Bio

Shana Pearlmutter is a Chicago based painter, community muralist and healing centered art educator to 1000 students at A.G. Bell School. Her community murals can be found at Loyola University, Seward Park, Sarah’s Circle (a women’s drop in center where she worked for 5 years in the 90;2) and A.G. Bell School where she has been the art teacher since 2001. Her paintings are in private collections in St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco and Marrakesh, Morocco. Shana has had three extensive, solo exhibitions at Uncommon Ground, Clark Street and Devon Street since 2008. To deepen her understanding of her inter-faith, cross cultural marriage to world language teacher, Mohamed Danja, she and Mohamed were awarded a Fund for Teachers Fellowship grant to conduct action research of artisans, storytellers, musicians and NGOs in the World Unesco Heritage site and Mohamed’s home, Marrakech, Morocco in 2014.
Since 2019, Shana has become a Reiki Master Teacher and practitioner and attributes this healing path to her mother, Jan Pearlmutter who was also attuned to Reiki and was known as a healer to many. Shana shares Reiki in service for the community as a member of the Reiki Brigade, giving Reiki to essential workers and communities in need in person and virtually. In 2020, Shana co-created a thriving online peace circle, “We Are The One’s We Are Waiting For” to provide a healing community during the COVID pandemic.

In addition to her studio work over the past 30 years, Shana has also collaborated with many arts and civic agency organizations in Chicago and Morocco including: Project Soar Marrakech, Earth Guardians, Circle Ways, The Chicago Park District, Facing History and Ourselves, Gallery 37, After School Matters, Chicago Public Art Group, Urban Gateways, and Lookingglass Theatre. In 2016, Shana was awarded the distinguished The Griffin Award for Teacher of Excellence from the Oriental Institute in Chicago and in 2019, Shana and her social studies colleague won the inaugural Obama Foundation Award for Leadership in Civic Education. She has facilitated students creating Teaching Artistic Behavior/Studio Habits passion projects, mosaic and painted murals, ceramic sculpture, site-specific art classes, quilt making, and theater artwork with youth and adults. Shana also teaches transformational art classes to adults at Uplifted Human as the Creative Arts Educator & Transformational Guide. More recently, Shana has focused on the co-creative process and generated a series of artworks collaboratively made with artists from around the world in a virtual gallery called: Collaborative Concurrence.

Shana received her BFA in Printmaking and Painting in 1994 from the University of Kansas where she graduated with honors. She also received her MAAE in art education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001 with a focus on student voice, identity, equity, uplifting under-represented artistic voices and environmental sustainability. She currently lives with her husband Mohamed and their son Abrahim and their pets Kipo the dog and Lulu the guinea pig. Please check back for new work soon!