The ArtStart roster of artists for our summer programming includes both artists and arts educators who represent diverse cultural backgrounds and art forms. All have a deep commitment to the arts and nurturing each person’s creative artist within. ArtStart artists and staff cordially invite you to start your summer with the arts!
Karen Anderson
DRAWING/PAINTING • CLAY Karen Anderson is a retired elementary art educator. She especially enjoys teaching drawing and painting to young children. Her personal artmaking interests range from drawing and painting, to photography, to pottery. She is an avid traveler and outdoor enthusiast.
Gustavo Boada
PUPPETRY • MASKMAKING Gustavo Boada is a theater-based artist with more than 28 years performing and teaching in his native Peru and now Minnesota. He is known for creating dramatic performance masks, designing and building puppets, and his set designs. He is co-founder of Little Coyote Puppet Theater.
Julie Kastigar Boada
PUPPETRY • MASKMAKING • BEADWORKJulie Boada is an Anishinaabe artist, storyteller, puppeteer and art educator is passionate about work that fosters cultural pride and value. She has worked regionally and nationally for the past 30+years, both with HOBT and independently. She is co-founder of Little Coyote Puppet Theater.
Angie Courchaine
PERFORMANCE ARTS • STILTWALKERAngie Courchaine (they/them) is an acrobatic stilt walker who frequently performs and creates with Hijinks Stilts, Barebones Puppets, and In the Heart of the Beast. Angie is also a co-founder of Pinwheel Arts and Movement Studio and an Art Shanty Projects artist and producer.
Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra
VISUAL ARTISTRebekah Crisanta de Ybarra (she/her, Maya-Lenca Nation) is an interdisciplinary and experimental artist, musician, and culture bearer whose work is rooted in Indigenous Futurisms and immersive storytelling such as “La Luz, la Galaxia, y la Sombrisa” (the light, the galaxy, and the sadness) and her puppet play for children “Star Girl Clan.” A 2021-2022 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, she is currently creating new music and instruments as Lady Xøk for the 2023 Cedar Cultural Commission entitled “Olonguayu toni mulauna” (I Still Have Medicine). Rebekah has performed locally and nationally and has over 20 years teaching Mesoamerican and Indigenous arts and crafts to people of all ages.
Sophia Crosby
NATURALIST • MURALISTSophia received B.S. in conservation biology and environmental studies with a minor in art. Studied grouse, spotted owls, and pheasants as a field technician with the MN DNR and US Forest Service. As an artist, she created 3 educational wildlife and landscape murals for MN Valley NWR and the Eagle Lake Association. Sophia loves to sketch and paint nature while camping and backpacking.
Tara Fahey
PUPPETRY • TEXTILES • PRINTMAKING Tara Fahey is a multi-disciplinary artist,performer, and educator. Within their art, the layers of connection between the natural world, science, and spiritual relationship are interwoven. Since 2008, they created large dimensional puppets for Barebones outdoor night pageants, specializing in lanterns. In anchoring community printing workshops with Barebones for 15 years, Tara has learned and practiced silkscreen design and production. In 2019, with support from the Jerome Foundation Puppet Lab program at In the Heart of the Beast,Tara crafted a solo work,“Devotion: The Early Years of Rachel Carson,” honoring the gifted scientist and writer. Their love of teaching is rooted in the joy of intergenerational sharing.
Guerreiro
MARTIAL ARTSGuerreiro began training in martial arts in 1996 and then began training Capoeira in October 2000 under the instruction of Rosa and Cravo. In 2013, Guerreiro began training with a former capoeira classmate and long time friend, Instructor Pulo, who ran Nova Luta Capoeira. Two years later, Guerreiro founded Capoeira Minnesota. In February of 2022, Guerreiro was promoted to the rank of Professor by the capoeira community of the USA. Today, Guerreiro teaches capoeira throughout the Twin Cities.
Lisa Himmelstrup
CLAY Lisa Himmelstrup is a teacher, art therapist, and clay artist with over 30 years experience in classroom and community settings. She currently teaches at the Northern Clay Center, and creates her own clay work in her home studio for shows and sales.
Linda Jensen
DRAWING/PAINTING • FINE ART 
Linda Jenson loves teaching and learning along with others who enjoy the adventure of creating. She’s worked with ArtStart programs for over 20 years and taught in the Apple Valley school district for 26 years. As an artist and teacher she knows art connects us with others, our varied differences in culture, climate, geography, history and the natural world. She thinks Art helps us be better people through knowing and expressing ourselves.
Linda Jenson loves teaching and learning along with others who enjoy the adventure of creating. She’s worked with ArtStart programs for over 20 years and taught in the Apple Valley school district for 26 years. As an artist and teacher she knows art connects us with others, our varied differences in culture, climate, geography, history and the natural world. She thinks Art helps us be better people through knowing and expressing ourselves.
Tim O’Keefe
MIDDLE EASTERN & LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC Award winning percussionist/multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Keefe has been active performing and teaching around the Twin Cities, nationally and internationally for over 40 years. His long career has included performances with many highly renowned world music artists including Simon Shaheen, Jovino Santos Neto, Siwan Perwar, Nirmala Rajesker, Sakhar Hatter and many more. He is a founder of many world music ensembles locally and composes for theater and dance productions. Tim is also a longtime teacher specializing in instruments and styles not usually taught in many institutions. Tim holds a Smithsonian World Music Instructor certificate.
Laurie Witzkowski
PUPPETEER • STORYTELLER Laurie Witzkowski is a maker of theater, music, ceremony and gardens in both English and Spanish. In addition to her local theater work, she has performed widely across the country and the world, in venues from Lincoln Center to war zones, prisons and sacred sites.
Christopher Yaeger
DANCER Christopher Yaeger is an independent teaching artist, working in a variety of dance education programs. He performs on stages across the globe including the Twin Cities, Budapest, Prague, Las Vegas, and Seoul and is known for his innovative, fun, and high-energy dance classes.
