Lisa Rasmussen is a transformative artist, educator, curator, and art advocate who truly believes and embodies the notion that art can change and heal the world. Lisa is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Art is Moving, and the 3rd Annual Art Break Day. Art Break Day is a communty art-reach event that offers thousands of people the means and space to connect with their community via the art-making process. She is also the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Art 4 All People and AY Atelier Art, an international sanctuary for arts and consciousness in Malibu, and in virtual reality.

In March 2013, Lisa was awarded Alumni of the Year from JFK University for her deep service to the Arts and Consciousness profession, and community. Additionally, Lisa pioneered an award-winning expressive art program for emotionally traumatized and abused youth, and developed a professional art gallery for the residents of Lincoln Child Center, a mental health faciity in Oakland, CA.  She has also taught intuitive and expressive art to elders, at-risk teens, and has been an art coach for adults. In 2008, she was awarded Graduate Student of the Year from JFK University's Holistic Studies Program for her transformative work with the children at Lincoln Child Center, and for her MFA graduate solo exhibition. 

Lisa is a professional artist, and her paintings are her spiritual practice. Her current work is being exhibited in various galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco. You can connect with Lisa at www.artismovingnow.com, www.art4allpeople.com, and www.ayatelierart.com.

Elana Haviv is the Founder and Executive Director of the Children's Movement for Creative Education (CMCE). Elana is an education and human rights specialist. Through her flagship organization, CMCE, she has created academic and artistic programs to guide childrena and youth to understand and overcome the effects of violent world events on themselves and their communities, and to become global citizens. She designed The Telling History Project: Understanding the Past to Create the Future, a curriculum to teach students about human rights. After 9/11, Elana spearheaded the development and implementation of the art-based CMCE 9/11 Trauma Relief Project in New York City schools. She also continued to create art-based healing programs in post-war Bosnia. More recently, in response to Hurricane Sandy, Elana founded the Hurricane Sandy Art Relief Caravan Project which was recently featured in The Huffington Post article, Art Heals Heartache for Sandy Kids. You can learn more about CMCE on their website, childrensmovement.org.

Lori Portka is an art creator and love radiator. Her artwork is made with an open heart carrying the intention to spread love and healing.  Lori's designs appear on greeting cards, prints, calendars and magazines internationally, and reach other sweet souls who connect with her genuine and compassionate spirit.  You can learn more about Lori and her A Hundred Thank Yous project on her website, loriportka.com, and follow her on Twitter at @loriportka.

Reminder: The nomination deadline for the Arts and Healing Network Award is May 15th. For more information, go to:
www.artheals.org/projects/ahn_award.html

"I believe color creates energy, and I believe energy creates inspiration, and then I think inspiration creates the change.  If you can create color, which murals do, then you're making a massive impact." ~ Ricky Lee Gordon

Ricky Lee Gordon is a South African muralist and artist who goes by the name of Freddy Sam.  He is the founder of three initiatives.  The first is Write on Africa, a community art and inspiration project that creates murals and workshops in poor communities to uplift and inspire social change.  Their philosophy is, "Inspire ourselves to inspire others to inspire change."  The second project he founded and directs is A Word of Art, which includes an art space, art projects, and an international art residency program dedicated to celebrating new art and emerging young artists. The third is the Woodstock Industrial Center, a derelict industrial building in the heart of Woodstock, a suburb of Cape Town, where together with a willing landlord he has now brought in over 75 creative tenants. The building now has a coffee shop, skate park and bookshop, and hosts talks, exhibitions, movie nights, dinners and drawing evenings.

Ricky Lee is one of three recipients of the 2011 AHN Awards.  The Arts and Healing Network is so impressed by his incredible creative vision and use of art to revitalize and transform his neighborhood of Woodstock.

To learn more about Ricky Lee's work, please visit his websites at www.writeonafrica.org and www.freddysam.com. You can also read an interview by Arts and Healing Network Director, Mary Daniel Hobson, with Ricky Lee on the Arts and Healing Network.

