Teaching Artist Team Selected

The Steering Committee is pleased to introduce a strong team of teaching artists that will be guiding the youth art project at Thurgood Marshall Elementary this summer.  Yvette Simone and Timothy Siciliano will collaborate as lead artists, with poet Daemond Arrindell, as a guest teacher in the first week of the project. Their collective talents, skills and experience are sure to produce not only a great piece of public art but also an exceptional experience for the 24 young artist participants.

Yvette Simone

Native American, African American, Irish and Scottish, born in the Northwest, Simone’s family’s story has been featured on Oprah. She has been honored at the White House for her artwork included in the Arts in Embassies program.  Simone has completed eleven public art sculptures, exhibited in five museums, and exhibited in numerous galleries locally, nationally and internationally and now has a studio in Seattle's Central District. Simone’s work challenges what art is with her seemingly comic-strip-like style and also challenges censorship with hard topics. Simone and her paintings can be described using the same adjectives: childlike, playful, deliberate, intelligent, thought-provoking, seemingly simple yet complex, and masterfully skilled in artistic delivery.  To learn more Simone: http://ysimone7.tumblr.com/

Timothy Siciliano

A Seattle Native with over 20 years of solo art exhibits, Siciliano has deep experience in both theater design and public art work and sculpture. His commissions include works for the Seattle Center, City of Seattle, City of Auburn, City of Issaquah, King County and Washington State Arts Commission. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, King County Individual Artist Award, and the 2010 First-Prize International Arts Award from Fabrik Arts Magazine. He has collaborated with Coyote Central on other teaching projects, including last summer’s Hit the Streets youth art project at Washington Middle School in the Central District of Seattle, WA.

Daemond Arrindell

Arrindell wants to change the world with words, particularly the lives of young people. The spoken-word poet has been in Seattle since 2001, a transplant from New York. Inspired by Seattle writer Sherman Alexie, Arrindell has influenced hundreds of teens and wants to show that poetry isn’t just about “old dead white guys.” Poetry can give kids a voice. With professional experience as a youth crisis counselor, Arrindell is a full-time writer, teacher and poetry mentor. He works as a writer-in-the-schools and as a mentor with Youth Speaks, a writing and spoken-word poetry project for teens, sponsored by Arts Corps. To learn more about Arrindell: http://kuow.org/post/seattles-daemond-arrindell-changes-lives-through-poetry