karen Krolak

karen Krolak (she/her - Care-wren Crow-lock) is a free range collaborator who lives with a dynamic disability and an infectious laugh. She’s a midcentury Euro-mutt with an unruly silver mane, a futuristic tripod walker and pockets stuffed with craft supplies. Whether working in dance, crafts, visual arts,  theatrical design, or writing, her embodied explorations spark dialogues that reverberate between communities and have been presented abroad in Italy, the UK, Canada, India, and S. Korea, as well as nationally and throughout New England. She is an interdisciplinary artist can be hired for artistic commissions, mentoring opportunities, craftivism workshops, dramaturgy projects, and grant panels.

She is the Founder/co-Artistic Director of Monkeyhouse, an award winning nonprofit that connects communities with choreography. Her ongoing project, Dictionary of Negative Space (DoNS) holds space for the words that the English language lacks for grief, trauma, and repair. DoNS offers refuge for mourners grappling with complicated grief and became even more relevant as the COVID 19 pandemic rewrote rules about death, dying, and mourning.  karen is a co-producer of NACHMO Boston, co-director of aMaSSiT at The Dance Complex, a Board member for The Flavor Continues and Boston Dance Alliance, an Advisor for  The Black Arts Sanctuary, Subcircle and Rasik, a 2025 Mass Creative Fellow, a dramaturg for Jessica Roseman, Human Movement Project, Simon Montalvo, and a freelance audio describer. She holds a BA in Linguistics from Northwestern University and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Sierra Nevada University.  

For over twenty years, she has collaborated with Nicole Harris on a diverse range of dance and other media projects. In addition, Krolak frequently collaborates with Jason Ries, Jeremy Wechsler, Kwaq7aj', Ralph Farris, Eric John Meyer, Anne Howarth, Kim Holman, Cassandre Charles, Scott McPheeters, and Barry Duncan. 

Stove Works in Chattanooga, TN presented her first solo visual art exhibition, addenda: an exercise course from the Dictionary of Negative Space.  Her stop motion film collaboration with Nicole Harris, Pane #432.1, was exhibited at the City of Reno's Canyon Flats Video Wall, a new public art space. She is honored to have been the first (official) Artist in Residence at the Newton Cemetery and Arboretum, a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and a member of multiple diplomatic delegations to Morocco.