Heard

Co-facilitated with A'aron Heard

Jewish Studio Project Practicum

Jewish Studio Project Practicum

Hosted by Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Hosted by Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Hosted by Studio Pathways

Hosted by Studio Pathways

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…dreaming ahead…

I dream of a warm, vibrant, and accessible third space where cultural workers weave their artistic and spiritual practices with one another. We gather to ground in ancestral teachings, activating our shared power through our creativity. Together, we are devoted to heal what separates us, practice repair and care, imagine liberatory futures, and co-create a thriving sanctuary for all.

In the future, I hope to co-create gatherings and events, storytelling and skillshare retreats, healing rituals, group devised installations and performances, and community cohorts for extended learning and practice. 

Learning Lineages

I believe in naming and honoring our teachers.

make art, be art weaves wisdom from the following lineages: abolition, disability, healing, and transformative justice, intersectional & Black feminism, pedagogy & theatre of the oppressed, Jewish Studio Project, Kohenet, and Shomeret Shalom (Jewish nonviolence).

Learning Communities & Training:

My work is informed & guided by:

  • When No Thing Works by Norma Kawelokū Wong

  • Liberated to the Bone by Susan Raffo

  • Finding Our Way and What It Takes to Heal by Prentis Hemphill

  • Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

  • Shomeret Shalom: Replanting Seeds of Jewish Revolutionary Nonviolence by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb

  • Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, We Will Not Cancel Us, Holding Change by adrienne maree brown

  • Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

  • Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis

  • Rest is Resistance and We Will Rest! by Tricia Hersey

  • Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva

  • The Activist's Tao Te Ching by William Martin

  • Love & Rage by Lama Rod Owens

  • Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

  • This Bridge Called My Back edited by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa

  • Undertorah: An Earth-Based Kabbalah of Dreams by Jill Hammer

  • Loving Our Own Bones by Julia Watts Belser

  • All About Love by bell hooks

  • Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

  • Lessons in Liberation: Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators edited by The Education for Liberation Network & Critical Resistance Editorial Collective

  • Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Phd

  • There is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart: Mending the World as Jewish Anarchists by Cindy Milstein

  • This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared by Rabbi Alan Lew

  • We Want To Do More Than Survive by Bettina L. Love

  • Do Your Lessons Love Your Students? by Mariah Rankine-Landers and Jessa Brie Moreno

  • Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond

  • Theatre for Community, Conflict & Dialogue by Michael Rohd

  • Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal

  • Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education by Lois Hetland

Let’s Connect

Interested in working together? Have an idea for a collaboration? I would love to hear from you.

make art, be art is fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas.

We accept 1-time donations as well as automatic, recurring, monthly donations.

Supporting this work contributes directly to affordable healing arts programming while paying artists & cultural workers a living wage.

make art, be art is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of make art, be art must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

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