Danielle Foushee

Danielle Foushée is a writer, designer, artist, and Associate Professor at Arizona State University. She is obsessed with the artistry of landscapes — any landscape, and is especially interested in human-generated mark-making in the environment: buildings, roads, tunnels, and signs… petroglyphs, graffiti, and initials carved in aspen bark … forests burned, rows of corn, and victory gardens. Baby-dolls tied to fences. Gnomes on front porches. Stamps in concrete, and words on paper. She studies, documents, generates, and amplifies grassroots creative expressions across a range of outdoor environments from uninhabited public lands to dense urban neighborhoods.

Foushée’s creative work has been exhibited and/or installed in Seattle, Bellevue, Portland, Vancouver, Reno, Baltimore, and Tempe, among others. She has won national and international awards for her work, most recently the Mayor’s Art Award for Community Innovation in the City of Phoenix, Arizona. She recently served as a member of the Phoenix Arts & Culture Commission; as a grants panelist for Arizona Commission on the Arts; and as an arts commissioner for Snohomish County, Washington.

Ms. Foushée founded and is executive director of Phoenix Mural Project, a grassroots community organization that facilitates the creation of new visual expressions in public places, captures local artists’ oral histories, and maintains an extensive archive of murals and street art in the city. Produced by PMP, the inaugural Phoenix Mural Festival was embraced by the community in 2018. In partnership with local residents, community groups, and businesses, the second Festival in 2021 hosted more than 80 Arizona artists who mirrored the city’s diverse population. Working with themes of “sustainability,” they painted more than 65 new murals and revitalized the previously underappreciated outdoor public space along Phoenix’s Grand Canal in Midtown.

Professor Foushée earned MFA degrees from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Visual Studies and from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Design. Currently, she is progressing towards another MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing at Northern Arizona University. As a university teacher, she encourages students to use their creative skills to prioritize making artifacts that cultivate community connection over profit-driven commodities that tend to exacerbate social inequities and/or destroy the environment. Her own creative practice uses public and environmental art to evoke optimism and delight in passers-by, as well as deepen their sense of pride in the places they call home. For more information please visit DanielleFoushee.com.