BIO

Beverly Naidus's art life has straddled the socially engaged margins of the art world, artful activism collaborations, and community-based art projects. Her audience participatory installations, artists books, photo-text and multimedia projects have dealt with the anxieties of being unemployed, nightmares about nuclear war, ways to transform body hate, using consumerism to numb ourselves from the extractive insanity of our capitalist economy, how grief and gratitude weave together in the climate emergency, the epigenetic trauma of living under white oppression and the joyful resilience of the marginalized. She often collaborates to develop creative strategies that might heal trauma, to plant seeds of activism, and imagine different outcomes. Early on, she discovered that her vulnerable story telling could generate stories from others, sometimes catalyzing positive actions. She has shared her work in city streets, alternative spaces, public parks, university galleries, community centers, and major museums. Her work has been written about in many books and journals and has developed an international following. After vibrant chapters in the New York and Los Angeles art worlds, including fruitful periods in other parts of North America, she has made a home in the Pacific Northwest since 2003.

Naidus received her BA from Carleton College, and an MFA with a full teaching fellowship from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. She taught art as a subversive activity at NYC museums, the Institute for Social Ecology, California State University, Long Beach where she had tenure, Goddard College, Hampshire College and Carleton College. From 2003 until 2020, she was the only tenured artist on the UW Tacoma faculty where she shaped an innovative, interdisciplinary studio arts curriculum in art for social change and healing. She is the author of Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame (a book that helped to shift studio arts curriculum in many places). She has written & published many essays on eco-art and social practice as well as a few works of speculative fiction, and she is currently writing, Rewilding Our Muses: Creative Strategies for Navigating the “End of the World” and is looking for a publisher. While co-directing the non-profit, SEEDS (Social Ecology Education and Demonstration School) with her husband, Dr. Bob Spivey, they are leading workshops online with a focus on art that deals with climate and racial justice and have formed an international collective. They are currently facilitating an in-person “story hive project” with neighbors and are planning more “pandemic processing and dreaming into the future we want” art workshops to happen in coming months. Her solo show, “The Dead Ocean Scrolls and other Possible Futures” will be on exhibit at the Tacoma Community College Gallery in November 2021.

For more information visit her website: www.beverlynaidus.net, Instagram: #utopias4all Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/92685388277 or Beverly Naidus