Damali Ayo - Early Life

Early Life

damali ayo was born Damali Ayo Patterson, February 26, 1972 in Washington, DC She attended Sidwell Friends School from kindergarten through high school. She legally dropped her last name in 1995.

Ayo earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1990 from Brown University with a double concentration in Public Policy and American Civilization. While at Brown, ayo served as the director of the student-run Women In Prison Project, a community involvement project that placed undergraduate women as theatre instructors in the Rhode Island women's correctional facility. After college she spent time as a farmhand on a small farm in Pembroke Maine. She returned to Providence where she worked as a house painter, then new-age book store clerk, before spending a year as the Program Director for the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), and three years as the co-director of their leadership camp program, Anytown. She moved to Chicago for six months, where she worked in a CD store. ayo moved to Portland, OR in 1997 where she began making visual art, and co-founded defunkt theatre company. After establishing her career as a self-taught artist, she was invited to apply to Portland State University and earned a Master of Fine Arts in studio art in 2006. Her first book was published in 2005.