User:Toandanel49/sandbox/Ortiz

Draft:Michelle Angela Ortiz

Early life and education
Ortiz’s mother, Epifania Ortiz immigrated to the Italian Market area, Bella Vista, from Colombia. Her father, Miguel Angel Ortiz, was from Puerto Rico. She attended elementary school at St Paul’s, then St. Maria Goretti High School (now Neumann-Goretti). Her first mural was her senior project in 1996. Sharing the Light of Unity.

Ortiz earned a  Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts from Moore College of Art & Design and graduated summa cum laude in 2000. She earned a Master's Degree in Science of Arts and Cultural Management from Rosemont College in 2002. She was a Master of Fine Arts candidate from June 2012 to May 2013 Maryland Institute college of Art.

Career and works
Ortiz taught in North Philadelphia, at Taller Puertorriqueño. She served as the program manager for the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation which advocates for the Philadelphia arts community at large. She held a summer internship for Haverford College known as the Support education of public Arts and migrant rights opportunity She served as a Rauschenberg Foundation artist as an activist fellow,

Exhibitions with other artists in Phildadelphia
Making Space, Leeway Foundation 25th Anniversary, 2018 Galleries at Moore, Philadelphia, PA

Signs of Solidarity, Outdoor Exhibition, Little Berlin Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

Truth to power Group exhibition during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia

Wind Challenge Exhibition: with Michelle Angela Ortiz, Evan Dawson, and Rebecca Gilbert, was a series of free-public programs led by the artists and designed to deepen the artistic experience held at the Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia.

Journeys South: evolving immigrant histories of South Philadelphia, a City of Phildelphia mural arts program sponsored a mural project with Ortiz and photographer/video artist, Tony Rocco, on Different paths, one market.

Seguimos caminando (We keep walking) a mural sponsored by the city's mural arts program on the gates of Philadelphia city hall, described as an imaginative projection. Flores de libertad creative action against family detention Ortiz held workshops on making flowers that with made hundreds of flowers Monument Lab Research Field Office at the Barnes Foundation. with messages of freedom for the detained families at the Berks Detention Center. the hand dyed flowers were assembled at the north gates of City Hall to spell out the 10’x40’ word “Libertad” (Freedom/ Liberty).

The collective artwork is a creative action that was followed by a press conference led by the Shut Down Berks Coalition to put pressure on Governor Tom Wolf who has the power to shut down the center and end family detention in Pennsylvania.

Additionally, artist Michelle Angela Ortiz collaborated with Jordan McCullough and Carol Richardson McCullough, both TRIPOD writers-in-residence, to lead a mural painting session inspired by “Notes to Self.” The mural was installed at the Free Library of Philadelphia as part of the national Conference on Community Writing hosted by Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania October 17-19, 2019.

US exhibitions with other artists
Race and Revolution, 2016 Governors Island, New York, New York; An artistic response to documents and events from the American Revolution to include racism and inequality in history. The exhibition attempted to expand the accounts told about colonial times to include the experiences of African-American and Native American people.

Living Walls: The City Speaks, 2017 Atlanta, Georgia. This city wide project was started to bring to life neglected public spaces and improve dialogue in communities.

Finding Our Place, Digital Murals, Lancaster, Millersville University' s Latino Community Mural Project explores the stories of the area's Latino community. Ortiz was the artisti-in-residence and worked with students enrolled in contemporary art courses, African-American and Latino experience courses.

Wilmington Trap Stars, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, Delavare. This exhibition, sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was about structural inequality and violence in Wilmington.

Chicanismo y Latinismo, 2014 Creative Alliance, Baltimore, Maryland: This group exhibition was decribed by the Creative Alliance as about how " the Chicano movement moved beyond its West Coast beginnings to include a multiplicity of Latino identities."

Cultural envoy with the US embassy
Ortiz was chosen as a cultural envoy for the United States embassy in 2008, after the election fo Barak Obama. Among her projects as cultural envoy were: Un Nuevo Futuro (A new future) mural in Tegucigalpa, Honduras was sponsored by the Meridian International Center together with the local Alianza Joven Honduras (Honduras youth alliance) and Office of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the US State Department. Afuera y Adentro Fanzine, Santa Martha Prison for Women, Habitajes, Mexico City, Mexico. El Viaje (The journey) Public Art Transnational Art Project, 2011 Mexico City and Puebla, Mexico Aquí y allá (Here and there)  a documentary film by Michelle Angela Ortiz that was shown when she hosted artists workshops in Mexico and Honduras

Construyendo Puentes de Igualdad / Building bridges of equality Mural, U.S. Embassy Cultural Envoy, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Juntos Creamos Nuestra Comunidad / Together we create our community U.S. Embassy Cultural Envoy, Caracas, Venezuela

Mothers of the earth Mama Hanua mural in Suva, Fiji  US Embassy Cultural Envoy

El Nuevo Camino (The new way) mural. U.S. Embassy Cultural Envoy, Juarez, Chihuahua, MX

In 2015 Ortiz the "De La Memoria Al Muro" with the Otomi indigenous migrant community in Mexico City and in 2018 and Orgullo Otomi in San Santiago, Queretaro, Mexico This project was through Habitajes

Luz de Esperanza (The light of hope) Mural, U.S. Embassy Cultural Envoy, Vitoria, Spain

Somos Regla (We rule) : Mural, Meridian International Center U.S. Embassy, Havana, Cuba. Ortiz completed the first U.S. State funded public art project since the re-opening of te US Embassy in Havana in 2015.

Familias separadas
Ortiz made a 30 minute documentary, “Las Madres de Berks/ (the mothers of Berks), as part of her Familias Separadas / Separated families and it was screened in Reading, Philadelphia, Lancaster, and Harrisburg with her art exhibition. “Las Madres de Berks” documentary shares the testimonials of four mothers that were detained for 2 years with their children at The Berks County Residential Center, a family prison in Pennsylvania. The Shut Down Berks Coalition, a statewide action against family immigration detention, worked with Ortiz on the project as a community partner.

The screenings are made possible with support by The Fleischner Family Fund of the Philadelphia Foundation,   The Free Migration Project, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Solo Exhibitions
2017 Quizas Mañana Nuestro Llanto Quede Atras (Hopefully Tomorrow our Sorrow Remains Behind Us).Taller Puertorriqueño, Philadelphia,

2012 Aqui y Allá, Mural Arts Program, Philadelphia PA

2011 Marcadas, McKinney Gallery, West Chester University, West Chester, PA

Permanent Collection
Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA 2016

Print Collection, La Salle University Art Museum Philadelphia including Eres mi Todo (You are My Everything), 2016 in Border Crossings.

Awards and recognition
Ortiz won the Leeway Foundation Transformation Award (2008) and she won a 2018 PEW Fellowship, and she was a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist National Fellow,2017-2018. Ortiz was a three time recipient of an Art & Change grant (2013, 2012 & 2006.)

(date?) Santa Fe Art Institute Equal Justice Resident Artist.

She became a fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Fund for the Arts (2011),

In 2016 Ortiz received the Americans for the Arts' Public Art Year in Review Award which honors outstanding public arts projects in the nation, and also in 2016 the Philly Te Ama video series featured a spotlight on mural artist Michelle Angela Ortiz

Ortiz is featured in the April 2019 Philadelphia Magazine profile of 38 Philadelphians "Shaking Up the City."