By Peyton Stark on August 22, 2019 Heidi Hafermann Heidi Hafermann, MCAD alum and Art Cellar staff member, has been a leading figure in the Native Youth Arts Collective (NYAC) to build up this community of artists. The exhibition acts as a bridge between the community at MCAD and NYAC through their artwork. Can you provide a little background on the Native Youth Arts Collective? NYAC was developed by Joe Beaulieu and myself as a way for Native Youth, ages 14 to 21, to gain confidence in accessing and utilizing creative resources around the Twin Cities and enjoy the hands-on process of art-making. Arts institutions can feel like very colonized spaces. It can be difficult to understand what resources and experiences might be available if you are not sure of how to navigate a system or space. I am so happy that places like the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) and the Walker Art Center have welcomed our youth and that more and more programming is reflecting the understanding that in order to be living, vibrant resources, art centers need to hear from the whole community on their own terms. We also give the youth opportunities for painting, drawing, printing, and so on. Many of our projects are collaborative, which adds another layer of community to our programming. Can you talk a bit about the exhibition coming up at MCAD? The exhibition at MCAD has brought up a lot of emotion for me. I am an MCAD alum, and my NYAC colleague Courtney Cochran is a current student, so having MCAD support our work and collaborate is meaningful on many levels. I also am so proud of the students we work with. Looking through artwork, photos, and videos brings back so many great memories. It’s a retrospective of the last four to five years. This group really is family to me. What is your role with NYAC and the upcoming exhibition? There are three of us who work regularly with NYAC: myself, co-founder Joe Beaulieu, and artist and mentor Courtney Cochran. We all do a little bit of everything, in terms of reaching out to potential partners, grant writing, and mentoring the youth. I am the lead artist (for the purposes of “titles”), which means I develop some of the project ideas and curriculum. None of it would work without the conversations we have with the youth or the support we give each other. It is absolutely a team effort. Circular Calendar Is there a project you have done with NYAC in the past that stands out? There isn’t really one particular project that stands out to me. If things are going well (which luckily is most of the time), then I tend to think each new thing is my favorite! Overall though, what makes me happiest is to see our youth navigating places like the Walker with enthusiasm and confidence. That’s when I see that they’re making their own connections and deciding for themselves what is meaningful about the space and experience. You have a strong connection with MCAD, both as an alum and a friendly face at the Art Cellar. What is it about MCAD that keeps you coming back? What makes this institution special? What makes MCAD special… I do think it always comes back to the people. Being in the Art Cellar, I see the new first-year students come in, figure things out, and maybe surprise themselves a little in terms of what they can do and be. I see and hear many interesting and incredibly important conversations happening around issues of race, equity, and gender, and I’m really excited by that. College should ideally be a place where you feel like you can test the systems around you, and I’m happy to be in a spot at the Art Cellar where I can witness some of that. Please correct my language and my use of pronouns, if need be, and if I ask you how your day is going, you can certainly give me the unvarnished version if that feels right to you! To say the ultimate “old person” thing, I’m thrilled to see younger people being passionate, but I don’t think you should have to do it alone. Call out us older people! And I hope you feel safe doing that here. What does your personal practice look like? My personal practice is a work in progress! You can see some of my (not very recently updated) work at heidihafermann.com. I have spent the last couple years very immersed in helping build NYAC, and I wouldn’t trade a moment of it, but I’m definitely at a point where I need to remember that I can’t be an effective resource if I don’t fill the well. I’m finally beginning to trust that what we’ve built has some momentum, and maybe I can spread my energy out a little more. I’m never not an artist, but that movement of thought into the process is definitely so important and something I’m always trying to balance.