Sioux City 2026

Mark Lakeman is a national leader in the development of regenerative public places. In the last three decades he has collaborated to direct, facilitate, or inspire designs for more than five hundred new community-generated projects in Portland, Oregon alone. Through his leadership in communitecture, inc., and its various affiliates including the The City Repair Project (501(c)3), The Village Building Convergence, and the Planet Repair Institute, he has also been instrumental in the development of dozens of participatory organizations and urban permaculture design projects across the United States and Canada. Mark works with governmental leaders, community organizations, and educational institutions in many diverse communities.

www.communitecture.net

www.cityrepair.org

www.marklakeman.net

www.planetrepair.org

Ricardo Levins Morales is an artist and organizer based in Minneapolis. He uses his art as a form of political medicine to support individual and collective healing from the injuries and ongoing reality of oppression.

Ricardo was born into the anti-colonial movement in his native Puerto Rico and was drawn into activism in Chicago when his family moved there in 1967. He left high school early and worked in various industries, and over time began to use his art as part of his movement work. This activism has included support work for the Black Panthers and Young Lords and participating in or acting in solidarity with farmers, environmental, labor, racial justice, antiwar and other struggles for peoples empowerment. He was a founding member of the Northland Poster Collective (1979-2009).

He also leads workshops on creative organizing, social justice strategy and sustainable activism, and mentors and supports organizers. Ricardo’s work is widely used by grassroots movements, organizations and communities.

Website: RLMArtStudio.com

Born in Missoula, MT in 1976, Amanda Browder received an MFA/MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives in Brooklyn, producing over 30+ large-scale fabric installations all around the world. Amplifying multiple voices, she collaborates with local community groups and sources her textiles from local donations. Exhibitions include: Triennale Brugge, Belgium, Project 1: ArtPrize; SPRING/BREAK Art Fair; Nuit Blanche Public Art Festival; Dumbo Arts Festival; White Columns, NYC; Nakaochiai Gallery, Tokyo. Published in Unexpected Art: Chronicle Books and Strange Material; Arsenal Pulp Press. In 2025 she received the Iowa Governor's Award for Arts in Service. She received numerous grants such as the NEA with the Sioux City Art Center, the Buffalo Art Museum AKG and St Charles Art Center, IL. She is a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA artist fellow and has been an artist-in-residence at UNLV Las Vegas, Erie Arts & Culture, Reach Projects and University of Montana. Photos and reviews have appeared in New York Times to Fiber Art Magazine and founder www.badatsports.com

Carrie (Cc) Sage Curley, San Carlos Nnee (Apache) Shii, K’ai tsehit’i’n (Clan) is a multidisciplinary Queer artist who draws inspiration from her cultural heritage and holds a deep reverence for the land. Her expertise lies in the creation of large-scale murals using acrylic and spray paint, but she also has significant experience in photography, videography, and woodwork. In addition to her artistic endeavors, Cc is committed to serving and inspiring her community by sharing her knowledge of traditional Apache foodways and land cultivation. She is an active participant in the Apache Stronghold, which seeks to preserve Oak Flat, a sacred holy site for many Indigenous peoples. Cc firmly believes that the natural environment is the Creator's masterpiece and should be conserved and protected for future generations to learn from and enjoy.

Keynote with Ricardo Levins Morales

I think of my art as a medicinal practice. Like a healer, whose skills and collection of medicines can address a wide range of conditions, art can impact community in multiple ways. It can help to recover community memory, challenge harmful beliefs, polarize or depolarize conflict, stimulate action, validate identities, promote connection, and support critical thinking. With examples from my art as backdrop we will explore the principles animating this approach and consider how they might apply to new situations and challenges.escription goes here

At 2012 Portland CBA Conference, the folks from the Hello Neighbor project talked about making large scale photographic portraits as a way to strengthen human connection. At Concrete Couch we took our favorite parts of their process and developed it with tiles for a multi-year project on a state highway bridge.

Sarah Bedell and Steve Wood will share a few of the challenges, rewards, and lessons learned from this program.

ConcreteCouch.org

Keynote with Carrie (Cc) Sage Curley

Water and land are important parts of our natural world, providing life, beauty, and inspiration. Art helps us express and appreciate their beauty through colors, shapes, and creativity. Together, water, land, and art show the connection between nature and human imagination.

Water and land sustain life, while art can inspire people to protect nature and create positive change.

Photo Credit: Richard Bluecloud Castaneda, NDN, Creative Resistance 2023

with Carrie (Cc) Sage Curley

Create wheat-paste art inspired by water, landscapes, and our connection to the environment. Add your piece to a collective artwork that shows how every drop makes a difference.

with Amanda Browder

Fabric serves as a catalyst for connection, uniting diverse voices and fostering meaningful experiences. My work engages communities through sewing, dialogue, and collaborative projects, challenging traditional hierarchies. By emphasizing community participation and site-specific responses, I aim to create spaces for critical reflection and social engagement. This approach positions "the artist" as a dynamic network rather than a solitary figure, inviting collaboration and transcending individual identities.

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What if slowness was your guiding principle? Through stories and reflections we explore themes such as accessibility, emergent curriculum, participatory design and attunement and how a small non-profit made a big community art piece.

Carmelo Castro-Netsky lives and works in Berkeley, California as an art teacher facilitator, currently collaborating and co-creating with neurodivergent adults living with a range of accessibility needs.

 Dave Loewenstein  is a muralist, printmaker and writer based in Lawrence, Kansas. His community-based murals can be found across the United States and in Northern Ireland, South Korea and Brazil. Dave’s prints, which focus on social justice issues, are exhibited internationally and are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles.

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with Howie Sneider

Bike racks designed by kids, giant crochet mushrooms, and even a balloon parade. For each project, “The community” shows up in different ways…

This session will include some short videos of recent inspirations at Stone Quarry Art Park and look at some of Howie’s projects from Central New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and more. 

We’ll discuss some efforts that never made it off the page or ran into trouble along the way. This event will include a presentation, Q&A, and a short activity for all.

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Collective Mural OTW will be presenting information about a recently completed mural that was imagined, designed and painted with Sioux City Highschool Students. During this session, Mural OTW will be sharing the process they use to create community-based murals while talking about the specific meaning and significance of their new mural installed at the Sioux City Art Center’s Gilchrist Learning Center.

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José Faus is a painter, writer, performer, independent teacher and mentor with an interest in the role of artists as creative catalysts for community building. He received degrees in Creative Writing/Journalism and Studio Art/Painting from the University of Missouri Kansas City.

He has been involved in mural projects locally, regionally, and internationally in Mexico and Bolivia, the latter sponsored by a State Department grant. He also maintains a studio practice Caridostudio and has exhibited broadly.

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Keynote with Mark Lakeman

Even in this current state of the world, you may already suspect that we are surrounded by solutions and all the help that we need. Easy enough to find if we would just take a breath and listen. You might even hear that everyone is actually on the same side. What would you do then?

Maybe we have more in common than we've ever known.