ABOUT
Cathy Salser is a durational artist who holds time and connection as her primary art media. For over thirty years she has developed interactive, site-specific works that invite people to crystallize their leadership in the face of challenge, sustain action over time, and replace isolation with community.
Her current work focuses on incubating journey-based art practices within community-based organizations, mentoring leaders innovating transformative art practices that serve their specific communities and contexts, and co-designing offerings for conferences, institutions and initiatives that use art to build a living, lasting fabric of change.
Cathy has been recognized with the Women’s Caucus for Art President’s Award, the Karen Cooper Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, the Betty Fisher Award from the LA Domestic Violence Council, the Bank of America Local Heroes Award, and the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund Award, among others. Her work was entered into the U.S. Senate Congressional Record in 1998.
She is the founder of A Window Between Worlds, whose art-based trauma-healing programs now reach 148,000+ participants annually across 44 states and 8 countries.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My medium is time and connection.
For over thirty-five years, I’ve made portraits and ribbons, touchstones, recordings and rituals. People see those things and respond to them. But that’s not actually what I’m making.
What I’m making are ways to take little moments of time and be able to hold onto them in a way that is healing. The art is actually each moment of the journey, and time and connection are the primary art supplies I play with.
Some of these works span decades or might even span generations, some last the duration of three deep breaths. Some of these works focus on connection within while others weave connection among thousands of people. Whatever the spectrum of time or connection, these are all portals into journeys of transformation.
I started understanding this when I began recording conversations with survivors of domestic violence. The portraits I painted from those sessions were beautiful. But they were never the point. The point was the window of time we shared. That spirit became the foundation of A Window Between Worlds — thirty-five years, 148,000 people a year, built out of nothing more, and nothing less, than time and connection.
I’m interested in how quickly we lose the energy of our intentions between moments of inspiration and moments of community connection. The vast waste of purpose that just… dissipates. Art, I think, can be the thread that refuses to let go. Ribbons, stones, charcoal portraits, five minutes of presence — these aren’t decoration. They’re scaffolding. Anchors for journeys.
I don’t make work that needs to look a certain way. I make recipes — things other people can try and adjust and make their own. I have no interest in work that’s precious or proprietary or locked behind expertise. The opposite. I want every practice I develop to be an open door. And my deepest happy place as an artist is within a circle of innovators, each making this our own, and being inspired by one another.
And as such, I’m always still figuring out what I’m doing. The work keeps teaching me. The fires took my home and studio and a lifetime of artifacts — and what I found on the other side of that loss was the clearest version of what I’ve always known: five minutes of deep listening can become a lifeline that lasts decades.
I’m building that into everything I make now. Openly. I welcome you to build it with me.
CV
EDUCATION
1988 BA, Studio Art, Phi Beta Kappa, Class Valedictorian, Williams College, Williamstown, MA
1986 Intensive Study: Photography and Painting, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
1983–1985 Painting and Drawing, University of California, Los Angeles
SELECTED INTERACTIVE PROJECTS
2026–ongoing
Scaffolding the Phoenix: Fire Recovery Journeys in Progress
Durational works emerging from the January 2026 Palisades fires. Oak portraits drawn with charred branches, glass cabochons cast from recovered ash, voice recordings, ribbons, and daily intention trackers — artifacts of an ongoing recovery journey.
2023–ongoing
Durational Art Incubator
Four-month annual immersive program supporting community-based leaders to activate durational art practices within their own communities.
2021–ongoing
Act of Hate / Activate
Los Angeles-based project within LAvsHate, supporting a cohort of community leaders prototyping art-based healing practices in response to rising acts of hate.
2019–ongoing
#PrisonersToo
Project created by individuals living in custody within South Carolina women's prisons, designed to shift institutional culture around rape, sexual assault, and trauma.
2016–2018
At the Core, Transforming Trauma Together
Collaboration with lead artist Fabian Debora, combining Touchstones with mural-making to address core wounds, values, and needs in pursuit of lasting transformation.
2015–ongoing
Touchstone Journey
Community initiative inviting facilitators and participants to use art as a durational catalyst — owning leadership, sustaining action, replacing isolation with community.
2007–ongoing
Community Story Tree
Collective creation with panels from 72 individuals across the nation and abroad, embodying community commitment against domestic violence.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2026
Scaffolding the Phoenix: Fire Recovery Journeys in Progress, Shoebox Projects, Los Angeles, CA; St. Paul Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN; United States Russell Senate Building Rotunda, Washington, DC; Los Angeles City Hall Bridge Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
FOUNDER
1991–present
A Window Between Worlds (AWBW)
Non-profit art-based trauma-healing organization. Today: 500+ active community sites, 148,000+ participants annually, 44 states, 8 countries.
HONORS & RECOGNITION
2014
Karen Cooper Lifetime Achievement Award, California Partnership to End Domestic Violence
2013
Betty Fischer Award, Los Angeles Domestic Violence Council
2008
Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund Award
2007
Bank of America Local Hero Award
2006
Williams College Bicentennial Medal, In recognition of distinguished achievement in socially responsible art
Women's Caucus for Art President's Award
1998
Citizen of the Year, National Association of Social Workers, Region H
U.S. Senate Congressional Record, Honored during National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Cited by Donna Shalala, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services
1997
California Community Foundation Board of Governor's Award
1984-87
Future Masters Grant, City of Los Angeles
1984
Presidential Scholar in the Visual Arts, YoungArts (formerly ARTS), Honored at the White House
SELECTED PRESS
Joli Field, “A Love Letter to the Land: Temescal Canyon Mural Restoration Continues,” Palisadian Post, May 24, 2026
"A Window Between Worlds' Founder Cathy Salser,” Venice Paparazzi, 2018
Laura Abruscato, "Cathy Salser & Healing Through Art Mark 25th Year,” Palisades News, 2016
"Letting the Art Do the Healing," DomesticShelters.org, December 23, 2016
Andrea Adelson, ”Window Between Worlds,” Williams Alumni Review, 2001
Laura Witsenhausen, ”Art Provides Windows into a New Life,” Palisadian Post, 2000
Lorenza Munoz, ”A Look at the Art of Survival,” Los Angeles Times, 1995
Suzette Prude, ”Looking Through 'A Window Between Worlds’," National Foundation for Advancement of the Arts Newsletter, 1993