Through public art collaborations across Minnesota, Moira Villiard is a multidisciplinary artist. She uses art to uplift underrepresented narratives, explore the nuance of society’s historical community intersections, and promote community healing spaces. Moira (pronounced “Miri”) is a dynamic visual artist, proficient in a variety of artistic genres. These genres include portraiture, illustration, graphic and digital design, and murals. She is also a community organizer, curator, and passionate arts educator. She concentrates her efforts on issues of equity and justice including arts access (creating platforms for underrepresented communities within the arts), creative placemaking, environmental sustainability, youth empowerment, and acknowledgment of Indigenous land, culture, and history.

Moira grew up on the Fond du Lac Reservation in Cloquet, MN. She is a Fond du Lac direct descendent of mixed settler and Indigenous heritage. For three years she worked as the Arts & Cultural Programming Coordinator for the American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO), where she had her first art exhibition at 18 years old. She currently works as a freelance consultant, designer, speaker, and grant writer and is the project director and lead artist of the Chief Buffalo Memorial Mural site in Duluth. Her educational, activism-rooted exhibits “Rights of the Child” and “Waiting for Beds” will be on tour in 2022. Most recently, she was the featured artist at the 2021 Illuminate the Lock. She animated and directed a 10-minute, 150’ projection piece titled “Madweyaashkaa: Waves Can Be Heard”.

To see her work, visit her incredible website.

About Ask a Leading Woman

Welcome to our Ask A Leading Woman series, one of our organization’s projects dedicated to featuring amazing women leaders in rural! Currently, the majority of leadership roles in rural are held by men, meaning we don’t always get the same opportunity to witness strong women leadership. Ask a Leading Woman is an opportunity for our community to actively engage with leading women by hearing about their pathway to leadership and asking questions. Learn more information here.

Another way we highlight rural women is through our Spotlight Profiles! While they are similar projects in that they highlight women doing incredible work, they differ in how they’re executed. Spotlight Profiles are not public meetings, but the recordings are available on our YouTube. These go more in-depth about their story, what they do, and their advice.