BIOGRAPHY

Phyllis Viola Boyd is an interdisciplinary artist and urban strategist exploring connectedness and healing from the scale of the individual to that of the community. Boyd’s multi-media studio practice engages paint, collage, and textiles in an intuitive process that creates space to practice intentionally shifting from hustle and resistance (constant busy-ness in response to external demands and manufactured desires) to flow (intuitive action/inaction in response to an internal compass). Boyd’s community-based work focuses on supporting the efforts of diverse communities to transform their built environments into meaningful, relevant, and life-enhancing places. Boyd served as the project co-lead of the ArtPlace America-funded RECLAIM Project, which transformed the blight of vacant lots into beauty and economic opportunity for emerging artists and formerly incarcerated community members. 

 

Boyd holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Indiana University in Bloomington and attended The University of Texas at Austin where she received a Master of Arts in Botany, studied painting and drawing in the College of Fine Arts, and received a Master of Landscape Architecture. Boyd is a former Indiana Arts Commission On-Ramp Fellow, was named the 2021 Hoosier Resilience Hero by the Environmental Resilience Institute of Indiana University, and received an Environmental Justice and Equity Expert Award in 2020 from the Urban Waters Learning Network.