Star of Brooklyn: Danielle Bullock

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT: Danielle Bullock is a community artist through and through. From co-organizing the Bay Ridge Empty Bowls Project with Ed Huml, to teaching afterschool art programs on Tuesday afternoons for children in kindergarten through fifth grade at the Bay Ridge branch of the Brooklyn Public Library as a volunteer, to aiding John Avelluto with the Bay Ridge Storefront Art Walk, to planning events and concerts for the Children’s Chorus of Bay Ridge as part of the Art on the Corner organization, almost all her work has been community-based.

Bullock encourages people to get involved in community efforts to help Bay Ridge be great.

“It’s already a great neighborhood and I love living here, but some people can even do little things to pitch in to help make the community even greater than it already is,” she said.

MOTIVATION: A strong believer in art’s role in healing through crisis, Bullock’s constantly interested to see how she could bring art into the community of those affected by trauma. To her, art is special and should be shared.

“I really feel that every child should have an opportunity to experience art, to see it and to create it, so that drives me to continue the work that I’m doing, which most of the programs that I work for are free or low cost for people of the community,” she said.

CAREER/DAY JOB: Bullock works as a teaching artist for different arts organizations and works with people who bring those kinds of extra art programs to places like schools and public libraries. She is constantly working in different mediums on the side too.

“I was trained as a photographer, but I’ve been working as a potter and ceramist for the last eight years or so, so I’m currently working on different projects,” said Bullock. “I’m also a writer and poet, so my own work is all in the realms of photography, ceramics and writing.”

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: Besides her role in Empty Bowls helping to feed the needy, Bullock said that her seven-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter were her biggest achievement to date.
“They’ve just been the number one achievement in my life – to raise two really healthy, happy, art-creative individuals,” noted Bullock.

BIGGEST CHALLENGE: Bullock recalled that reentering the workforce after spending the last 10 years raising her children was difficult in terms of finding paid work in the art education field.

“I can obviously get a lot of jobs doing volunteer work, but I’ve had a gap in my resume of quite a number of years, so to come back to what I was doing before has been a challenge for me at my age,” she said. “I can find no end of community projects to work on. We all need some kind of art program or something going on in all of our lives.”

PERSONAL LIFE: Bullock currently lives with her children and spends as much time as possible with them, sharing the gift of art.