Artists in Residence

Recent Artists in Residence

Through the Fairmount Cultural Corridor, DS4SI supported 5 Artists in Residence who spent 15 months designing opportunities for residents, merchants, youth, and other creative practitioners to re-imagine public spaces, public forms of community expression, and social interventions that increased vibrancy and community connectedness. They forged novel and innovative relationships and practices with community members through art in public spaces.

Nansi Guevara

Nansi Guevara is a community designer and artist from the South Texas/Mexico border. She explores themes of identity, Xicana consciousness, Rasquachismo, and decolonization. She has a BFA in Design from the University of Texas at Austin, where she focused on creating educational studio based experiences and educational resources for youth of color. She spent one year in Mexico City on a Fulbright, where she co-authored and co-illustrated a children’s book for pediatric cancer patients that is now being used in the Hospital General de México Federico Gómez and Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. She has recently completed a Master’s in Arts in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she focused on culturally relevant education and built community amongst social justice activists and educators.

Cedric Douglas

Cedric Douglas is a Boston-based artist who combines the use of street art ideology and organic creativity to connect, inspire and interact with the community. He was recently selected as Artist in Resident in Uphams Corner. Cedric holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He was recently selected as Artist in Residency in Uphams Corner. He is currently working on a community engagement public art project called the “UP Truck”.

Risa Horn

Risa Horn is an interdisciplinary artist and designer whose work explores social justice, storytelling, image making and learning. Her work has exhibited widely, including the Peabody Essex Museum and the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, she holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Aziza Robinson-Goodnight

An avid artist, activist, entrepreneur and community organizer, Aziza Robinson-Goodnight is a woman committed to shaping, re-energizing and creating systemic, sustainable changes in her native Boston.

Claudia Paraschiv

Claudia Paraschiv seeks to foster a sense of imagination, ownership, stewardship, and civic action through projects in public space. Trained as an architect in Los Angeles, Claudia completed her graduate studies in urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for which she prepared a thesis on Los Angeles’ Public Space as understood through the lens of farmers markets; since then, she has become irrevocably committed to study and action in public space. As an architect, urbanist, artist, and writer, she has led a middle school class in the exploration of their immediate environment in Roxbury, Boston, worked in Barcelona, Spain to facilitate participatory design, created and taught a seminar exploring public space at Wentworth Institute of Technology: Approaches to Public Space, and founded the Salem Public Space Project in Salem MA, where she lives. Currently, Claudia paints, practices architecture, teaches Community Practice at the Boston Archtiectural College, and creates and explores in public space as the Artist in Residence for Four Corners, Boston: our4corners.co. Check out some of Claudia's work here

Artists in Residence were based in distinct communities on and along the Fairmount Line in Boston, including Upham’s Corner, Dudley Street, Four Corners, and local schools, while our Artist in Transit worked at bus stops, buses and the on commuter line itself. They were hosted by local organizations and initiatives, including: Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), Boston Promise Initiative lead by DSNI, Upham’s Corner Main Streets, Familia Grocery II, Dorchester Arts Collaborative, Four Corners Main Streets, Greater Four Corners Action Coalition, and the Jeremiah Burke High School.

Here they are some exciting examples of their work:

The Big Toy--Claudia Paraschiv

Created from an old playground structure donated by local artists, the Big Toy frames a space to share creativity, information, and play. The bright sculptural presence draws attention to The Cornerstone, the new community created gathering space, and serves as its bulletin board. The Big Toy also created a space for the second Public Art Salon, where we engaged community members in creating Story Corner postcards, block-art for MoveMe Gallery, Shade-hoops, Toy Talks, and spontaneous actions on Friday evenings.

Street Games--Cedric Douglas

“Street Games” was a series of Pop Up community activities on the sidewalks along Dudley Street, Hancock Street and Columbia Road in Upham’s Corner. This intervention engaged over 100 individuals in the streets and 200 via social media. These spontaneous moments of play brought community members together in unique and intimate ways and opened up their sense of creativity and wonder.

Witness--Risa Horn

WITNESS centralizes the role of florescent yellow artificial flowers as subject, metaphor and material. The yellow flowers are often used for public sidewalk memorials along Dudley Street, but also have a host of other cultural references for the communities living along Dudley Street.
In WITNESS, a weaving of yellow flowers and black plastic bags recontextualization the abandoned building behind the fence as a witness to the bustle and movement of the street, prompting the question, what would this building say if it could talk?

Keep'in All These Dreams--Nansi Guevara

Keep’in All These Dreams is a school placemaking project that involved students at the Jeremiah Burke High School. Students took control over their own image, each representing themselves how they wanted.

“The painting could change how we see things in life so that we can build off of what we see.” - Analiciya Rich, Student Artist

T Stop Meal--Aziza Robinson Goodnight

T-Stop Meals, co created with Global Local Gourmet chef Nadine Nelson and SenseLab’s Mike Hornblow, were 3 day events in public community spaces along the Fairmount Cultural Corridor. They engaged commuters with several types of experiential conversations, bringing residents and neighborhood treasures together around transportation, food, arts and activism.

Check out the inspiring work started by Artist in Residence to Four Corners (2014-2015) Claudia Paraschiv, on Our 4 Corners!

Other Artist in Residence Programs at the Studio

Our Artists in Residence program was inspired in part by our work collaborating on Department of Public Imagination, with Community Labor United.

DPI was also inspired by the Studio's original artist in residence, Judith Leemann, who partnered with us on The Grill Project and Big Urban Games and who continues to inspire the Studio.