vanessa german is a Pittsburgh-based self-taught citizen artist working across sculpture, performance, communal rituals, immersive installation, and photography, to repair and reshape disrupted systems, spaces, and connections. The artist’s practice proposes new models for social healing, utilizing creativity and tenderness as vital forces to reckon with the historical and ongoing catastrophes of structural racism. In 2011, german founded Love Front Porch, an arts initiative for the women, children, and families of the local neighborhood that began after she moved her studio practice onto the front steps of her home. Three years later, in 2014, german opened the ARThouse, which combines a community studio, a large garden, an outdoor theatre, and an artist residency. german has been awarded the 2018 Don Tyson Prize from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and a 2018 United States Artist Grant. german’s fine art work has been exhibited widely, including at the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa; The Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha, Nebraska; and The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. Her work is in private and public collections, such as Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; the Art Museum of West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virgina; and Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, among many others.