Lisa Van Dusen is a Palo Alto–based interdisciplinary artist whose research-based practice spans drawing, installation, mixed media, audiovisual work, performance, and participatory forms. Through intimate observations, playful interventions, social exchange, and systems-based inquiry, she explores the visible and invisible forces that shape access, agency, and participation across public and private life. Her work draws on a lifelong art practice and decades of experience in media innovation, civic leadership, and philanthropy. Along the way, she helped launch the pioneering local media platforms Cable Co-op and Palo Alto Online, relaunched Leadership Palo Alto, helped grow Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2), and served as executive director of the Palo Alto Community Fund.

Her work has been exhibited in galleries, educational institutions, and alternative settings, including the Tahoe Gallery, Garage Gallery, and Ron & Maureen Ashley Community Gallery (Incline Village); the Donna Beam Gallery of Fine Art (Las Vegas); the Krause Center for Innovation Gallery (Los Altos Hills); Avenidas, ArtLab (Palo Alto), as well as Palo Alto’s Privately Owned Public Open Spaces (POPOS), among others. Her work is held in private collections.

She holds an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and an A.B. in Semiotics from Brown University, including studio art coursework at RISD. She is the creator of Public Benefit.

Public Benefit: Pop-Ups in the POPOS is an ongoing public art project supported in part by a City of Palo Alto ArtLift Grant.