Bridget Bartolini & Priscila Stadler

Bridget Bartolini is a socially engaged artist, educator, and aspiring oral historian who uses story-sharing to strengthen community connections. Inspired by her love for New York City, her belief in the power of storytelling as a tool for social justice, and her frustration with the lack of cultural programming in areas like her home neighborhood in Queens, Bridget launched the Five Boro Story Project in 2013. Under the Five Boro Story Project, she produces community storytelling events that bring New Yorkers together through sharing true stories and art inspired by our neighborhoods. Her creative process involves working with community members, organizers, activists, and artists to collaboratively create tributes to the people and places that make up our homes. Bridget holds a Masters in Community Education from Columbia University’s Teachers College, and was a 2013 Create Change Fellow and 2014 Commissioned Artist with The Laundromat Project, a 2015-16 Creative Community Fellow with National Arts Strategies, and an artist in residence with More Art’s Engaging Artists 2016 Housing Justice Residency. She received the More Art Prize for Public Art in 2017, and in 2018 joined the Oral History Masters Program at Columbia University.

Priscila Stadler
Whether making buildings from cheesecloth, envisioning underground networks between fungi and tree roots, or designing open-ended dialogues as starting points for reflection and community activism, Priscilla Stadler explore the resilient and precarious structures of connectedness - sometimes among humans,and sometimes among plants.

Through exploring landscapes -whether the ones imagined underground or in NYC's contested streets - Stadler has learned that things that appear delicate (cloth, communities, and seedlings) can be much tougher and more resilient than they seem.