Every once in a while we have the good fortune of working on a project that we feel truly matters, a project that we’ll still be thinking about years from now. Maybe even something we can imagine telling our grandkids about – surely you’ve had moments like that where something you did in your professional life really mattered?

Jac Alva

As both an artist and art teacher, I always create artworks and design classes that I find both meaningful and authentic to my creative voice. This past summer, I led a teen cohort at The Muckenthaler Cultural Center’s Teen Intensive Program where my students engaged in a series of art lessons involving food imagery. Having an M.A. in Modern Art History with an emphasis in modern/contemporary food artworks, I designed a weeklong program integrating the global politics of food and beverage into various artistic methods including painting, drawing, sculpting, and collaging. The program focused on various parts of our current food system, including the agriculture & global supply chain as well as the media representation of food. Read more>>

The Artist Aesthetic

At the moment, this project, The Artist Aesthetic Tour, is our biggest project and main focus. What makes it so meaningful is that it stems from a vision that we, as a group of artists, have had for ourselves. The goal for this tour was to craft an experience that resonated not just with the audience, but with us as creators, performers, and music lovers – something that we as artists would want to be a part of. Making it real and being able to share it with other artists and fans makes this a huge deal. Some of us organizers have been in the business of planning and promoting events for years, so we now have the opportunity to take all we’ve done and make a massive multi-city tour that has everything: Live performances by talented rappers, singers, musicians, DJs, producers, and other new and special live events; plus raffles, swag, and lots of vendors and merch to continue to support local artists and businesses. Read more>>

Chloe Temtchine

The project closest to my heart is “The Smile Tour.” I perform in leading U.S. hospitals for pediatric patients with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension and other chronic illnesses. Funded by The Chloé Temtchine Foundation, my 501(c) 3, this tour transforms hospital rooms into intimate concert venues, offering moments of joy to children and their families during tough times. The tour synergizes with “Super Brave Kids,” an initiative where I interview these young “superheroes,” who share their stories and inspire a wider audience. Both projects not only bring smiles to faces but also elevate public awareness of PAH and other severe health challenges. They encapsulate my core mission: to use music and storytelling to empower and inspire, turning life’s hardships into catalysts for change. Read more>>

Hailey Sullivan

This year, 2023. I got a forwarded email from my sales representative about a local exhibition. The deadline for submissions was a little over a week away but luckily had a smaller drawing I could use. To have better understanding, I’ll go back in time of why it worked out the way out did. The pencil drawing I mentioned was a small – 5inch by 7inch – but detailed image of a horse galloping. Something that was rather simple but elegant to the eye. My sales representative, Gabrielle, asked me to have it drawn up for another project we working on. To my surprise, I would be able to recycle that drawing for multiple pieces. I came from being self taught, but had tunnel vision on the potential of what I could create with my art. So because I had this piece finished, and with Gabrielle’s artistic experience, she told me I could have it printed and add other medias to it. Read more>>

David “FuZe” Fiuczynski

The most fertile ground for me has been the continued cycle of traveling back and forth from the professional field of writing, rehearsing, recording & live performance and returning to the academic realm of Berklee College of Music. Successful intuitive ideas that have been implemented on tour with artists like Jack DeJohnette, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Hiromi, John Medeski and more….get the seal of “true, tried and road tested” and then are incorporated into my teaching. These ideas have then been absorbed by amazing students who add these concepts to their playing and in after-hour jams we have experimented with theses ideas. Read more>>

Rosemary Tuthill

My mural project technically ended on September 23rd of 2020, when the Eastvale mural I painted was dedicated. It was a long journey to get to that point, and that is what I am going to discuss. I will begin when my husband and I were exploring my job options after working as an R&D engineer tech ended, due to the sale of the company. He suggested that I return to my art roots that I put aside for decades. Considering that option was better than the hour-plus round trip drives every day on a congested freeway, I agreed. I also took the opportunity to spend time with my father, but that is another story. A few months passed, and I began oil painting, and I created a Paint and Sip Party business, but I also wanted to take the time to document my father – Emigdio Vasquez’ – 400+ easel works and his 32 murals. I decided to start that undertaking by creating a video documentary about his murals. Read more>>

GM Macleods

In the glitzy world of Hollywood, where I’ve produced multimillion-dollar movies and long-running television series, there’s a project that has etched a special place in my heart. It’s not your typical Hollywood blockbuster or a TV series that graced screens for a decade or more. No, it’s something far more enchanting and deeply personal. It’s the multiple award-winning series found on the RPG All-Stars YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/RPGAllStars), a digital sanctuary where the enchantment of tabletop role-playing games comes to life in meticulously crafted actual play sessions. I take immense pride in stating that we set the highest production quality standards in this realm. Read more>>

