Photography: Peter Braune

Michelle Carollo is an artist and learning experience designer. She received an MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute and has shown her work around the country including New York, Miami, San Francisco, Baltimore, and Indianapolis. Michelle recently finished a public art commission for the New Day Shelter in the Bronx to support ending Domestic Violence and completed a public artwork with the New York City School Construction Authority. 

Outside of her own personal practice, she has worked extensively in the creative innovation space as a learning designer, program strategist, cultural producer, community organizer and an arts & cultural grantor. Her focus is in open space initiatives (sustainable entrepreneurship) which aims to transform the creative process ---combining groups of practitioners, activists, scholars, and industry professionals together to generate new solutions for a changing economy. Learn more.

When Michelle is not installing public art projects, you can find her hiking with her rescued dogs and parrots, kayaking the coast, and spending time with family and friends.

About my work

My work explores gender, pop-culture, and domestic industry. It uses humor and color to capture the energy, power, and tension in contemporary culture. By using a series of symbols, figures, and built handicraft, my work blends the playful with the serious.  I draw on multiple references from cartoons to graffiti and entertainment, as well as technology and the history of art.  I find there is something completely ridiculous and pleasurable in making deceptively simple imagery. The result is often a visual mash-up that remixes spontaneous information with a type of balanced order.