The Intensive Arts Mentorship invites high school artists to step into a creative journey where their voices become public art. Led by Mentor Muralists, participants co-create vibrant mural projects that authentically reflect their communities and stories. Students learn valuable job skills, receive a stipend, and the chance to see their vision come alive in public spaces—all while amplifying youth expression and leadership.
How it works
Apply
Applications open to high school students ages 14-18.
Collaborate + Design
Teen artists work with Mentor Muralists to brainstorm and design a public art piece
Install + Celebrate
Teen artists bring their design to life at a public site, then gather with the community for a mural unveiling where their work and achievements are celebrated.
Calling All High School Artists!
Make art. Be heard. Get Paid.
Youth in Arts’ Intensive Arts Mentorship (I AM) program invites high school artists to step into a creative journey where their voices become public art. Led by Mentor Muralists, participants co-create vibrant mural projects that authentically reflect their communities and stories. Students learn valuable job skills, receive a stipend, and the chance to see their vision come alive in public spaces—all while amplifying youth expression and leadership.
Each Emerging Artist receives a stipend for their selection and participation.
Applications are currently closed. Stay tuned for upcoming mural projects!
Youth in Arts is passionate about and dedicated to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for young artists experiencing disabilities in our programs. Our building is ADA compliant, and we encourage interested students to reach out to Program Manager, Barbara Yupit Gomez at barbara@youthinarts.org to inquire after or request reasonable accommodation.
Meet the I AM Mentor Muralists
Fred Alvardao
Fredericko Alvarado
Fredericko Alvarado is a project based artist working through drawing, painting, public art, video, and curatorial practices. Their work revolves building with communities in the creations of site specific works. Alvarado engages sites through observation, research, and connection to local centers, organizations, and individuals who negotiate given spaces. This allows them the ability to experience, learn, and decipher differences and commonalities between the diverse personalities and cultures of this beautiful world.
Karina Ramirez-Cortez
Karina Ramirez-Cortez
Karina Ramirez-Cortez is a multidisciplinary artist, muralist, and community advocate raised in California's Central Valley by a farmworker family — an upbringing that shaped her deep commitment to resilience, representation, and cultural storytelling. She serves as Arts & Culture Coordinator at the Multicultural Center of Marin and works as a contracted artist and mentor with the I AM program, where she blends muralism, fine art, and social consciousness to help young people explore identity, self-expression, and healing through art. Across the Bay Area, she channels a fearless creative spirit into public art, grassroots organizing, and cultural advocacy, driven by a lifelong dedication to honoring the stories of working-class and immigrant communities.
Keena Azania Romano
Keena Azania Roman
Keena Azania Romano exercises her creative mind through the exploration of diverse artistic mediums as a way to engage and understand individual and collective purpose. Romano received her BFA from Pomona College then returned to her native Bay Area to pursue a career in the Arts. Her Murals can be spotted from Sacramento, California, to Richmond, Virginia to Oaxaca, Mexico. Inspired by cultural practices, Romano combines spirituality with urban experience to produce work that draws upon the quest for a greater understanding of intersectional beauty in this world. She fuses traditional native arts with contemporary inner-city techniques to reflect a new language that encourages the healing and empowerment process between community members and their environments. Her style is described as “vibrant and insightful”. She aspires to travel and create a colorful trail of art by exploring the
modern Diaspora based on her multi-ethnic experience.
Ali Vaughan
Ali Vaughn
Ali Vaughan is an artist based in Richmond, California. She received dual BA degrees in Art Practice and Art History from Stanford University in 2019. She regularly works between mediums of oil painting, drawing, and sculpture. Through process-based abstraction, her work examines notions of place and identity. She teaches K-12 multimedia art classes regularly across the bay area, focusing on abstraction and material exploration.