Not every mind or body will experience art the same way, but every mind and body is entitled to the experience. 

This event will air as a Live broadcast on Facebook and Zoom
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Galveston Arts Center (GAC) presents its annual speaker series, Conversations @ The Center, featuring artists and arts professionals who speak about and show images of their work, practices, professions, or discuss timely issues in contemporary visual art. The 2020 series highlights individuals and artists working in the field of arts, accessibility, and healthcare.

This event’s speakers will highlight accessible arts programs for people living with chronic illnesses and spinal injuries, respectively. 

Speakers

Eepi Chaad is a multidisciplinary artist, advocate, and environmentalist who tells stories using textiles, fibers, metals, places, and people. Her work investigates the relationship between humanity and environment. Eepi worked with Artist Boat, a coastal margin preservation non-profit in Galveston prior to serving as one of the first resident artists for the City of Houston. Eepi now serves as Director of Community Engagement at Art League Houston where she runs the Healing Art program and is part of the team of facilitators for the Artist INC Houston program. Eepi is also board vice president of Artists For Artists and serves on the steering committee for the Houston Museum Educators Roundtable. Eepi believes art is for every community and creativity is in every human.

Wes Holloway is a community activist and organizer for Houston artists, disabled people, and (most crucially) the disabled artists and young people he teaches. In 2003, after one year of undergraduate work at The University of Texas at Austin, Wes broke his C5-C6 vertebrae in a diving accident, causing him to become paralyzed from the chest down. Deciding to devote his life to his first passion, he completed both a BA and BFA in studio art in 2008. In addition to his own studio practice, Wes now runs an accessible art program through the United Spinal Association of Houston called Opening Arts and Minds, providing space, adaptive art tools, equipment, materials, and workshops for individuals with spinal chord injuries. We’s studio practice explores themes around body and how society responds to the human form, engaging with issues of masculinity, vanity, perfection, pleasure and pain, and more. weshollowayart.com

Eepi and Wes will be joined in conversation by Reyna Collura, who directs Galveston Arts Center’s Art for All program.