Community-Word Project

MOIRA-JO TRACHTENBERG-THIELKING

TEACHING ARTISTS

SHARE TWEET

Moira is a poet, fiction writer and visual artist, who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU. She feels inspired by working with students and other artists to create student-driven, collaborative interdisciplinary arts programs. Her most recent project was to work with 5 high school art classes at the Bronx Academy of Health Careers to create large-scale collaborative sculptures capturing the students’ visions of “freedom.” She is also proud of leading the design of a digital community mural, now printed and installed at Soundview Library in the Bronx. It explored ideas of resilience, joy and “What makes us float,” which was especially relevant following the summer 2021 flooding crises in the region. When catapulted into the virtual world by the pandemic, Moira explored the opportunities of Zoom, Google Classroom and video shorts as both a teacher, poet, and artist. Her poetry, sculpture and video projects were displayed in virtual galleries through the Hammond Museum and Studio Theater in Exile/Hudson Valley MOCA. Her poetry has most recently been published in the anthology, “A 21^st Century Plague: Poetry from a Pandemic” (2021). Her photo, “Our Lady of Bronxwood,” featured in the February 2022 group show at the Upstream Gallery in Hastings on Hudson, was taken in the BAHC neighborhood after teaching classes! She is currently experimenting with “mudlark” materials from the shoreline, both manmade and natural, creating sculptural elegies evocative of time and loss.