Our Team

Stephanie Aviles (she/her), Communications & External Relations Manager
Stephanie is an artist, filmmaker, and photographer whose drive for knowledge and storytelling is never-ending. She believes in the power of story to be of great value and capturing it for resonance, and connection. She received her BA in Mass Communication with a minor in Marketing from Cal State LA.

Madeline Aubry (she/her), Artist Project & Operations Manager / Teaching Artist

Madeline is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on storytelling through art. She has a BA from Occidental College in Urban Environmental Policy and a minor in Spanish. She is interested in exploring the ways that communities can and do use art to form better relationships with their built environments and each other.

Tyriq Boykin (he/him), Teaching Artist

Tyriq is an artist-educator and humanities advocate who believes that means to various forms of creative expression should be accessible to everyone. Through project-based learning and by providing direct access to materials. He empowers the community to discover their own voice and communicate creatively.

Rebeca Castillo (she/her), Teaching Artists

Rebeca is a photographer and teaching artist based in Los Angeles. Born in El Salvador, she immigrated to Los Angeles as a teenager, an experience that continues to shape their perspective and commitment to arts education. She holds a BFA from ArtCenter College of Design in Photography and Imaging. She is passionate about expanding access to the arts and fostering meaningful connections between art and community. Alongside her teaching practice, she maintains an active photography practice.

K. Bradford (they/them), Teaching Artist

K. Bradford is a writer, performer, arts educator, cultural worker and mover/shaker at large, whose work incites livewire social space through poetics, sound, objects, and spectacle.

Salvador de la Torre (he/him), Teaching Artist

Salvador de la Torre is a Mexican-born Texas-raised artist, educator and storyteller based in Los Angeles. Their drawing and performance work invoke the power of personal experience and family history to create artworks that exist at the intersection of activism, art production and praxes of self-acceptance. Their work engages politics of migration, memory, queerness, and gender in ways that remind us of the power and solidarity that can exist in quotidian gestures. Salvador earned an MFA from California State University, Fullerton and a BA from Texas A&M International University.

Teresa Espinoza (she/her), Teaching Artist

Teresa is a natural born dancer and enjoys expressing herself through many forms of art.

Teresa comes from twenty plus years of working in the mental health field. Currently, she is working on finishing her Master's in Marriage, Family, Therapy. "I am excited to be working with an organization that allows me to combine my love for art and community."

Daniel Gaines (he/him), Teaching Artist

Daniel Gaines is an artist and therapist from Los Angeles. He received his bachelor's degree in visual art from The Evergreen State College, and his art practices include drawing, wood carving, and sculpture. Aside from making art, he enjoys hiking, watching animations, and playing ukulele. As someone with lived experience of mental illness, he is also dedicated to helping others find community and healing through the arts.

Maria Maea (she/her), Teaching Artist

Maria Maea is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, performance, film and sound. Through her art practice, she deepens her connection to land, somatic memory, and ancestry. Her works act as a residue of her lived experience as a first generation Los Angeleno of Samoan and Mexican heritage. Using plants and repurposed found material gathered throughout Los Angeles, Maea builds film set-like sculptures that relate to storytelling & myth-making.

Luchia Sortino (she/her), Teaching Artist

Luchia is an Altadena based artist, educator and practitioner with over a decade of experience facilitating community centered educational programs. Her multidisciplinary creative practice incorporates printmaking, somatics, instillation, collective healing, ancestral reconnection, teaching and facilitation through a trauma-informed, politicized, and relational perspective, with heavy emphasis on process and experimentation. 

Margaret Adachi (she/her), Teaching Artist
Margaret Adachi was born in Los Angeles, California. She has an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. She is a sculptor and installation artist.

Kelly Austin (she/her), Teaching Artist

Has spent 14 years at Side Street Projects and 30 years as a Professional Organizer and Bookkeeper, guiding financial and logistical processes with individuals and small businesses.