about us

Philosophy of Teaching | Program Descriptions | Staff and Board Member Bios

History and Mission

"Artistic Noise gave me a voice I never had. When I turned 18 DYS (Department of Youth Services) kicked me out with no knowledge of the real world and Artistic Noise took me in. I think to myself where would I be without Artistic Noise, maybe dead or in jail. If I never got the chance to join, learn and grow I would be going back to a place I never wanted to be. But now when I go back as a mentor to teach, it feels good for the girls to know I was there and I turned my life around and they can do the same with their lives."
-Minotte Romulus, co-founder, former participant and current Board Member and Assistant Director of Artistic Noise Boston

"Artistic Noise is amazing. Our residents who cannot or will not even sit down and attend a group or school will voluntarily participate in Artistic Noise and sit down and express themselves through art."
-Edward Figueroa, Social Worker at The Bronx Residential Center

Artistic Noise is an arts and entrepreneurship program for youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The program provides an opportunity for participants to process and document their lives using the visual arts while learning valuable life and job skills. Through the creation of artwork exploring issues such as self-identity, hope, incarceration, and dreams– along with the exhibition and marketing of their artwork -- the young people involved are empowered by – 1) following a complex project through to fruition; 2) having their voices heard through a visual medium; 3) participating in a collaborative project with their peers and facilitators.

By working with youth both inside the detention facility and back in the community Artistic Noise provides continuity for youth who are often experiencing trauma and upheaval in their lives. The program's flexible structure gives job training to youth who often lack the skills, experience and maturity needed to succeed in standard employment training or job situations. Artistic Noise (formerly Hear Us Make Artistic Noise or H.U.M.A.N.) was founded in Boston in 2001 and developed a New York City chapter in 2008. The program recently established itself as an independent non-profit but previously operated under the umbrella of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project (JRAP) at Boston College Law School.

Artistic Noise seeks to affect individual and systemic change within the juvenile justice system by:

Philosophy of Teaching

"Artistic Noise is a great program that allows teens to express themselves in new and creative ways. Painting, drawing, and carving are different forms of art that not a lot of teens are usually exposed to so they sometimes resort to other forms of expression that aren’t always positive."
- Fradeline, Teen Curator

We start with the clear understanding that the youth in our program are extremely valuable and have a unique and important perspective on themselves and their communities. Through object-based discussion and critical viewing of contemporary art, students begin to reflect on their own experiences through a different lens. Using a variety of artistic mediums, they explore themes such as friendship, loss, sexual violence, community, freedom, identity and their dreams for the future.

We work to empower the participants with a sense of the creative potential of the arts. Technical skills are taught and emphasized, but the main impetus is to allow for the safe, effective and meaningful communication of life experiences through visual language, and the building of connections to the larger community. Given that many of our participants suffer from abuse and low self-esteem, projects are designed to minimize the possibility of intimidation and to maximize the possibility for creative output and skillbuilding.

We do not avoid dealing with sensitive issues (such as racism, abuse, love, violence, identity, anger, or depression), understanding the participants' need to express difficult emotions in a safe, constructive context. We believe structured artmaking fosters critical thinking and problem solving -- skills that are beneficial to the teens' healthy psychological development. We believe in the strength of both individual projects, which value the unique voice of each participant, and group projects and critiques which develop skills of cooperation, negotiation, and leadership.

Program Descriptions

"I've enjoyed participating in Artistic Noise because it shows that I can be someone without being locked-up."
-Jamie, Participant

"This program has enhanced our residential facility more than any other program that we have had in years."
-Joseph Dennison, Facility Director at The Bronx Residential Center

"I have loved participating in Artistic Noise because it helped me learn a lot more than I expected. I have learned more than art, I have learned respect and self-control."
-Jose, Participant

Boston - Current

The Metro Youth Services Center / Spectrum Detainment Center – Dorchester, Massachusetts (2001-present) – Artistic Noise, Boston, runs a weekly art program for girls at the Spectrum Detainment Center in Dorchester. The program runs from September – June and brings innovative art activities into lockup. Projects are designed to involve a variety of traditional and digital media and to span several weeks. Themes are chosen to maximize the girls' interest and involvement over time. The program culminates in spring exhibits at the Violence Transformed youth exhibit at The Massachusetts State House and the Ubuntu in the Works show at Wheelock College, among others. The program formerly involved girls on the Treatment Unit, which has since been closed. This program regularly involves student volunteers from Boston College Law School, Wheelock College, Massachusetts College of Art, and Montserrat College of Art, as a way to educate the greater public about issues of juvenile rights, social activism and art education.

