Caryn T. Davis is a grants-based teaching artist who explores community
multidisciplinary artmaking, often centered on social justice themes by focusing on the
ways the “personal is political” with people of all backgrounds, language proficiencies,
and ages. Caryn views her partnership with the Anne Frank Center as an opportunity to
contribute to young people’s knowledge and artistic expression to resist and combat
hate in all its forms, and especially towards Jewish communities. Caryn is a self-taught
teaching artist, and artist, earning a BA from Hunter College in New York City, and a
master’s in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) at the New
School in New York City. The New York Times awarded Caryn an ESOL Teacher of the
Year award, in part, for her creation and facilitation of her Altered Book Project for her
adult college-bound immigrant students at the City University of New York. Her students
developed their English language and critical thinking skills in a unique way through
creative expression. She is currently a cohort at the Lincoln Center’s Summer Forum for
Teaching Artists in New York City. Caryn has received numerous arts grants to facilitate
workshops and residencies for her Altered Book Project, and No Sew Quilts in public
schools, senior centers, not-for-profits, and in collaboration with the New York Public
Library, Sundog Theatre, and the Brooklyn and Staten Island Museums. Caryn believes
in the interconnectedness between her art teaching and her practice of abstract painting
she creates in her backyard studio shed on Staten Island, New York. She attended her
first arts residency in the California desert and has begun to exhibit her paintings and
photographs in community settings in solo and group shows in New York.