This month’s episode of Cultura Conscious is all about transitions and finding your purpose. Paulina Lopez, adult educator and teaching artist at the Art Institute of Chicago, joins me to discuss the events of 2017 and how they affected our personal, political and professional lives. Paulina shares her insights on what keeps her motivated and focused, even among political turmoil. She shares her unique perspective on how we can learn to weather ambiguity by practicing basic principles of artistic practice. We also touch on the difficulty we have untangling our professional and personal lives, but how crucial we have found it to learn a healthy balance. Paulina also gives me timely advice on how to navigate transitioning from a small museum to a very large museum (hint: draw a behind the scenes map!). Plus! New year, new us. What is in store for 2018?

Paulina Lopez is an educator, teaching artist, and maker whose practice envisions the art museum as a site for exploratory learning and exchange. Her current work at the Art Institute of Chicago focuses on developing opportunities for intergenerational art-making as a way to meaningfully engage with the museum’s artworks on view, inviting visitors to embrace risks and explore the value in the unexpected. She received her B.A. in Studio Art from Carleton College and her M.Ed. from Southern Methodist University. Her dream home would be a printmaking studio merged with a used bookstore and a Mexican panadería.