HISTORY: beginnings
In 2019, Carol Adinolfi, teacher and writer, and Chris Randolph, art therapist and painter, founded Dovetail Arts. Longtime friends, they'd shared their work with one another and talked throughout the years about their individual processes., Their aim is to articulate and utilize mutual and complementary approaches to creative expression. And to make Dovetail's methods available to people from all walks of life hoping to explore and learn about writing and art.
Dovetail projects, workshops and events are built around an experimental and intuitive process based upon Carol and Chris's everyday working lives as artists. As facilitators, they dovetail art and writing in order to engender new, useful, exciting, and, where called for, healing experiences for participants. Carol and Chris also facilitate as individuals, and work solely through either creative writing or visual art.
DOVETAIL ARTS: our mission
Through collaboration and partnership with organizations, institutions of higher learning, and relevant entities, we support the mission of providing alternatives to incarceration and other institutionalized forms of the infringement of freedom. Our approach is trauma-informed and inclusive.
The aim of our teaching methodologies is to augment initiatives currently in place providing educational opportunities for incarcerated and other justice-involved individuals and communities.
CURRENT & ONGOING WORKSHOPS
Our focus is on experimentation and discovery, and working together with all kinds of people from many backgrounds and with varying levels of experience. Directives and experiments for both art and writing are designed to help participants incorporate art-making into daily life.
We draw from many influences including the ideas of political and psychological and philosophical thinkers, artists, playwrights, poets, pop culture, music and dance.
See our upcoming workshops here.
FOUNDERS
CAROL ADINOLFI
TEACHER, WRITER, VISUAL ARTIST, DRAMATURG, PRODUCER, EDITOR
TEACHER/EDITOR
Throughout a teaching career that spans twenty-five years, Carol has worked with students of many ages and walks of life. As Writing Consultant for the Brooklyn Public Library Literacy and Prison Services Program, she led creative writing workshops at the Brooklyn House of Detention for Men.
Carol is currently developing a project with Alisa Del Tufo, founder of Threshold Collaborative designed for working with incarcerated individuals and for collaborating with existing prison education and reentry programs.
Since 2021, Carol has facilitated creative writing workshops as part of the former St. Joseph's Orphanage Restorative Inquiry (now the Voices of St. Joseph's Orphanage) an initiative involving individuals who suffered severe physical and emotional abuse as children.
In that capacity, and building towards work with other justice-involved groups and individuals, she served as dramaturg and producer for two theatrical productions of the writers' monologues. Carol also edited a collection of the S.J.O.R.I Writers' Group's poetry and non-fiction.
In addition to teaching privately, she has served as a consultant and staff developer for the Teachers’ College Reading and Writing Project. In that role Carol worked with faculty and administrators of New York’s inner-city public schools to make creative writing central to the Literacy curriculum.
CONSULTANT, PROGRAM FOUNDER & DIRECTOR
As Writing Consultant for the Brooklyn Public Library Literacy & Prison Services Program, Carol led poetry workshops at the Brooklyn House of Detention for Men. She also taught library administrators, staff and literacy program volunteers how to incorporate creative writing into their workshops. She founded and directed a six-year project as part of Bennington College’s Quantum Leap program for at-risk youth in public schools. As part of that role, she mentored and supervised Bennington undergraduate and graduate students in the teaching of creative writing and visual art.
EDUCATION & TEACHING APPROACH
Carol received her master’s degree from The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her undergraduate work at Sarah Lawrence was concentrated in Creative Writing and Education. She has been a working writer for thirty-five years, and visual art has always been an intrinsic part of that process. She has developed an approach to teaching that is informed by the daily practice of a writer’s life.
CHRIS RANDOLPH
LCAT, ATR-BC, VISUAL ARTIST
FOUNDER, DIRECTOR, & MENTOR
THE ROCKLAND LIVING MUSEUM
In 2010, Chris founded the Rockland Living Museum, an open art studio, at Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg, NY. She has worked extensively mentoring artists in their creative processes as well as provided ongoing support for their psychological health and growth. At Rockland Psychiatric 40% of her clients were formerly incarcerated and she has a deep interest in offering creativity workshops to this population.
Chris has worked with over one hundred graduate and undergraduate interns, supervising their professional development and advising them on their career paths.
TEACHER
Chris taught painting to high school students at Sarah Lawrence College and has presented therapeutic art workshops at the Queens Museum, Hofstra University, St Thomas Aquinas College, and Hopper House.
ARTIST
Chris has been painting for 45 years and has shown her work at the Queens Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Hopper House.
EDUCATION, LICENSING
Chris is a New York State licensed art therapist as well as a nationally board-certified art therapist. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Pratt Institute.
