Tawakalitu Amusa , 2010-11 NYC Civic Corps Volunteer (sponsored by AmeriCorps and the New York City Department of Service)

Tawakalitu Amusa recently graduated from the University at Buffalo with a major in political science and minors in philosophy and English. Hailing from Long Island (otherwise known as Strong Island), she is excited to be a new member of The LP team. Upon graduating from college, she began looking for opportunities to get involved with non-profit organizations committed to strengthening communities in the New York City Area. During her time with us, she is thrilled to explore the many ways art can make social impact.

Kiran Chandra, Works in Progress, Teaching Artist

Living between Calcutta, India and Brooklyn, New York has been an extremely enriching experience for Kiran. The privilege of having two homes has also been a position from which she understands and engages in the world.

A practicing visual artist, current graduate student at Hunter College and freelance educator, she finds it difficult to extricate any of these identities from the other. Her artwork is informed by these lives, as much as her teaching.

Petrushka Bazin, Program Manager

Petrushka Bazin is an independent curator and arts administrator committed to finding new ways of making art more accessible. As Program Manager of The Laundromat Project, she works closely with the organization's teaching artists and public artists in residence to present engaging art programs in unconventional spaces throughout the Greater New York Area.

Bazin is currently curating The Newark School at City Without Walls in Newark, NJ and Shame the Devil at The Kitchen in New York and recently curated the 2010 edition of Art in Odd Places, a New York-based annual public art and performance festival which took place on the length of 14th Street. Her past curatorial projects include Self-Storage, an exhibition turned special collections library sited in a San Francisco storage unit and artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher’s first European exhibition of their participation based website Learning to Love You More. She received her MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts, BFA in Photography and Imaging from NYU - Tisch School of the Arts, and was the 2009-2010 Curatorial Fellow at The Kitchen, a New York-based non-profit interdisciplinary art space.

Tyler Burton, 2010-11 NYC Civic Corps Volunteer (Sponsored by AmeriCorps and the New York City Department of Service)

Tyler Burton is a graduate of James Madison University's philosophy department where he logged many hours reading Kant, Heidegger and Hindu thought. After graduating, he moved to Seoul where he taught English to well-behaved and overworked students. Soon after returning to the States, he moved to Brooklyn and became a history and writing tutor to high school students in Harlem. Having grown up in the Appalachian foothills near Harrisburg, PA, he's beginning to learn the ways of environmental stewardship in New York City.

Brendan Carroll, Works in Progress, Teaching Artist

Brendan Carroll is an artist. His materials are accessible and utilitarian: the Polaroid camera and the Remington Sperry-Rand typewriter. He types anecdotes in the lower white margin of each Polaroid. The anecdotes are derived from his personal memory, other people's memories, from actual events, or from his imagination. He cofounded Agitators Collective in 2006. Agitators Collective creates site-related installations in urban locales that have fallen into neglect or dereliction.

Brendan has exhibited his work at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ; Leubsdorf Art Gallery, NY, NY; Center for the Book Arts, NY, NY. His work has been eatured in several periodicals, including The New York Times, Village Voice, and Time Out New York. He has participated in AIM 28 (Artist in the Marketplace) at The Bronx Museum of the Arts. He received his BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, in 1996.

Kathleena Howie-Garcia, Works in Progress, Teaching Artist

Kathleena Howie-Garcia (Lady K-Fever) is a New York City based multi-disciplinary visual artist. She began exploring her social/political visual voice in the early 1990’s through painting graffiti and murals in Canada while studying theatre and film at Gastown Actor’s Studio/University of British Columbia. She put herself into graffiti herstory being the first Canadian female to paint at the legendary Harlem Graffiti Hall of Fame in 2003 and 2004. Her graffiti murals have been featured in books Graffiti Woman and Burning New York as well as numerous magazines and websites. She has exhibited her work for over 15 years throughout United States and Canada and most recently in the Art for Change exhibition Haiti: Beyond Mountains there are Mountains. Her photography and writing has been published in magazines, newspapers and websites globally from the New York Post to Backspin magazine (2002-2004) from Germany. Her visual expressions are a creative balance pioneering her own feminine style and documenting life through the combination of mediums. She has also taken on the role as a curator to create exhibitions for The Bronx Museum’s Project Space and The Aurora Gallery.

