Wendy Testu

Wendy Testu comes from a long line of
educators, activists and environmentalists. Born and raised in Mt. Shasta,
California She moved to San Francisco when she was 17 years old to attend
design school. She has worked in the realms of clothing design, painting,
ceramics, sculpture, installation art and film. Wendy values experimental work
that brings communities together to explore culturally relevant issues and
prefers to work on long-term projects where the art-making involves youth and
speaks about environmental and social justice issues.

Wendy is the creator of the two-year
community engagement project, Welcome to the NeighborHOOD, a collaboration with
youth from Literacy For Environmental Justice and several artists showing the
issues facing the Bayview / Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco. She’s
received grants from the San Francisco Department Of The Environment, the San Francisco Arts Commission, The LEF Foundation, The San Francisco Foundations-Koshland
Program, and The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation. Wendy also recently was the
recipient of a National Arts Strategies
Future Leadership Fellowship.

For the past four years she has managed,
taught and trained parents for the parent lead visual arts programs at the
Leonard R. Flynn public elementary school in San Francisco. In the future Wendy
plans on committing her time to bridging the gap between non-profits, community
organizations and inner city public schools by bringing art programming that
will align itself with a school’s curriculum, introduce themes of environmental
and social justice and will teach youth community building through the process
and collaborative creation of art.