Artistic Noise in the Community – Boston, Massachusetts (2002-present). Artistic Noise, Boston, has been developing a community outreach program, to support girls once they are out of lockup. The program runs on a project to project basis and provides stipends for the girls to work on community art projects. The aim is to build greater continuity in our communities and to help girls develop their creative and job skills. The most recent project, completed in May 2009, was the Ubuntu Quiltmaking Project and culminated in the donation of a large, embroidered quilt to the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Roxbury, Massachusetts. In the past, the program has received space grants from The Cloud Foundation and The Boston Trinity Foundation.

New York - Current

The Bronx Residential Center - Bronx, NY (2008-present) - The Bronx Residential Center is a facility for young men operated by The Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS). Artistic Noise runs a weekly afternoon art program with select participants at this facility. The many projects that we have completed at this site include a mural installed in the entryway of the Center and a documentary film about youth in lock-up. Participants from The Bronx Residential Center work with Artistic Noise while incarcerated and those interested enter the LINC program or The Art and Entrepreneurship Program upon release.

The Children's Aid Society's LINC Programs – Bronx, Brooklyn and Harlem, NY (2008-present) - The LINC (Lasting Investments in Neighborhood Connections) program is a juvenile reentry program for youth getting released run by The Children's Aid Society in collaboration with The Office of Children and Family Services. Artistic Noise partners with LINC to offer arts programming to youth in the Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn. This partnership combines Artistic Noise's arts programming with LINC's restorative justice model. Many of the youth we work with in facilities enter this program upon release as part of their court-mandated after-care. In these programs each young artist creates individual projects, which value the unique voice of that artist. These individual projects most often inform a large-scale, collaborative project that in turn helps participants develop skills of cooperation, negotiation and leadership.

Art and Entrepreneurship Curatorial Program - The Next Generation Center - Bronx, NY (2008-present) - Artistic Noise partners with The Children's Aid Society's LINC Program to run an intensive studio art and curatorial entrepreneurship program. The program begins in September and culminates in June with our yearly exhibit of student work at New York University's Commons Gallery. Along the way, participants develop their creative skills as individual artists and collaborators and their business skills as paid artists, entrepreneurs and curators, gaining knowledge of job professionalism, learning about art world careers, and creating their own art exhibit. Through this highly structured program participants see an extensive planning process through to fruition, encouraging youth to understand the importance of working towards long-term goals.

In order to participate and receive payment in our entrepreneurial program a youth must complete an unpaid training period. After completion he or she must fill out a job application and participate in interviews in order to gain a paid position in our program. The paid artists and curators learn responsibility and are held accountable for their actions through daily self-evaluations and periodic supervisory reviews.

New York City Department of Probation Art Therapy Program– Bronx, Brooklyn and Harlem, NY (2011-present) – Artistic Noise recently received funding from The Department of Probation and The Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College to pilot an Arts Therapy program for youth involved in probation. These weekly workshops in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Harlem are co-facilitated by an Artistic Noise Teaching Artist and a Licensed Art Therapist. This model program combines Artistic Noise's Restorative Justice model with a therapeutic component.

New York - Past Programs

The Brooklyn Residential Center - Brooklyn, NY (2005-2010) - The Brooklyn Residential Center was an Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) facility for young women. Artistic Noise ran an afternoon art program each Spring with select participants. In the Spring of 2008 we implemented the Pillow Project through a grant through the Brooklyn Arts Council. In the Spring of 2009 we developed and implemented a video project with the young artists through a grant from The Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund. The Brooklyn Residential Center has been closed for renovations since 2010 and we hope to get back involved when they reopen. Rose M. Singer Center, Rikers Island – Queens, NY (2008) – Artistic Noise offered weekly art workshops to girls detained at RMSC on Rikers Island in 2008. The young women involved participated in the Pillow Project and Letterwriting project through a partnership with The Department of Education's Passages Academy and The Children's Aid Society.

Arts-Based GED Program – Dunlevy Milbank Center Restart GED Program, Harlem (2008-2009)- Artistic Noise partnered with The Children's Aid Society's LINC Program and the Department of Education to pilot a progressive arts-based GED program for re-entry and out-of-school youth. Artistic Noise developed and implemented a theme based art education curriculum geared towards enabling students to pass the GED. This GED program has since shut down.

