September 2019 Meet Our Artists: Rachel DeGuzman

Our Members, Fiscally Sponsored Artists, and other program participants represent a wide range of career stages and disciplines. We love them - and, as fellow artists, we're always inspired by them. With this monthly feature, we hope you'll feel the same way!

Name & Pronouns:  Rachel DeGuzman, she/her/hers

What do you do?  Arts administrator, producer, curator, convener and artivist

What inspires you?  I am driven by the belief that art and creativity – the most authentic and soulful expression of humanity – can provide the most effective platform to center the marginalized and bring us together. I want to foster more opportunity and equity for women of color (WOC). I seek to center the histories, voices and narratives of women of color. Together, with other women of color, I hope to harness our collective power to effect change in and through the arts.

Rochester City Newspaper "Power Peers"
cover story featuring WOC Art Collaborative

What are you proud of?  I am very proud of establishing At the Crossroads: Activating the Intersection of Art and Justice a year ago, and the 20 events it has produced because they were collaborative, inclusive, relevant, and centered the lives and perspectives of women of color. The At the Crossroads Long Table Conversations/ Installations are very meaningful to attendees, some of whom have attended at least half of them. Arts editor of City Newspaper Rebecca Rafferty has attended most of them – acting, in some ways, as a witness (à la James Baldwin) as well as providing critical feedback – and has deemed them (more than once) as some of the most important arts programming in Rochester, New York. 

More recently, I did found and launch WOC Art Collaborative with 10 other WOC creatives. We do have a headquarters and access to a 2,700-capacity rehearsal, performance, exhibition and event space 240 days per year. See more here and here.

What are your goals?  To continue presenting the Long Table Conversations, to deepen the connection to the 20+ collaborators that I worked with in 2017/18, and to establish new collaborative relationships with artists, higher education, presenting organizations, and the Rochester City School District. To establish a collaborative center for real equity in and through art – comprised of a diverse cohort of WOC artists/creatives. All of the aforementioned are in the planning phases or underway.

Do you have any advice for your fellow artists?  Follow your vision. When you encounter a roadblock, regroup, and then reroute. Trust your instincts and don't waste precious time on dead ends or regret.

How does The Field help you?  The Field provides my work with critical fiscal sponsorship and some exposure through its website and programs.

© Rachel DeGuzman
21st Century Arts & WOC Arts Collaborative

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April 2019 Meet Our Artists: Jane Jerardi

Our Members, Fiscally Sponsored Artists, and other program participants represent a wide range of career stages and disciplines. We love them - and, as fellow artists, we're always inspired by them. With this monthly feature, we hope you'll feel the same way!



Name: Jane Jerardi

What do you do?
Dance, Performance, Video, and Installation Artist

What inspires you?
The creative process. And seeing other artists’ work. Seeing artists begin and continue and persevere through the questions of their own work never ceases to amaze me.

What are you proud of?
That we re-started The Field in Chicago. We have 18 people in our current Fieldwork group here! Pretty exciting.

What are your goals?
To keep creating interesting art and to support fellow artists in the process.

Jane Jerardi and Dao Nguyen's Six Acts of Witness (2015) participatory event. Photo by Slaveya Minkova

Any advice for fellow artists?
I find making is a lot about getting out of the way. Convincing the parts of you that want to procrastinate and the part that thinks your ideas aren’t very good – to tell them to just slowly step back. And, you keep going despite them, while they’re there waiting in the background.

Then once you have something – that’s usually kind of terrible – you at least have something which is certainly better than nothing. And then you start to negotiate with it and then get weirdly into it and wonder about it and expand it, change it, or manipulate it and multiply it, or teach it to a friend, and get them to change it into something better. And then, you start having strong opinions about it – that it needs to be a certain way and you’re not really sure why but you’re fairly convinced of it.

And then, the project has somehow become bigger than you and you’re just following its lead. And you’re still not sure if you’re worthy – or your ideas are any good, but you do it anyway for some reason.

And despite it all – you realize that what’s beautiful about this is that you can make something without really much of anything at all. There are dances waiting to be made, photos waiting to be taken with your phone, your dollar-store notebook waiting to be written in, music waiting to inspire. Your art is as worthy as anyone else’s and we certainly need it.

(Excerpted from Jane’s recent essay about studio practice, “on beginnings,” published by The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago. Go read the full piece! We love it!)

Jane Jerardi and Dao Nguyen's Six Acts of Witness (2015) interview photo by Slaveya Minkova

How does The Field help you?
The concrete nature of the (Fieldwork) process really aids so many different kinds of artists, no matter what stage their project or work might be at. It never fails to surprise me how often different artists connect to it.

©Jane Jerardi

Additional Viewing:

excerpts from Nocturne

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