Brianna Valdez

Content creating and live-streaming have lead me to complete a lot of meaningful projects, but my favorites always involve working with charities. My biggest passions in life are being creative and helping others, and this career has allowed me to combine both in the most incredible way. I have fundraised about $20,000 over the past four years for a number of amazing causes including St. Jude Children’s research hospital, Wounded Warrior Project, Extra Life, Stream for a Cause, and more. I host events on my Twitch channel to raise money for charity while I play video games, have fun with friends, wear awesome costumes, work on art projects, and more! It is truly so fulfilling for me to be able to make a difference in this world doing something I enjoy and love so much. Read more>>

Emma Walker

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on to date was a piece showcasing my own interpretation of sexual violence and the everlasting affect it has. I orchestrated this piece for the Riverview Center Hope & Healing gallery in honor of sexual and domestic survivors. Although this nude photo series came from a place very close to my heart, it was the vulnerability of it that left me in a place of artistic expression I’d never known before. Read more>>

Constanza Aravena

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve had the privilege to work on was the creation of a collage-based Tarot deck called ‘Corazon Collage.’ This project held special significance for me due to the profound personal and creative journey it took me on. I initiated this project in 2020, a year when, like the rest of the world, I found myself in a period of deep self-reflection. Tarot cards had always held a fascination for me due to their capacity to provide insights into the human psyche. Consequently, I decided to embark on a project that would merge my artistic inclinations with my desire for self-discovery. Read more>>

Antonio Bomar

I’ve created 9 meaningful projects in my life that I have been proud of. Each project has a story, a theme or an explanation for the sounds and track listing. I start off with a list, an idea then a title. Building from that title I critique the instrumentation to remain relevant or parallel to the feeling or emotion in what I would like to capture in that moment. The context is a simple formula which I interpret: melodies- what people remember, chords-what people feel, rhythm- what makes people move. This meaningful in understanding what i try to capture and explain via instrumental music and sink emotions between them. Read more>>

Jess Clark Garcia

I’m very happy to say that I’ve worked on many meaningful projects throughout my career. To date, I’d say my first EP “Roses” remains the most special. It came at a time in my life where I was really starting to come into my own as an artist, and was ready to take the reins when it came to my ideas and creativity. I wrote every song myself and they each came from a very personal, special place to me. I was ready to take my own creative direction with the entire project, including the visuals. It was just really freeing and I’ll always be really grateful that I had the opportunity to put out a body of work that I’m so proud of. Read more>>

J. Michael Hayes

I feel so blessed to be in a position where almost all the work I am involved in right now feels really meaningful. My agency is currently working with a company that has spent 20 years developing assessments and early intervention for children with reading challenges. Some of our other clients include a Wampanoag history museum, an equine therapy center, and an online comic convention centered on BIPOC creators. Read more>>

Courtney Sell

In being a Documentary Filmmaker, it’s certainly hard to pin point one specific meaningful project, as it’s so common to feel completely touched by each subject every film is about. Making films from an early age, I’ve been running a camera for most of my life and documenting years and years of experiences. Between witnessing the intense aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as well as my Fathers passing from an aggressive form of cancer, the moments were not only significant in my personal life, but as a Documentarian as well. For me, any project I work on that has a positive and inspirational benefit to others is meaningful. Read more>>

Ellen Schaefer

While it always feels incredibly significant to be a part of bringing the visions of others to life through my commissioned artworks, my recent series of birth flower paintings is one of my most personally meaningful projects. I created this collection of 12 original watercolor paintings based on the birth flowers associated with each month of the year. Initially, I painted 12 line-drawn gouache artworks with this theme. However, the gouache pieces did not feel right, so I waited and held onto the idea for several more months. When I was in my third trimester of pregnancy with my daughter, after finishing up the last of my custom work prior to my scheduled maternity break, I returned to the idea of painting the birth flowers again. Read more>>

Anna Moon

While every project I’ve worked on has been deeply meaningful to me in it’s own unique way, the one that stands out is my recent EP release under Anna Moon titled Psychic Visions. I wrote all the songs during the pandemic, just me and my guitar. I had been making indie pop music for a decade and hadn’t touched my guitar in what felt like years. When I first got into music I was playing tiny bars and clubs, open mics, just me and a guitar. It’s how I fell in love with songwriter at 15 years old. So when these songs started pouring out of me mid lockdown it felt like a coming home. Coming back to myself. And it unlocked so much in me. I started writing about my childhood, things I hadn’t thought about in years. Read more>>

Brittany Ackerman

All of my writing is extremely personal to me, especially when I’m writing fiction. Fiction, more so than essay, has become a place where I can explore some of the acute traumas that have occurred in my life and re-imagine them as a way of processing them. For example, I’ve just finished a draft of a novel that I call my “mall book,” a narrative that follows a mother and daughter as they work alongside each other at a department store in South Florida. The idea for the book stems from a summer where I worked at the very same department store as my mom, a summer when I was experiencing a lot of anxiety and doubt and fear of the future. The mall has always been a place of reprieve for me since I was little, and it felt like the proper setting to land some of the challenges I faced before graduating college and entering the real world. Read more>>

