Donna Pence is an artist and art educator living in Salt Lake City and working for East High School in the Salt Lake City School District. Her work as an art educator has consistently addressed community and the use of art as a problem solving tool. As an elementary art specialist, she assisted every grade level in creating a school wide anti-bullying video campaign and a mural project to benefit the veterans at the VA hospital. Since moving to secondary education, her program seeks to encourage art students to use their creativity to highlight and seek solutions to issues of social injustice. Her classrooms worked with the CDAC and guest artist/author Lily Havey to create an exhibit spotlighting Justice-Memory-Activism, artist Ruby Chacon to create a mural within the school addressing the fight against inequities in their community, and after traveling to the Women-s March in Washington encouraged her students to address women-s rights in an exhibit entitled -This is What Feminism Looks Like-.

Ms. Pence-s artwork also centers on working with youth, community, and social issues. She created three public art installations working with the Glendale youth and Latinos in Action through an NEA grant entitled -Claim It-, She annually works with the Entrada Institute and the fourth graders in Wayne county to create art addressing the importance of clean water, and assisted the Utah Department of Arts and Museums as an artist in residence with incarcerated women at the Atherton Community Correctional Facility.

Ms. Pence is currently working with the UMFA and UMOCA to bring East High School art students into active roles of collaboration with guest artists and curating.