Join Kat and A’Driane Nieves as they chat about creating your own space in the art world, building a community, learning essential lessons and persevering when things get hard. A’Driane Nieves is a USAF disabled veteran, multi-disciplinary abstract artist, activist, and speaker with a heart for serving others and social good. She is a mental health advocate living with bipolar disorder and runs an online platform and mental health support group for women of color called Tessera Collective. In 2018, she opened Tessera Arts Collective, an arts nonprofit serving women-identifying & non-binary abstract artists of color in the Greater Philadelphia area and beyond that currently operates a storefront studio & gallery space in North Philly. She believes that creating and viewing visual art that addresses difficult topics can serve as a catalyst for personal growth & social change, while also empowering WOC artists to speak their truths. She pushes womxn to transform the brokenness in their lives into power and beauty, and works to amplify the voices and experiences of those marked as Other in society. A’Driane lives in New Jersey with her husband and three boys.