Mentorship

Mentor

Anuradha Vikram is a writer, curator, and educator in Los Angeles. In 2024 they were co-curator of the Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial: ablaze with our care, its ongoing song and the Getty PST Art exhibition Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption at UCLA Art Sci Center. Vikram’s book Decolonizing Culture (Sming Sming Books, 2017) helped initiate a global movement to decolonize arts institutions and monuments. Their latest book is Use Me At Your Own Risk: Visions from the Darkest Timeline (X Artists’ Books, 2023), using speculative fiction to address current and future social conditions from a techno-critical point of view. Vikram has held curatorial roles at institutions throughout California and is currently a lecturer in the Department of Art at UCLA.

Mentor

Lucia Fabio is an independent curator and researcher whose interests include notions of domesticity, alternative spaces and histories, and the wonder of the everyday. She was part of the curatorial team that organized The Feminist Art Program (1970-1975): Cycles of Collectivity at REDCAT. She worked on the first museum retrospective of Fluxus artist Alison Knowles which opened at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2022.

Mentor

Nica Aquino is a visual artist, curator & cultural producer living and working in Northeast Los Angeles. She holds a BFA in Photography from the Pacific Northwest College of Art & MA in Contemporary Visual Culture from the Manchester School of Art. She primarily works in 35mm film and occasionally experiments with various multimedia ranging from video & sound, installation, textile & fibres. She is the founder and director of Mata Art Gallery, an alternative gallery project, and has a full-time day job as a public art administrator. Learn more about her projects at nicaaquino.com and https://www.mataartgallery.org/ or follow her on Instagram at @nica_aquino and @mata.art.gallery

Mentor

Danielle Sommer is a Los Angeles-based museum professional specializing in art and cultural exhibitions, as well as co-creation and community engagement. She currently works with the USC Fisher Museum as a curator. Past experience includes Natural History Museum, Craft Contemporary, and the Getty.

Mentor

Claudia Huiza, a native of El Salvador, is an LA-based artist, educator, writer, and activist. For over 25 years, she has launched initiatives for positive social change.  This includes a variety of transcultural collaborations including "Trans-Culturation/Trans-Polinación, Arte de San Diego y Tijuana" funded by the American Festival Project Grant for the Arts, sponsored by the Getty Fund.  

Mentor

Emma Gray is a contemporary artist, curator, and gallerist known for her significant contributions to the Los Angeles art scene.

She has been influential both via her personal art practice and her role in promoting other artists.  Emma has been privately mentoring and advising artists, some renowned in several creative fields . She combines her extensive knowledge in all aspects of the artworld and her education and experience in the meditation studio to mentor artists and creatives. She focuses  on helping  build careers and a sustainable  self-supporting life in the arts, centered around  well being, core values, principles and ethics.

Mentor

Kim Schoenstadt was born in Chicago, Il. and currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. She received a BA from Pitzer College, Claremont, CA. Her work sits at the intersection of architecture and historical research, with a feminist bent. She is known for large-scale wall drawings that weave architecture and sculptural shapes together to tackle issues of constructed realities.

Mentor

Sarah Griffin is a Chicago native and LA local, Sarah, is an artist, a design junkie, a deep thinker, and a lover of all things beautiful. After realizing that many people want original art for their homes, but are daunted by the process of finding and/or affording it, Sarah founded the Art House Market, an art advisory service that focuses on interiors. Sarah who completed her undergraduate work at Stanford and graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania created Art House Market.

Mentor

Dominique Clayton is an arts consultant, writer, and gallerist born and raised in Los Angeles. Clayton is the founder of Dominique Gallery, a storefront turned pop-up exhibition and online program which showcases and advises emerging artists with a focus on marginalized artists and artists raising families. In addition to the gallery, Clayton also serves on the curatorial and programming committee of Destination Crenshaw, a forthcoming outdoor art museum and arts program based in the historic Crenshaw community of Los Angeles. Clayton previously worked as Manager of the Founding Director’s office at The Broad and later as an interim director at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery. Her arts writing has been featured in publications including Cultured Magazine, LALA Magazine, Artsy, Sugarcane Magazine, Blavity, and her own forthcoming Black Arts Diary.