Community engagement and social practice
2-D art, screen and printmaking
Literary arts: poetry, playwright, creative non-fiction, digital art, and handmade paper
Pittsburgh Creative Corps Artist Directory
Felicia Savage Friedman
YogaRoots on Location / The Cussin' Yogini
Primary Discipline
Artistic Practice
Assemblage, including found objects, multimedia
Painting/works on paper/printmaking
Collage with handmade paper, cursive and calligraphic writing, embodied environmental art with writing
Perfectly Imperfect Mark Making Series: Creative Cursive & Calligraphic Course 1/26 – Solar System Sojourn, 2025, handmade paper from cotton rag, flax, Japanese knotweed, and other invasive plants, 9″ x 12.” Book 1 of 26.
Root Shock, 2023, metallic chisel markers with sand, twigs, and ocean grass. Inspired by a term coined by Mindy Fullilove, MD, in her book Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What You Can Do About It.
Joyful, Joyful, Joyful, 2022, oil paint over permanent marker on white stretched canvas, 24″ x 36.”
I Am Beautiful, I Am Strong lessons as part of the F.I.N.E. Artistic Residency at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, 2017-2018. Programs combine yoga and positive self-esteem with respect to skin tone.
Human, Being. Golden Communal Silence, 2018, metallic pen on black stretched canvas, 36″ x 26.” This is a play about simply being with ourselves within community in silence and stillness, however that looks and for any amount of time.
About the Artist
Felicia Savage Friedman—known artistically as The Cussin’ Yogini—is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, and anti-racist yoga educator whose creative practice is rooted in embodied liberation, ancestral reverence, and unapologetic Black joy. Felicia’s artistry spans visual art, performance, and written word, drawing from her lived experience and deep commitment to dismantling oppressive systems through expressive practice.
Her paintings are bold, intuitive, and vibrant, often emerging from meditative states that center the breath, movement, and memory. Her poetic voice—featured in her book We Are All Connected, We Are The StarDust Crew—weaves together radical love, personal narrative, and collective healing. Her words, like her brushstrokes, resist erasure and reclaim space for truth and tenderness.
Felicia is also the founder and CEO of YogaRoots On Location, where she teaches AntiRacist Raja Yoga and Liberation Through Embodied Collective Joy workshops that integrate breath, somatics, and social justice. Her work blurs the boundaries between spiritual practice, activism, and art, offering portals to freedom through the body and imagination.
Through community-engaged projects, installations, and performances, Felicia invites people to laugh, cry, cuss, and create their way into liberation. Her work is not just a celebration of resilience, but a provocation for change, grounded in the fierce and sacred knowing that we are the ancestors and the art our descendants need now.
Photo by Martin L. Friedman
Web
Accreditations, Certifications, and/or Awards
- Registered Yoga Teacher Certification, 2012
- MA in Elementary Education, 2008
- BA in Natural Sciences, 2001
Provides Fabrication Services to Other Artists
No
Teaching Artist
Yes, all ages
Joined the Directory
April 2025
Related
PROJECT
Pittsburgh Creative Corps
Designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pittsburgh Creative Corps initiative engages artists and creative workers to activate the public realm while providing economic opportunity.
“To be free, we must collaboratively co-create pathways of liberation, which means working in reciprocal relationships with others from diverse walks of life and creative ways of knowing and being.”
Felicia Savage Friedman
Contact the Artist
Please enter information in all of the required fields below.
Related
PROJECT
Pittsburgh Creative Corps
Designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pittsburgh Creative Corps initiative engages artists and creative workers to activate the public realm while providing economic opportunity.
