Meet the Team

DIRECTOR OF THERAPEUTIC ARTS she/they

Fernanda was born and raised in Medellín, Colombia, where she studied psychology and painting. She enrolled in a cultural exchange program and landed in Massachusetts, where they found that both of their passions were actually a real profession, deciding to become an expressive arts therapist.

After finishing her Master’s Degree in Art Therapy at Lesley University, she wanted a space where healing through the arts was possible, in the city she called home. The multilayered richness and culture of Lawrence, MA provided all that she needed to manifest their vision and kickstart Lawrence Arts House, later known as La House.

You can often find Fernanda roller-skating, frolicking in her garden, and making mermaid splashes at the beach.

EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR he/him

From the Hood to the World, like rain on a tin roof, River Malakai is a multidisciplinary artist and writer of mixed Afro-Indigenous Caribbean descent. His work weaves together social and spatial practice, recontextualizing diasporic cultural memory through archival poetics and aesthetics.

Inspired by research-creation methods, like oral histories, counter-mapping, and sonic ethnographies, River makes use of art as cultural infrastructure — building participatory archives, sonic commons, and neighborhood laboratories where youth artists thread archival pasts to speculative futurities.

River Malakai grew up in both Lawrence, MA and the Dominican Republic and has spent the last decade working in creative community development.

DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS + OPERATIONS they/she

Y-Bình is a proud daughter of American War in Vietnam refugees, descendent from a rural farming community in An Giang, Việt Nam, and situated in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

They are a communal mythology storyteller, multi-media artist, budding agriculturalist, and avid eyeliner enthusiast.

Their writing focuses on eco-resistance sci-fi, transgenerational trauma & healing, critical compassion, queer coming of age love stories, diaspora hustles and bustles, and visionary fiction by way of recognizing the power of making space for past, present, and future ancestors to heal and create new worlds.

Y-Bình also uses their 10+ years of experience with ceramics to build new forms.