COPLA ARTISTS

CLAUDIA VALENTINO

Founder and Creative Director

As Founder and Creative Director, Claudia guides the core of Copla’s mission and creative direction. She is also full-time muralist who specializes in community-driven art. The daughter of parents who were exiled by dictatorships in South America, Claudia was born in Mexico, grew up in Argentina and Chile, and currently lives in the United States. Questions surrounding identity, belonging, and social justice are the defining themes of her life and artistic practice. She loves how making art can be a tool for communities to strengthen bonds, organize, and protect themselves.

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Claudia has 10 years of experience making murals in community and has been awarded several grants for mid-career artists, including from Forecast Public Art and the Walker Arts Center. In 2019 she was invited to participate in the ChromaZone Mural Festival in Saint Paul, MN. She was also one of 10 artists selected to develop a 4,000 square foot mural for Power of Vision: Mural on the Ave, in partnership with the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Hope Community, and Project for Pride and Living.

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Claudia is bilingual in Spanish and English.

LYNDA GRAFITO

Visual Artist

Lynda Grafito is a Visual Artist based in Minnesota and born in Colombia. Her linocut work is inspired by the beauty and diversity of nature, representing scenes of animals and plants from Latin America and Minnesota, from which she finds sociocultural relationships that allow her to talk about migration and environmental issues. In Colombia, Lynda Grafito collaborated in the drawings of two graphic novels: Cielo Rojo (2017) and Ciudad Perdida (2019) with L.E.C.H.E. Collective and she obtained her degree as a Visual Artist (2019) and a laureate mention with her project Aguablanca, un barrio de historias.

Her first international group show was at the MCAD Art Sale, Migani Mirror (2019) for a graphic representation of the
graphic novel Dos Aldos, by Cohete Comics. She has been part of group exhibitions such as The Land Within Us (2022) at Fresh Eye Gallery; Archive I: Diverged Origins (2023) at New Studio Gallery and was selected in The First Print Pachanga juried exhibition (2023) at El Paso Print Pachanga, TX.

Lynda has been interested in interventions in public space, such as her participation in the Day of the Dead Parade on Lake Street, exhibiting her linocuts We Belong to the World and Lake Street Is... (2021), in Latino local businesses. She has collaborated with the community organization Copla Murals creating murals focused on community engagement such as The Ancestors (2022) at La Mexicana Supermercado on Lake Street and Bloomington Avenue, Minneapolis; What a Wonderful World (2022) at House of Payne on Sims and Payne Avenue, Saint Paul and Mamitas (2023) at Centro Tyrone Guzmán, Minneapolis.

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Lynda is bilingual in English and Spanish.