Art / Museum Connection After-School Class - City Challenge Center – Brooklyn, NY (2008-2009) - Artistic Noise partnered with The Museum of Modern Art for programming with students at The Children's Aid Society's City Challenge Center. City Challenge was an alternative high school for juvenile offenders in Bedford Stuyvesant. Through this program participants created their own artwork inspired by various fieldtrips to cultural institutions throughout the city. The Children's Aid society no longer works with this site and since Artistic Noise partnered with CAS we no longer offer programming at this site.

Staff and Board Member Bios

Staff

Lauren Adelman
Director/ Co-Founder, Artistic Noise Boston 2001-2003
Director/ Co-Founder, Artistic Noise NY 2008-present
Lauren Adelman is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA from The School of The Museum of Fine Arts and a MA in Arts Education from NYU. She co-founded Artistic Noise in Boston in 2001 and New York in 2008. Lauren has also worked as an educator at the Museum of Modern Art since 2006. She currently works in the Community and Access Department at MoMA running partnerships with adults and youth involved in the criminal justice system. Lauren is a licensed Department of Education Teacher and has taught art in many varied settings such as public schools, juvenile detention centers, and non-profit arts organizations both locally and abroad. Lauren has shown her own artwork nationally and has been awarded residencies at The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; Anchor Graphics, Chicago, IL and was most recently a visiting artist at The Artist’s Proof Studio in Johannesburg, South Africa. Lauren’s own artistic practice explores environmental and social issues through printmaking, drawing, animation and other media.
www.laurenadelman.com

Julie Martini
Director, Artistic Noise Boston 2011-present
Julie Martini is a practicing artist and arts educator. Julie earned her Bachelor's in Studio Art at Carleton College and her Master's degree in Fine Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design. In addition to working for Artistic Noise, Julie is an instructor at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts. She has also taught at The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Fuller Craft Museum, and Massachusetts College of Art & Design. She has taught and made art with homeless individuals as Artist-In-Residence at the Barbara McInnis House, through the Eliot School and hopeFound at the Kitty Dukakis Treatment Center at Shattuck Hospital, and at Pine Street Inn. She has also been an Artist-In-Residence at the Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, making art with patients. In 1997, she conceived her first community art project, The AIDS Book. Over the course of nine months she worked with individuals living with HIV to create an edition of 125 handmade books that featured their writings. In her own work, she uses drawing, collage, and other media to explore how science influences society and our ideas about the nature of life. Her work has been exhibited in numerous exhibits in Massachusetts and beyond, and she has received residencies at the Petrified National Forest, the Women’s Studio Workshop, and the Vermont Studio Center.
www.juliemartini.info

Danielle McDonald
Artist in Residence, Artistic Noise NY 2008- present
Danielle McDonald is an artist and educator working in New York City. She is a muralist, stage designer, and avid sketcher who brings a genuine passion for creating to her teaching practice. Danielle has worked with Artistic Noise since its NYC emergence, collaborating with Lauren Adelman on The Banner Project, Transformations, and The Pillowcase Project; a program funded through the Brooklyn Arts Council. Danielle has also has taught with the Creative Arts Workshop for Kids, Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, The Brooklyn Arts Museum, The Village Community School, the Pratt Institute Pre-College Program, and is currently a full time arts teacher at Baruch College Campus High School in Manhattan. She holds a BFA in painting from the University of Delaware and a MA in Arts Education from New York University. She has designed multiple murals in NYC, operas with Opera Delaware and two short independent films. She also traveled through the Fund for Teachers Grant to Vietnam to research the impacts of communism on contemporary visual culture. She consistently seeks opportunities to examine conditions surrounding the production of art- why people create, how their social, political, physical environment influences them, and the impact this expression has on others.

Sergio Perez
Artist in Residence, Artistic Noise NY 2011-present
Sergio Alexis Perez is a Brooklyn-based Artist and Educator who originally hails from Southern California. As a youth he was initially influenced by the unique murals that adorned the highway underpasses of the renowned Chicano Park as well as the various letter styles of Chicano graffiti near his grandparent’s home in San Diego, California. Raised by his mother, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, he was also exposed to the myriad tactical symbols, aircraft markings, and symbolism of unit insignia related with her field of work. These influential elements and transient lifestyle motivated and provided Perez with the opportunities to seek out and interact with other graff writers and artists throughout high school and later on in his studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he received his BA in Arts Education. It was in Boston that Perez began working with youth and utilizing his experience as a means of empowerment and self-esteem for young people. He has continued to work and create in various community centers, public schools, incarceration facilities and arts organizations. Much of his work references both his exposure to military life as well as his indigenous and Hispanic roots in a free-associated narrative style in a variety of mediums. Currently, Sergio teaches art at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens and continues to paint murals with youth in New York City. Most recently he has completed murals with teens in conjunction with C.A.W. (Creative Arts Workshops for Kids), The State of New York, The Harlem Development Council and the community organization H.O.P.E. in East Harlem.

