KUDOS TO COMPAS ARTISTS & EDUCATORS

Through COMPAS residencies, workshops, and performances, artists from all arts disciplines and many cultural backgrounds share their talents with children and adults around the state. We applaud the achievements of the following individuals:

Teaching Artist Journal featured COMPAS as an arts partner in a recent editorial project of the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago. The article, “Beyond the Residency Model,” highlights the three-year ArtsABLE project of the Saint Paul Schools. Its purpose was to expand an arts education model that was successful in raising test scores of students at risk of academic failure. COMPAS was selected as arts partner for Frost Lake and Galtier Magnet elementary schools.

TOU SAIK LEE
COMPAS spoken word artist Tou SaiK Lee received a Jerome Travel Grant to visit Thailand with his grandmother Youa Chang. Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, Lee came to the United States as an infant with his family and has never been back. His goal is to explore Hmong poetic chanting practiced by his grandmother and by his aunt in Thailand. This is a traditional oral art form passed on from generation to generation. He wants to learn koo tia and use it in his work as an artist.

SUSAN MARIE SWANSON
Susan Marie Swanson’s new children’s books—To Be Like the Sun and The House in the Night—had starred reviews and other awards, including a Junior Library Guild selection. Susan Marie has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and was awarded fellowships from the Bush and McKnight foundations. A WAITS artist for nearly 25 years, Susan Marie says, “I owe so much to COMPAS. My writing for children is very much interwoven with my work writing with children.”