Meet the people who are bridging the gap between neighbors and encouraging friendships while uplifting community voices.
Founder/Executive Director
Amy Bauer is a visual artist and community organizer dedicated to fostering creativity, environmental awareness, and community engagement through the arts. As a California Creative Corps Artist Grantee, Amy developed and led Trashion Show Long Beach (TSLB), a year-long initiative that offered free, inclusive art workshops throughout Long Beach, California. The project brought together local artists and residents to transform discarded materials into wearable art, culminating in a community-driven “Trashion Show.” Inspired by the success and impact of TSLB measured in joyful connections, creative expression, and environmental dialogue Amy founded Creative Art Events to continue using art as a tool for community building and social change.
Board Chair
Charlie Nguyen is a nonbinary jack o'lantern of many trades who resides in California Heights. They followed the siren song to Long Beach from Orange in 2017 and haven't looked back since - LBC is the place to be. Charlie loves living in a city where others value access to community needs and spaces and demand that through a variety of social change methods. They especially love getting around the city via public transit, the booming Queer scene, and all the eco-nerds they get to meet through their job at BYO Long Beach (your neighborhood friendly refill shop!).
Charlie enjoys dabbling in all the mixed media that the world has to offer, with experience spanning from sculpture welding to set building, with some theatre direction, poetry, papier mache, baking, performance art, and watercolor ("wow, so accomplished", says Darcy). Their current rotation of special interests includes making miniatures - both in real life, with trash or other foraged materials, and digitally in The Sims, and crafting tenets for a Solar Punk Present with their closest comrades.
Charlie enjoys dabbling in all the mixed media that the world has to offer, with experience spanning from sculpture welding to set building, with some theatre direction, poetry, papier mache, baking, performance art, and watercolor ("wow, so accomplished", says Darcy). Their current rotation of special interests includes making miniatures - both in real life, with trash or other foraged materials, and digitally in The Sims, and crafting tenets for a Solar Punk Present with their closest comrades.
Board Treasurer
Janna Vandenberg is a second generation Southern Californian whose grandparents emigrated from the Netherlands in the early nineteen-hundreds. A graduate of Cal State Long Beach with a BA in Finance, she spent her working career pursuing early computer applications for advanced manufacturing. Her projects include making high-precision medical devices for the human eye, structural components for the C-17, and parts for the Alaskan Pipeline. Janna taught herself to sew when she was eight years old, and has sewn, among many other things, her own wedding dress, tutus for the Long Beach Ballet, and a Glinda the Good Witch costume for the West Hollywood Carnival. As a lover of the outdoors, she backpacks and has an embarrassing number of kayaks and water toys. She also volunteers cooking and baking for St. Luke’s Manna Meals and manages the set-up and tear-down for the community murals of Roses for Rose Park.
Board Secretary
Kim has been on the Board of reDiscover Center (Los Angeles) for eight years with six of them as recording secretary. She previously has been on the Board of the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA, for four years. She is a published freelance writer.
Kim’s personal passion of creativity goes back generations in the Swiss watchmaking industry, which explains her incredible manual dexterity and the pleasure she derives working with very small things. She is excited about Creative Art Events and all the future work that can be done, working with people of many ages to share the love of creativity - without being on a cellphone!
Kim’s personal passion of creativity goes back generations in the Swiss watchmaking industry, which explains her incredible manual dexterity and the pleasure she derives working with very small things. She is excited about Creative Art Events and all the future work that can be done, working with people of many ages to share the love of creativity - without being on a cellphone!