Alfred Planco
Artist in Residence, Artistic Noise NY 2011-present
Alfred Planco is an artist, educator, and urban farmer. Alfred received his BA from Hampshire College with a concentration in creative writing and community-based programs for out of school youth. While in college, Alfred tutored, mentored, and taught creative writing and art to youth in a special education program. He later taught at a charter high school that had a campus inside the county jail in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Most recently, Alfred coordinated a pilot job-training program at Added Value in Brooklyn, for young adults living in NYCHA housing. A native New Yorker, Alfred creates, prints and sells books that include text and graphic collage, photography, poetry, and children’s stories. Alfred’s work is inspired by found print/objects and the City.
PickledCity.blogspot.com

Minotte Romulus
Artistic Noise Co-Founder/ Youth Participant, Artistic Noise Boston 2001-2006
Artistic Noise Assistant Director and Board Member– 2006-present
Minotte Romulus is an emerging artist, mentor and educator who has collaborated with John Ewing on several large-scale public art projects. She has taught for St. Stephen’s Be Safe Program and led projects for Artistic Noise in both New York and Boston. Minotte has spoken at Boston’s Cyclorama, The Boston State House, The Cloud Foundation, Columbia University, The Massachusetts College of Art and most recently at The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Annual Conference in Washington DC. Minotte was first involved with Artistic Noise as juvenile delinquent and is now the Assistant Director of Artistic Noise Boston. As a former Artistic Noise participant she offers the young people she works with hope that they can succeed, follow their dreams and that anything is possible.

Deborah Rice, LMHC, LCAT
Art Therapist/Clinical Supervisor, Artistic Noise NY 2011-present
Deborah Rice is a New York State Licensed Creative Arts Therapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor. She received her MPS from Pratt Institute in 2002. She currently has a private practice working with children and adolescents in Manhattan and Belle Harbor, NY. Deborah is also a clinical supervisor for Counseling In Schools National Network, a nonprofit organization servicing New York City’s public schools. She provides art therapy services to students in Brooklyn and Queens as part of a Graduate, Prepare, Succeed program. Deborah utilizes the creative arts to engage children and teens in adaptive coping skills and expression. She focuses on building therapeutic relationships through the art process to positively influence change.

Julia Pagnamenta
Intern, Artistic Noise NY 2011-present
Julia Pagnamenta left her native New York to attend the University of Chicago where she majored in English. Upon graduating in June 2010, she became a production intern at the Chicago Public Radio affiliate, Vocalo.org, where she edited audio stories, wrote weekly blog entries, and occasionally produced short interviews for live broadcast. She also volunteered and wrote blog posts and reviews for I Am Logan Square, a not for profit that promotes artists and the arts in general in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. In spring 2011, Julia returned to the University of Chicago campus to work as a research assistant at the Business School and later in the Sociology Department. Now back in New York, Julia is excited to collaborate with Artistic Noise and hopes to contribute through action and ideas.

Board of Directors

Francine T. Sherman, President. Director of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project at Boston College Law School and co-founder of Artistic Noise.
Board of Directors, 2001-present

Rebecca Vose, Treasurer and Clerk. Staff Attorney, The Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project
Board of Directors, 2001-present

Daren Chentow. Provides mentoring services to girls in the juvenile justice system in Massachusetts and is active in the philanthropic community. She was a recipient of the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Embracing the Legacy Award.
Board of Directors, 2008-present

Barry Gaither. Executive Director of the National Center of Afro-American Artists.
Board of Directors, 2008-present

Kathryn Jellinghaus. Artist/ Educator, Westwood High School.
Director, Artistic Noise Boston 2006-2010
Board of Directors, 2010-present

Tess Korobkin. Phd candidate in Art History at Yale University
Deputy Director, Artistic Noise NY 2008-2010
Board of Directors, 2010-present

Cullen Malley. Associate Brand Manager with Unilever.
Board of Directors, 2010-present

Minotte Romulus. Artistic Noise Assistant Director, 2006-present
Artistic Noise Co-Founder/ Youth Participant, Artistic Noise Boston 2001-2006
Board of Directors, 2008-present

Anne Tobey. Associate Professor and Director of Juvenile Justice and Youth Programs at Wheelock College
Board of Directors, 2008-present