Since 2004, her passion has focused on education development through community projects, creating curricula that celebrate the positive aspects of urban arts education that is engaging to children, youth and adults. As a Teaching Artist, she teaches with The Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, and Urban Arts Partnership. She is also a recipient of the Arts in Education Grant from the Bronx Council on the Arts.

Alice Mizrachi, Works in Progress, Teaching Artist

Alice Mizrachi is an artist, curator, social entrepreneur, educator and community organizer. Born and raised in Queens, New York, she has long been an active part of the art community near and outside her hometown. She has exhibited her works in galleries worldwide such as Powerhouse in NYC, Colette in Paris, Lab 101 in L.A, Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis to name a few. Her works reflect a nostalgia for a city that once was- an urban subculture, gritty and thriving through a variety of buildings woven together as a colorful luminous cityscape; sometimes vibrant but always invoking a hidden tranquility. Alice has also been featured in a variety of niche publications such as Giant Magazine, Juxtapoz, and Square Rootz for her hard work and dedication to the arts. She continues to paint murals all over the world as an additional part of her artistic ventures and collaborative partnerships. While educating today’s youth in central Harlem as a teaching artist, she is also keeping busy as a co-founder of the YOUNITY Arts Collective. Alice is not only known for her excellence as an artist and educator but also for her passion in uniting female artists and entrepreneurs through YOUNITY.

Shani Peters, Works in Progress, Teaching Artist

Shani Peters is a New York based artist (born in Lansing, MI) primarily working in video, collage, printmaking, and social practice public projects. Peters completed her B.A. at Michigan State University and her M.F.A. at The City College of New York. She has exhibited and screened throughout New York, including group shows/screenings at Rush Arts Gallery, the International Print Center New York, and the Schomburg Center for Black Culture and Research. She has completed residencies at The Center for Book Arts, and LMCC’s Swing Space and is currently participating in the Bronx Museum’s 2010-11 Artist in the Marketplace program and is a Keyholder Resident at the Lower East Side Printshop. In addition to personal and public arts projects she works as a teaching artist with Harlem Textile Works and other community organizations.

Alessandra Rodda, 2010-11 NYC Civic Corps Volunteer (Sponsored by AmeriCorps and the New York City Department of Service)

Alessandra Rodda is an artist, musician, and arts administrator. While in high school, this New Jersey native jumped across the Hudson River to study French Horn at the Juilliard School. She graduated with a French Horn performance degree from Manhattan School of Music in 2009. After completing business studies, Alessandra joined the board of the Patriot Brass Ensemble, worked in marketing and development for Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and held a position at 21C Media Group.

Rosemary Taylor, Works in Progress, Teaching Artist

Rosemary Taylor lives and works in New York City and is a 2007 Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant Recipient. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree at Brooklyn College in 2007 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA. Rosemary’s work has been included in many group exhibitions including: tART @ A.I.R., AIR Gallery Brooklyn, NY, My Heroes, Jack the Pelican, Brooklyn, NY Joan Mitchell Foundation Recipient Exhibition, CUE Foundation NY, NY, RE: GENERATION: Emerging Women Artists Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY curated by Joan Snyder and RE: GENERATION: Works on Paper, Kentler Drawing Center Brooklyn, NY. She has presented lectures at Tufts University and Brooklyn College.

Maya Valladares, Works in Progress, Teaching Artist

Maya is a textile artist and museum educator and works as an art teacher in the Gallery/Studio Program at the Brooklyn Museum. She has taught in Peru, Brazil and New York, and hopes to travel things around them, instead of thinking art is only paintings hung on a gallery wall. She is from Lima, Peru, where her family still lives, but grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her favorite food is either chocolate or sweet potatoes.