Kaylee Bender is a life-long artist drawn to painting, poetry, music, education, and community organizing as vehicles of liberation for the greater community. With a focus on acrylic and spray paint, she explores connection through portraiture, figurative works, and surrealist play. Inspired by jazz and the blues, her practice celebrates art as motion, liberation, and disruption. Her community engagement is centered in art’s role in building a sense of identity in community and its role our emotional and physical well being. Her practice integrates the larger issues of loss of communal practices and freedom of expression and discusses contemporary methods of segregation based on socioeconomic status. Her intention is to make art a part of daily life for all community members: improving access to the arts on a grand scale is to permeate and dirsrupt the caste system, starting with the youth. Through her personal creations and community work, she hopes to foster challenging conversations regarding creation, identity, and intersectionality.