Hey, y’all, I’m Nia Burks. Nice to meet you!

Nothing was ever enough for me. I remember thinking “this shit just cannot be it” when I was 4 years old or so, long before I ever know what ‘shit’ or ‘it’ even was. I just knew that this couldn’t be it. I was smart. But I was undercapitalized and half-orphaned. I was born into the chaos of poverty and felt both like a lifer and a visitor at the exact same time.

My pursuit of a different kind of ‘shit’ and ‘it’ landed me with a collection of art school degrees, 10 years of experience in academia, 10 more in strip clubs, a long fine arts exhibition record spanning multiple continents, and a life lived in 3 different countries. I have an insatiable appetite for creativity, independence, passion, and a strong belief that being who you are is an act of both defiance and justice.

I used to joke with a friend that I knew chaos so well, I could be a tour guide for its visitors. Tuning into that truth about myself opened the door to a lifelong career in the arts on the subject of becoming.

After 16 years educating the most creative minds in one of the top art schools in the country, I stepped away from academia to run a school of my own, using my own curriculum to elevate that which has been cast aside, shine light on the forgotten, and provide an opportunity for women to take action on that which is truthful and alive inside of them.