When the multimedia artist Sand T (MFA '97) was evicted from her Boston studio and gallery to make way for a parking garage, she protested, she grieved, and then she transformed her loss into action. She found her way to Malden, Massachusetts, at Boston's northern edge, where she opened a second gallery in the two-car garage next to her house. In doing so, she unwittingly launched a grassroots cultural movement that has helped reshape Malden into an up-and-coming haven for artists.

Sand T held her first show at the Malden gallery, artSPACE@16—"a humble yet modern space," she says—in 2000. There were visual works by nearly twenty artists, an acoustic music performance, a poetry reading, and a tea-tasting. Since then, Sand T has promoted and hosted dozens of exhibits at artSPACE@16. Other local artists and community organizers began to follow her determined example: new galleries opened in Malden, art-centered events and organizations sprang up, and city officials agreed to convert a former convent into downtown studios where artists will live and work. According to Sand T, "Malden has great potential in becoming a hotbed for the arts if more inspired residents, artists, and professionals take the lead in starting and sustaining new initiatives."

Sand T, whose full name is Soh H. Tan Kalloch, grew up in the port city of Malacca, Malaysia, making paper lanterns and dolls for her friends, and creating sculptures from the grass, sand, and mud outside her home. Her most current artwork uses more sophisticated materials—resin, graphite, spray paint, and film on gridded Plexiglas panels—but presents a similar "simple visual experience."

Sand T attended art school in Kuala Lumpur, moved to Boston fifteen years ago to attend the Museum School, and settled into a longstanding community of artists who lived and worked in Fort Point, Boston. After her gallery and studio were bulldozed, she was determined to recreate the same cooperative and innovative spirit she'd experienced in Fort Point. She chose Malden, she says, because it was affordable, diverse, and "it was a city next door."

Despite the success of artSPACE@16—it was named " Best Art Gallery" in the A-list consumer poll conducted by WBZ-TV and CityVoter in 2007—Sand T decided in November to drastically reduce her exhibit schedule in order to concentrate on her own work. "I will still continue to work on art projects within Malden's art community, but with a much lower profile than in the past," she says. "It's the right time for me to retreat back to the basics of artmaking."