Meet Joanna Perich, PhD, ATR

Founder & Artistic Director, Creative Arts for All (CAFA)

Joanna Perich is an artist, educator, and therapist whose life’s work is rooted in the belief that creativity transforms lives. After immigrating from Poland in the mid-1990s, she made Ridgewood her home and became a vital member of the Queens community, opening one of the first Polish businesses in the community, Touch of Beauty. For more than two decades, Joanna has balanced the practical demands of business—she is a licensed cosmetologist and longtime local entrepreneur—with a passionate commitment to the healing power of the arts.

Her academic path reflects this dedication. Beginning at the City University of New York, she studied music therapy before pursuing Music and Psychology at Hunter College, Clinical Art Therapy at C.W. Post/Long Island University and finally earning her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Saybrook University. Along the way, she worked directly with children, adults, and seniors across Queens and Long Island, contributing to institutions such as the North Shore Rehabilitation Center, Parker Geriatric Institute, the Queens Museum of Art, and Holliswood Psychiatric Hospital.

Her research on creative arts therapy for seniors living with dementia was published as Roses in December: Case Studies from a Program Combining Reminiscence, Art and Music Therapies (RAMP), a study demonstrating the profound impact of combining art and music with memory work.

These experiences led Joanna to establish Creative Arts for All (CAFA)—a program dedicated to making fine arts, dance, drama, music, and writing accessible to every member of the community. Under her direction, CAFA provides a safe, inclusive space where children, adults, and seniors—regardless of economic status—can discover the restorative and transformative power of creative expression.

Meet Margaret Marut-Paluch

Joining the CAFA family to provide services to the Queens Community is Margaret Marut-Paluch. New programs announced soon!

Meet James Kenney

James Kenney, head of CAFA’s writing programs, writes and teaches (for the City University of New York and St. John’s University). He is considered a “film archeologist” who saved the only surviving copy of Peter Bogdanovich’s final film, SQUIRRELS TO THE NUTS, which premiered at the New York Museum of Modern Art in March 2022. He presented it around the world, with screenings across the U.S., and in London and Melbourne in 2023. Most recently there have been screenings in Philadelphia (with Carrie Rickey) New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and he been contracted to write a book on Peter Bogdanovich, due Fall 2025/Winter 2026 from Sticking Place Books.

His most recent project is editing and writing the introduction for a new book by legendary filmmaker Brian De Palma (Scarface, Carrie, Mission: Impossible), AMBROSE CHAPEL, and he recently got Gee Malik Linton’s director’s cut of DAUGHTER OF GOD, starring Keanu Reeves and Ana De Armas, exhibited, with its U.S. theatrical premiere in April 2023 at the Wisconsin Film Festival. James; work and research has been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times and Sight and Sound magazine, and on his own website, tremblesighwonder.com

James is currently working on a book project with Alex Cox (REPO MAN) and noveliest and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer (TWO-LANE BLACKTOP).