We were lucky to catch up with Angela Lombardi recently and have shared our conversation below.

Angela, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I knew I wanted to make things from a very early age. My mother is an artist and I was fortunate to grow up supported creatively, with plenty of opportunities to make and explore. I first wanted to illustrate children’s books and that set me on a path to study drawing, painting and printmaking at Berea College in Kentucky.

Angela, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I studied art and music in college and dedicated myself to a life in the arts pretty early on. I found that I really enjoyed sharing with others what I was figuring out in my own practice. I worked with young children, teens and adult learners as a teaching artist, moving to a role where I could create circumstances for artists to be treated as I would hope to be treated when working with an arts organization or institution. In my current role as Director of Outreach and Audience Engagement at the North Carolina Museum of Art, I have worked to create a fully funded program (NCMA AIM Artist Innovation Mentorship program) that offers young people, in mostly rural communities, free afterschool art workshops. These workshops are led by artists from the same communities, giving them a chance to work close to home with the youth from their own towns. Many rural and underserved communities do not have art education during the middle school years – a time overflowing with confusing emotions and strong feelings, i.e. a time when developing a mode of creative expression can be very helpful. It has been a wonderful opportunity for me to meet artists from so many different backgrounds and to be able to support creative growth in young people statewide. I believe it is the responsibility of larger institutions to fund these types of initiatives and I’m thankful to be in a role that allows me to follow through on that responsibility.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I was a junior in high school, my mother was a single mom supporting all six of her kids by painting murals and decorative finishes all hours of the day and night. I learned how to work hard by trying to keep up with her, as this was one of my first jobs. We painted lobbies of doctor’s offices, children’s bedrooms, fancy marble columns onto flat walls, angels and clouds onto ceilings. She approached each job as a creative challenge, and even though it was hard work, it was always fun. Going away to college, I knew I was on my own and somehow even managed to support myself through a five year life in New York City and another year in Italy. All of that was challenging, but nothing prepared me for the realities of trying to stay an artist once I became a mother myself. I think my current role in the creative life of others is an incredible calling for this time of my life. But it takes a constant grinding persistence to think that I will one day devote just as much energy to my own creative practice, again. I’m not giving up! I have too many things to make!

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Society needs artists and creatives – it needs the weird/open space they create around our thinking and our more rigidly held beliefs. We need artists to hold up mirrors, open doors and windows to their own humanly unique ways of seeing the world. They need to be free to explore what it means to be a human in the Anthropocene; what it means to inhabit the earth and be related to others, free from the constraints of consumerism dictating foregone outcomes. There are so many things we could learn about society itself if we really got people to tune in to their creative impulses! To truly support creatives, we need to move beyond a structure that only pays artists for a service or a product that they provide, and financially support them in a very real way for the vision they generously share with us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.angelamaelombardi.com
• Linkedin: Angela Lombardi
• Youtube: @ncartmuseum
• Other: https://youtu.be/Iv7WeFIeNZA?si=GouJwFmajV6VgdNW Short film about the NCMA AIM program

Image Credits
Negin Naseri
Zach Storm