Angela is an arts manager with 16 years of experience at diverse creative nonprofits spanning Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, PA, and Colorado Springs, CO. She has built her career around engaging the public in local creativity through communications, multimedia, collaborative partnerships, and live programs. Angela currently serves as the Deputy Director of the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region, the nonprofit local arts agency for El Paso and Teller counties of Colorado (www.CulturalOffice.org) where she is part of a small and strong ensemble staff that connects residents and tourists with the creative sector. Her recent projects include coordinating the Arts Vision 2030 cultural planning initiative and the #ElevatedByArt campaign, hosting the online arts & entertainment show & podcast “Peak Radar Live”, and representing local arts on various local committees, boards, and project teams. She lives in downtown Colorado Springs with her family.
What do you do for a living? What brought you down that path?
I help to build stronger bridges between the community and their local artists. (See my answer to “one experience that has shaped me!”)
What is one experience that has shaped you to be the person you are today?
In 2002, I attended The Smithsonian Folklife Festival in D.C., which that year was themed on The Silk Road. They transformed the National Mall by bringing artisans, artists, and performers of all kinds from across Asia. I wandered the crowd and heard Mongolian throat singers, watched a stone sculptor for a long time … in one place they had literally rebuilt an Uzbek potter’s kiln brick by brick so he could make pots exactly as he does in his home village. That experience changed my life by showing me what can happen when barriers are removed between artists and the public. When people can see how things are made, meet artists personally, and try out new art forms in safe space together, the energy is magical and open and curious and connective. Through live programs that I’ve run in interactive museums, festivals I’ve managed in public parks, and multimedia I’ve created like the #ElevatedByArt campaign or my show “Peak Radar Live”, I’m always chasing that accessible alchemy where people can discover each other and themselves as creative souls, across barriers.
What advice would you give your younger self?
It takes time to build life. Lean in and trust the process.
What is the best $100 you recently spent? On what and why? (personal or professional)
I just took my first lesson in natural horsemanship on a family farm near Ellicott, CO. It’s different than anything I’ve ever done, but I found myself longing to experience horses’ intuitive connectiveness during the pandemic, when everything was digital and so separated. It feels disruptive, fresh and nourishing to do something completely unrelated to anything else in my life.
What is the one book that you recommend our audience should read and why?
I love Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Years after first reading it, I still occasionally flip it open to read a city, sometimes I have read a city or two out loud at parties. It is easy, surreal, and poetic, and makes you think imaginatively about the possibilities of community and built spaces. I think the Pikes Peak region could really thrive with more imagination about community, architecture, and public space.
What is your favorite quote?
“Let us put firmly and permanently aside as a cliche of an expired moment that art is a frill. Let us accept the goodness of art where we are now, and expand its worth in the places where people live.” – Robert Gard. (This has hung by my desk for 8 years.)
What local businesses would you recommend our readers support?
It’s very important, long term, that we all invest in BIPOC-led businesses and creatives of color. Intention behind our spending in this way can have transformative economic impact, affirm the value and quality of what our BIPOC neighbors contribute, and set us on a more just path together. I recommend the business directory at My Black Colorado as a great way to discover inspiring businesses and services along the Front Range – visit www.MyBlackColorado.com and choose “SHOP.”
What local nonprofit would you recommend our readers support?
Absolutely any creative nonprofit that speaks to you, from slam poetry to street art to chamber music to modern dance to kids choruses. It is frustrating when people complain that there “isn’t more to do” but they aren’t making any effort to find out what’s happening or support it by participating or investing in it! The arts will thrive with our support and participation. Our community thrives when the arts do. A good starting place is PeakRadar.com, which has a diverse event calendar for the Pikes Peak region and an organizational directory to help you connect to groups that fit you.
What is the biggest challenge you have ever faced and how did you overcome it?
My mother was suddenly diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer two years ago and died 4 months later. She and I were very close, and I helped care for her as she died and planned her funeral with her. Two things helped me. One, I reached out to other people who had experienced great loss in losing their mothers. It gave me reassurance that if they could survive it, I would be able to, too. I still occasionally read aloud a handwritten list of friends’ deceased mother’s names to honor that community in loss. Secondly, my family and I made daily choices to love each other well and create good memories still – sometimes as simple as setting a beautiful dinner table among the hospice equipment. That insistence on instilling meaning and beauty was an act of resistance for me. To defy what is horrifying with flowers brought in from the yard or a rose-scented bath for her or telling family stories. To assert ourselves against what feels like futility, to assert that we can be connected and experience beauty no matter what happens to us. I now believe that is a powerful life skill – a trait of resilience – to insist on making meaning together in the midst of crisis or tragedy.
Who is your biggest inspiration?
Jane Werner, Executive Director of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, whose leadership I closely observed while running live events and some special programs there for over 6 years. Jane is visionary, she seizes opportunities, she pushes her team and community to think bigger and to trust artistry as a solution to a spectrum of shared challenges. Her belief in play keeps her nimble, open, and luminous. She inspires me to drive forward further toward achieving gorgeous and meaningful results, but not making that work an overly-serious slog; progress should inspire people, and feel good, fun, and hopeful!
If you had a superpower what would it be and why?
I would throw glassy frisbees that expand into giant lenses that reveal possibilities when you look through them … and my costume and soundtrack would be 80’s hair band style. I would come busting into stuffy board rooms to soaring electric guitar solos and start throwing possibility discs and everyone would start having fun and making more exciting choices. Positive change is easier when we can see aspirational possibilities around us. Otherwise, we just keep building boring buildings, obsessing about minutiae, and systemically oppressing each other.
What 3 (only) items would you bring to a deserted island?
A sun tent, a photo of my family, an 80’s hair band mixtape.
Which are your favorite 5 spots in Colorado?
Chaffee County, Ouray, Wolf Creek Pass, Prospect Lake in Memorial Park, and the Memorial Garden at Grace & St. Stephens Church in Downtown Colorado Springs
Which is the next destination on your wishlist?
I would love to experience the architecture, retro vibe, and desert beauty in Palm Springs, CA.