Board

Joy

Joy Silverman Member

Joy Silverman has been presenting and producing cultural programs for over thirty-five years.  She was Director of Programs and Special Events for the Washington Project for the Arts in Washington, DC; the first Executive Director of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); founder of OnrampArts; and Co-Founder and Director of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression (NCFE). She has served on numerous advisory, grant-making and exhibition selection panels in addition to continuing to work as a consultant to non-profit organizations and independent philanthropies. Currently, she is producing the documentary “Wednesdays in Mississippi”, an untold story of women in the Civil Rights Movement. She is also serves on the Board of Directors for the Watershed Collaborative, the developer of an innovative curriculum which enhances critical thinking through communal discussion of visual art, science, and literature.

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Carolina Ibarra-Mendoza Member

Carolina Ibarra-Mendoza is a graphic designer, creative strategist, photographer, and Xicana feminist. She runs her own creative practice, where she translates social complexities into dynamic designs. She also works with Anne Bray as the Creative Director of the non-profit LA FREEWAVES. She’s a recipient of the “Woman’s Building and Metabolic Studio’s Special Projects in Archiving” art fellowship. Notable past work includes creating the archive website for Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz. As a visual artist, she understands the power of design to provide resources for marginalized communities, and that’s the kind of work she wants to be a part of.

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Aandrea Stang Member

Aandrea Stang is an educator, curator/producer with a focus on institutional program development, concentrating on contemporary and socially engaged art practices. She is the Gallery Director at the University Art Gallery, California State University at Dominguez Hills and serves on the art history faculty. Stang has diverse professional experience including education, curatorial, and management roles at museums, galleries, and academic institutions with additional experience in non-profit galleries and government agencies. She has developed and launched contemporary art and arts education programs for a variety of audiences at major cultural organizations including Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, Occidental College, and MOCA, Los Angeles. Stang holds degrees from USC and Oberlin College.

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Nicole Kelly (NK) Member

Nicole Kelly (NK) is a writer and independent audio producer based in Los Angeles, whose work embraces discomfort & hidden feeling. Currently the senior producer for the Black Mountain Radio Hour with Believer magazineher work has appeared on The Heart, VICE’s Source Material, and Afropunk’s Solutions Sessions, and she was a co-creator & host of bitchface, an experimental audio project. NK joined the Feminist Center for Creative Work as a spring 2017 programming resident, and later became the first Programming Director (2017-2019). She edited the first and second editions of Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication for Co-Conspirator Press. In a past life she received an MFA from the Programs In Writing at UC Irvine and was a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow. (Her fiction has been published in ZYZZYVA, Fiction Southeast, and elsewhere.) In this life she’s searching for sweaty concepts (Ahmed) and consenting to learn in public (Tallbear).

Sarah

Sarah Williams Secretary

Sarah uses her formidable processing power to keep WCCW’s administration, programming, business dealings, and external projects running smoothly. Her passion for creating systems to support inclusive, malleable platforms for creatives of all stripes to present work and build communities keeps her energized as she tackles the infinite library of spreadsheets it takes to run the organization. Sarah graduated from the Masters in Public Art Studies program at USC and studied Art History at UC Santa Cruz before that. She has also been a Project Manger at ForYourArt since 2007, serves on Arts for LA’s Programming Advisory Committee, and co-founded the Art Book Review. In her spare time she likes building stuff, playing basketball, and thinking about horses.

rebecca

Rebecca Lehrer Member

Rebecca Lehrer is the co-founder and CEO of The Mash-Up Americans. She has spent 16+ years doing strategy, marketing, and audience development in media, arts, and culture (Director of BD at New York Public Radio, The Flea Theater, Headlands Center for the Arts, Righteous Persons Foundation) and has over 10 years experience in audio and podcasting. Rebecca earned an MBA at the Yale School of Management and a BA in English at Columbia University.  Her work focuses on the shared cultural experiences that bring people together and re-centering stories on voices you don’t usually hear. Through her work with The Mash-Up Americans Creative Studio, she works with companies like Hello Sunshine, Soul Pancake, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Google, and Automattic using audio to elevate and center Mash-Up stories. She has lectured at Yale University and Loyola Marymount University and her work with The Mash-Up Americans has been lauded in The New York Times, Forbes, Los Angeles Magazine, The Guardian and more.

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Raena Granberry Member

Raena Granberry is a Perinatal Health Equity consultant and 2019 WPI local alumni from the LA County Health Justice Team. She currently serves as the Perinatal Equity Initiative Coordinator, managing a 4-year multi-million dollar community informed grant for the Division of Maternal Child and Adolescent Health at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Raena is a Spelman alumna and LA native who began in politics with the California Democratic Party and elected officials including Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

After subsequent years in the labor movement, and Child and Family Services, Raena experienced both stillborn infant loss, and a traumatic preterm delivery at 27 weeks gestation. This ignited her dedication to protecting and supporting pregnant Black women and birthing people; as a program manager for Great Beginnings for Black Babies, a Group Facilitator and Community Outreach Liaison for the Black Infant Health Program, consulting partner for Maternal Mental Health Now and Sr. Reproductive Justice Program Manager at Black Women for Wellness.

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Young Joon Kwak Member

Young Joon Kwak (they/them and she/her) is a LA-based multi-disciplinary artist and educator whose work spans sculpture, performance, music, video, and community-based collaborations, creating connections that bridge communities across a wide variety of socio-cultural, institutional, and alternative art contexts. Through sculptural manipulations in the form, functionality, and materiality of objects, they question common modes of perception and bodily objectification, while posing alternative ways of viewing bodies “beyond the skin.” Kwak is the founder of Mutant Salon, a roving beauty salon/platform for collaborative performances and installations with their community of queer, trans, femme, POC artists and performers. They are lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner.

Kwak presented solo and collaborative exhibitions and performances internationally at galleries and institutions including Arko Art Center, Seoul, South Korea (2022); Korean Cultural Center, LA (2021); Commonwealth & Council, LA (2021, 2017, 2016, 2014); Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada (2018); the Art Museum of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá (2018); The Broad, LA (2016); and the Hammer Museum, LA (2016). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Hauser & Wirth, New York, NY (2021); Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA (2019); Antenna Space, Shanghai, China (2019); and Le Pavillon Vendôme Centre d’Art Contemporain, Clichy, France (2015). Kwak received the Korea Arts Foundation of America’s Award for the Visual Arts (2020), Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant (2018), Artist Community Engagement Grant (2016), and the Art Matters Grant (2016). Kwak received an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014, an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2010, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. In addition to FCCW, Kwak serves on the board of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Kwak taught and mentored at schools including California Institute of the Arts; California State University Long Beach; School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s low-residency MFA program; University of California, Riverside; and University of California, San Diego. Kwak’s work has been reviewed and featured in Artforum, ARTnews, Artillery Magazine, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, and LA Times, among others. 

Past Board Members

Esti Giordani
Past Member: 2016-2018

Alexandra Grant
Past Member: 2016–2018

Kate Johnston
Past Member: 2015–2018

Irene Tsatsos
Past Member: 2015-2021

Beth Pickens
Past Member: 2015-2020