FIVE QUESTIONS FOR THE ARTIST

1) What is your name?
- Ann LePore - 

2) Where are you from?
- Saratoga County, New York - 

3) What do you do?
- I'm an artist and educator. I like to build, hack, break, edit, project and animate. - 

4) What inspired you to pursue your creative career?
- Delmer Herrick, my high school art teacher believed in me. If it weren't for him, I never would have pushed myself creatively, or gone to art school. -

5) What is your view on the state of the arts?
- The state of the arts in this state is not great- in terms of official NJ support, or American arts support for that matter. However, as artists, we create our own communities and our own support networks- and while we have very few monetary resources, we support each other better than any government ever could. -

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR THE ARTIST

1) What is your name?
- Lafotographeuse (nee Amanda Adams-Louis) - 

2) Where are you from?
- I hate this question because I don't have an easy answer for it. To be 100, I'm still trying to figure out where I am from. 

I have a US passport. My dad is Haitian, mom is American and I grew up in Panama City, Dakar, DC, Budapest, Toledo, Lugano, Gaberone and Conakry. And I've resided in Brooklyn my entire adult life. -

3) What do you do?
- I am an freelance photographer, visual artist, hip-hopographer, creative producer and arts educator. -

4) What inspired you to pursue your creative career?
- I attended a private, boarding school in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland for high school. I had access to amazing analog photography reproduction facilities, got to go on photo field trips and shoot various European capitals and go to amazing historic museums. So by the time I was 17 and thinking about the whole college/career thing, I had already been shooting for four years so I knew I wanted to pursue it as a career. -

5) What is your view on the state of the arts?
- Things are in flux right now. The funding is low but at least there is still some out there. I see a lot more collaborations that I did a few years ago and I think we might be seeing a lot more work that invokes the state of the economy. -

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR THE ARTIST

1) What is your name?
- TASNEEM - 

2) Where are you from?
- I am East African Gujurati Indian born in Canada raised in Oklahoma lived in NYC and now in LA ; ) -

3) What do you do?
- I am a musician actor and educator -

4) What inspired you to pursue your creative career?
- When i was a kid i heard Sade's smooth Operator on the radio i knew i had to play that saxophone been doing it ever since. -

5) What is your view on the state of the arts?
- The state of the arts is ever evolving which one of the things i love about it. The internet has changed music so much and i don't think its really anymore about being the biggest star its become for a lot of songwriters and bands about writing good music that people gracitate to, which gives me hop

twitter.com/iamtasneem
-

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR THE ARTIST

1) What is your name?
- Meron Dagnew - 

2) Where are you from?
- Originaly from Ethiopia but raised in NYC - 

3) What do you do?
- I am a director of an arts organization (non profit) working on capacity building for the arts and culture sector in Ethiopia called "Culture and Arts For Ethiopia" CAFE - 

4) What inspired you to pursue your creative career?
- Tried to repatriate back to my country and work in a sector I feel comfortable in, however I came to find out that there was no infrastructure nor the paradigm understanding in the country. It was just too soon to do what I wanted to do so I decided since I want to do what I want and make money I could not wait for someone else to do it so I founded the organization and started work -

5) What is your view on the state of the arts?
- My view on the state of the arts here in Ethiopia is the reason why i do what i do. With the help of hopefully good arts funding, and government support, our organization is trying to shift and move into this new paradigm of thinking that arts is the core of the creative thinking and that all stakeholders have to come together to find a solution. One of our big programs is introducing arts education within the public school system curriculum here in Ethiopia. -

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR THE ARTIST

1) What is your name?
- Lowell Boston - 

2) Where are you from?
- Upstate NY originally - 

3) What do you do?
- Animator. Professor. Writer. - 

4) What inspired you to pursue your creative career?
- Art. Film. Books, and works of the imagination. -

5) What is your view on the state of the arts?
- Independent artist have never been more empowered and weakened due to the demise of government (local, state, national) support for the arts and grant programs, widening the gap between the arts, artist and the public. This has lead to a cultivation of low brow sensibilities and a misunderstood perception of the arts and artist in general. However, due to the media and the internet never before have artist had the ability (filmmakers and animators) to promote and expose their work on a global scale. -

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR THE ARTIST

1) What is your name?
- Nicole Franklin. - 


2) Where are you from?
- I am from St. Louis, MO but I was born in Montclair, NJ while my father, Donald E. Franklin was on a journalism fellowship at Columbia University. - 


3) What do you do?
- I'm a Filmmaker and an Educator. My company is EPIPHANY Inc. and I am the Communications Instructor in the Division of Humanities at Bloomfield College (NJ). I also spent 20+ years as a daily hire news editor for all of the network news broadcasts on both the East and West Coasts and a few independent news broadcasts in Los Angeles. -

4) What inspired you to pursue your creative career?
- My love of storytelling and the lack of positive Black characters in media inspired me to pursue my creative career. I also loved the rush of emerging from the wings in costume and full makeup from my days as a dance student turned showgirl. -

5) What is your view on the state of the arts?
- The state of the arts is strong. No matter how much funding is denied the number of artistic projects that are birthed have multiplied. Artists are unstoppable. Art is life. -