Jingyi Gao

Formerly a dancer, My journey began with capturing the fleeting beauty of bodily movement on stage. This fascination evolved into an exploration of the intersection between reality and virtuality, tangible and abstract. It Is Us is a mixed-media project exploring the symbiotic relationship between humans and technology. Using A.I. text-to-image as the tool, through photographs, sculptures, and video installations, the project seeks to reimagine parts of the human body and explore the symbiotic relationship between humans and technology from Artificial Intelligence’s perspective. Read more>>

Daena Title

The Representation Project is working to confront rape myths, support survivors, and challenge rape culture in media. They posted my latest series, “Indoctrination in the Dark” to highlight how pervasive and harmful Rape culture is in our lives. Their web site: https://therepproject.org/endrape/ My work there: https://therepproject.org/endrape/rape-culture-in-film/ “Indoctrination in the Dark” is a series of twelve paintings each of which focuses on a movie plot that I, and many of the men who run our government, grew up on; plot lines that present the subjugation of women as entertainment. Read more>>

Felix Galvan

I am currently working on a project called “Ollin”, meaning movement or a state of flow, in Nahuatl. “Ollin” will display a body of work I’ve been preparing for my first solo art show. My goal with this project is to celebrate this flow state that has inspired me to make art that speaks with my voice. Read more>>

Brandon Mead

The first time I shared my writing with an audience was at an open mic night in Orlando, Florida. Just days after the Pulse tragedy, I had some very raw words inside of me that I scrawled down as I sat with my coffee. As the Writers of Central Florida group assembled, they welcomed me into their world and by the end of the night they shared my tears as I read my work to them from the stage. I went back week after week, always with something new. Their reactions and support helped me understand what was working and what wasn’t in the short fiction collection I was slowly putting together. A laugh from the right side, a gasp from the left. I remember every unexpected silence and round of applause. Read more>>

Jinty McTavish

I like to think every one of our ATLYS projects is meaningful to us. However, this year, we embarked on one of the most difficult, yet rewarding projects yet. One that required our first ever Kickstarter and enabled us to work with one of the top classical music producers in the industry, Adam Abeshouse. The album is a recording of the Sonnenberg Suite, a 10 movement, Neo-Romantic piece written especially for us by Ari Fisher. It was originally commissioned by a man named Thomas Mees from Canandaigua. Read more>>

Jody Zellen

“The Unemployed” is a data visualization that illustrates worldwide unemployment: it was on view at the Los Angeles International Airport from May – October 2019. Using data culled from online sources that list unemployment rates by country, “The Unemployed” represented the jobless as animated stick figures. The number of unemployed varies from country to country (as does the percentage of each population) ranging from a few thousand to many millions. In the installation, small figures wandered aimlessly in an empty space while the country represented changed randomly. The work was also presented on monitors where the figures moved within the confines of the shape of each country’s borders. Read more>>

Marilyn Traeger

You don’t know what you don’t know and I don’t know what I don’t know! Sometimes I think that much of life is a series of projects – some more meaningful than others. Sometimes you don’t realize you are in the midst of a project or that it is meaningful until a little or a lot of time has passed. Recently, I stumbled across the term liminal. I found that liminal is from the Latin word ‘limen’, which means threshold. And that a liminal space is the time between ‘what was’ and ‘next.’ It is a place of transition, a time of waiting and not knowing the future. Read more>>

Anne Ward

I’ve been teaching people online how to make more time for their art practice. Currently, that’s through using a painting app called Procreate on the iPad but I’ll also soon be teaching people to paint in gouache and maintain a daily practice through journaling. Its important to me because in the process of raising kids and caring for parents, I found that staying creative was a powerful and rewarding means of nourishing myself. A daily practice of art making helped me to find calm and feel fulfilled through all of life’s curveballs. Read more>>

Javier Salazar Rojas

I participated in the Playas de Tijuana Mural Project and got to paint my self-portrait on the border wall that divides the U.S. and Mexico. Right where the border wall starts on the western most point of the border wall is a mural with 13 portraits of people who were born in Mexico but taken to the U.S. as children and then deported as adults. When I first got deported I used to go to the beach and look at the border wall and remember thinking how close I am to home but yet so far at the same time. The wall is what divides me from my family and from my home and so to be able to paint it with my art is pretty Impactful and means a lot to me.The Playas De Tijuana Mural project is an interactive mural with QR codes under every portrait that you can scan and learn each individual’s story. Read more>>

Jonathan Gabriel Jr.

“Thank you for the warm welcome! I’ve been fortunate to be part of multiple projects that hold significant meaning in my creative journey. One such endeavor involves merging my passions for music composition, production, and visual storytelling. My music compositions delve into intricate melodies, harmonies, and cinematic soundscapes, aiming to evoke emotions and immerse listeners in unique sonic experiences. Parallel to this, my illustration work in Pen and Ink cartooning and comic book-style art allows me to convey narratives through captivating visuals. Both these projects represent distinct creative dimensions, allowing me to channel my creativity in diverse ways. Read more>>