Our Beginning
Hinge Collaborative is the artist team of Séan Alonzo Harris and Elizabeth Jabar.
Growing up we experienced the power of art as a place of refuge and an expression of our true selves. We both spent time in after-school arts programs with teachers and mentors who showed us that art-making was our first voice, a way to be seen and communicate with the world. Making art unlocked our purpose, gave meaning to our lives and provided a space for joy, healing, community, and pathway to our future.
After 30 years of experience in making, exhibiting, teaching and public engagement initiatives, we are launching a creative studio to share our models and strategies for socially engaged art and civic action. Our practices facilitate deep learning, forge relationships and design solutions through active participation, social experience, and creative experimentation.
We are professional studio artists and consultants to various for-profit and nonprofit entities and design arts programming, curriculum and community partnerships that promote civic engagement, mentorship and cultural participation. We produce a range of social change projects that connect youth, emerging and established artists, together with community partners, including art institutions, nonprofit organizations, businesses, and educational institutions.
Our endeavors include workshops, exhibitions, public creative interventions and participatory projects, limited edition prints, photographs, and community cultural events.
Séan Alonzo Harris
CO-FOUNDER
Séan Alonzo Harris is a professional editorial, commercial and fine art photographer concentrating on narrative and environmental portraiture. Over the past 25 years, Séan’s work is featured in a range of national publications, advertising campaigns, and exhibitions. In these varied contexts, Séan’s work focuses on human experience and identity and examines how individuals visualize themselves and how they are portrayed. Séan’s images bear witness to often invisible or overlooked members of our communities, and creates portraits that provide a counter image and narrative of self-worth and personal agency.
He has received several awards and grants for his work including, Good Idea Grant and Arts in the Capital Program, from the Maine Arts Commission, the Broderson Bronze Award, and the VanDerZee Black Heritage Award, from the University of Lowell. Most recently Séan was selected as one of the 60 most collectible artists in Maine 2010, featured in Maine Home and Design magazine. Harris graduated from the Art Institute of Boston and studied photography in Viterbo, Italy and at the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine.
Elizabeth Jabar
Elizabeth A. Jabar is a feminist printmaker who explores a range of personal-political issues in her work including cultural identity, representation, equity and maternal ethics. Her practice is located in the studio, the classroom and the community where she co-creates collaborative and participatory projects with students, colleagues and community members. Her hybrid works on paper and cloth display a highly personal visual language that incorporates motifs from popular culture, folk art, religious traditions and textiles. Elizabeth’s printed objects and environments embody printmakings’ democratic tradition of resistance and collective power and reflect her commitment to art as a tool for social change.
Elizabeth is the inaugural Director of Civic Engagement and Community Partnerships at Colby College, where she is designing and launching an innovative program expanding community based learning and active citizenship. She was formerly the Chair of the Printmaking Program and Director of Public Engagement at Maine College of Art where she designed and launched MECA’s distinctive social practice undergraduate curriculum the Public Engagement Minor. She also served in an administrative role at MECA as Associate Dean. She received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and her MFA from Pratt Institute.