Susannah Conway is a photographer, writer and the creator of the Unravelling e-courses. A Polaroid addict and very proud aunt, she is currently editing her first book, This I Know: Notes on Unravelling the Heart, which will be available in spring of 2012. You can read more about Susannah and her shenanigans on her blog at www.susannahconway.com and connect with her on Twitter at @photobird

Amy Taub is the Executive Director of Creativity Explored, a nonprofit arts center in San Francisco, CA where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit, and sell art.  The studio artists work at one of the two San Francisco studios, which are staffed by over 20 professional artists who act as teachers and guides.  Artworks created by the studio artists are sold through the Creativity Explored Gallery, and also in their online store.  The studio artists receive 50% of all proceeds. The rest is used to support Creativity Explored.

To learn more about Creativity Explored, go to www.creativityexplored.org.

Chris Zydel is a self-described "professional believer-in-the-gifts-of-others." She is a creativity coach who teaches expressive arts painting classes out of a wonderful Victorian home in Oakland, CA.

As Chris says, "Regularly diving into your creative pool renews your soul, heals your spirit, keeps your inner spark alive and allows you greater intimacy with the full depths of your being. And it's fun!"  Chris has helped countless people over many years discover and deepen their connection to the creative process.

On May 12, 2009, The Arts and Healing Network's Director, Mary Daniel Hobson, interviewed Chris about her creative journey, the important teachers on her path, the benefits of taking time to retreat, transformational stories from participants in her workshops, and advice for diving more deeply into one's creative work.

You can learn more about Chris Zydel on her web site at www.creativejuicesarts.com.

Sharon Siskin has an extensive national exhibition record, showing her work in museums, galleries and public sites for more than 27 years.

She is the recipient of awards and grants that include a Visual Arts Fellowship from the California Arts Council in 2003, the 2001 Potrero Nuevo Prize, Noetic Arts Program Community Grant, San Francisco Arts Commission Market Street Art in Transit Commission and 12 California Arts Council Artist in Residence Grants for community-based public art projects in the San Francisco Bay Area AIDS support service community and in the City of Berkeley homeless women and children services community.

She was the Artist in Residence at San Francisco Recycling & Disposal, Inc. in the summer of 2004. Her artwork has been featured in numerous publications including Women Artists in the American West, edited by Susan Ressler, Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society, by Lucy Lippard, Connecting Conversations: Interviews with 28 Bay Area Women Artists, edited by Moira Roth and Site to Sight, Mapping Bay Area Visual Culture, edited by Lydia Mathiews.

She is currently Assistant Professor of Drawing at the University of San Francisco and co-directs with Professor Richard Kamler Arts Outreach: The Artist as Citizen, a year-long program which seeks to embed student art practitioners into communities to collaboratively engage in community-based art. She has also taught as a member of the Core Faculty as an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Department of Arts and Consciousness at John F. Kennedy University and California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco Art Institute, California State University at Hayward and the University of New Mexico as well as at several California Community Colleges.

She is a recognized leader in the field of community-based public art and is the founder of Positive Art in 1988, an art project in the Bay Area AIDS community continuing to provide a model for many communities internationally. She has lectured extensively in art colleges, universities, professional conferences, galleries and museums throughout the United States.

Mary Daniel Hobson is the Director of the Arts and Healing Network. At the age of 14, she became captivated by photography and has been pursuing it ever since. Trained as an art historian, her work draws deep inspiration from Surrealism, in particular the work of Dora Maar. Whether creating intimate collages or bottling photographs, her mixed media photography explores inner geography and layered experience. Her work has been widely exhibited and is in collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Albuquerque Museum. She is also advisory faculty at the Arts & Consciousness Department at JFK University in Berkeley, CA, offering courses in Transformative Arts and Photography. You can see Danny's art on her web site, marydanielhobson.com