ABOUT
Nestor Topchy
Founding/Executive Director &Interim HIVE Board Chair
A co-Founder of TemplO/Zocalo, a collaborative nonprofit artist-run compound and situation on a repurposed light industrial site shared with contemporaries Rick Lowe and Dean Ruck among a revolving cast of notable Houston artists (1989-2000) where he assisted visual, performance artists, playwrights and poets.
Nestor Topchy has presented his work and spoken nationally and internationally at Ivan Honchar Museum Folkculture (Kyiv, Ukraine), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston), The Menil Collection, Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, Evergreen Museum /Johns Hopkins University, La Museo de Nacion (Lima, Peru), Edinburg Fringe Festival (Scotland), Grace Space NYC, among other places.
Topchy is designing and building HIVE prototypes and concurrently proposing “Exquisite Corps” , a temporary deployment of ISBU as year long field work shop and artist steered creative commons, a social sculpture which will also serve to enhance and inspire the grass roots development and implementation of HIVE (Habitable Interdisciplinary Visionary Environment) to build community via collaboration, hence Hives’ motto: “It takes a village to raise a village”.
“We at HIVE look forward to working with all who are as inspired by this shared vision and hope to hear from you this year as we initiate further steps in making this vision a reality.”
Nestor resides in Houston with Mariana Lemesoff, and their daughter, Minerva.
Joel H. McGlasson III
Board Treasurer, HIVE Accountant
Member of the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers, Mr. McGlasson associations include Page Southerland Page, Inc., a full-service design organization providing architecture, interiors, consulting and engineering services throughout the United States and around the world. The firm’s diverse, international portfolio includes projects in the healthcare, academic, government and science and technology sectors, as well as civic, corporate and urban housing projects.
Kelly Alison
Projects Manager & Board Secretary Emeritus
Artist and nonprofit projects manager, Alison has been active in the alternative art scene in Houston since 1979. Those involvements have included the original Lawndale Art Annex, TemplO, Box13 Artspace and The Art League Houston, where she continues to teach.
Ms. Alison is represented by GGallery in Houston Texas and is currently working on the foundation for The High Plains Project in the rural Panhandle of Texas. Alison's work has been exhibited in National and International Museums, most notably at the Shanghai Art Museum in China and the National Museum of Art in Lima, Peru. She has been published in books, catalogs and magazines such as Art in America, Texas Monthly and Town and Country and her work is on permanent exhibition in downtown Houston as part of the Wayfinder project .
Mariana Lemesof
Board Emeritus
Argentine born artist, entrepreneur, and creator of AvantGarden which she established in 1996 as the quintessential community bar cum cultural institution in Houston’s Montrose/Museum District.
Set within a reconfigured historical 1906 craft-style house, AvantGarden is known for its eclectic multicultural atmosphere and original events. As Founder of Helios, a nonprofit arts and performance presenting organization, she has continuously fostered up and coming artists, musicians, poets, fashion designers, dancers, and theater ensembles. Ms. Lemesoff was Co-Founder and President of TemplO, an energetic communal arts project that was home to many influential Houston artists.
She founded her first business in Los Angeles, California, in 1988, and she continues to be at the forefront of enterprises that support artistic individuals.
www.avantgardenhouston.com
Mayrav Fischer
Board Member Abroad
Dynamic learning & interpretation professional with 17+ years of experience working in leading museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Guggenheim Museum, and the MFAH–designing, overseeing and evaluating audience/visitor engagement programs and interventions. Mayrav brings comprehensive experience in developing staff, strategic plans, standards, evaluation tools and new initiatives with a collaborative spirit, grace, sensitivity, and humor, while modeling learning agility behaviors for staff, volunteers and museum visitors.
Stephen Klimas
Board of Directors
Architect, Scout Master and Yoga Instructor, Mr. Klimas is certified with the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards and received a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and Art History from Rice University in 1990. Specialties include environmental graphic design and sustainable design.
Si Dang
AIA, Board Emeritus & Hive architect (deceased)
Si Dang had Bachelor of Architecture from the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the University of Houston (1998) and is the Principal of ANDRIA Design. Mr. Dang’s professional experiences include previous positions as Senior Associate at Morris Architects and Designer at The Douglas Group, both based on Houston, Texas. With over twelve years of experience, he has had key roles in designing Bayou City Event Center, Phase V of Moody Gardens, Four Points by Sheraton, Houston Southwest, and numerous other projects throughout Texas, Louisiana and California.
Patrick Bresnan
Visual artist, film director, activist and sustainable builder.
From 2003-2007, Ike worked as an installer for notable Mission School artists Clare Rojas and Barry McGee (a.k.a. Twist), aiding in the creation of new work for exhibitions in the United States and abroad. His architectural work includes disaster relief housing on the Gulf Coast, cottages for the homeless in Austin, and structures for his photo and video installations. In 2010, Ike was awarded the top grant from the 2010 Texas Filmmakers Production Fund to finalize post-production of a feature length documentary Vietnam Appreciation Day.
He holds a masters in Sustainable Design from the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. You can find his art projects under the moniker Otis Ike or at www.otisike.com.
Cameron Armstrong
Served in a number of roles at Cameron Armstrong Architects since its formation in 1993. Prior to CAA, he worked in fields ranging from real estate development to minerals prospecting.
As a consultant and broker in New York and Houston during the 1980’s and ’90’s, he gained broad experience in the sale, leasing and financing of real property – standout transactions included Texas’ largest private market deal of 1988-89, to which he brought the buyer (seven office buildings/one closing).
His architectural apprenticeship included supervision of multi-unit housing and high-rise office buildings, spanning some of Houston’s top commercial properties. Recent projects have attracted tours and publications, and sometimes controversy. In 1994, he received a New Forms Initiative grant from the National Endowment for the Arts(with project partner Rob Ziebell). Cameron has been active in a number of non-profit and service organizations, includingAurora Picture Show (Board member), The Hospice in the Texas Medical Center (Ethics Committee: 1998-2000), Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston (Board of Advisors), The Sierra Club (Houston Clean Air Act Coordinator on behalf of Sierra, The Audubon Society, andThe Wilderness Society: 1987-88), Houston Sculpture/2000 (Board member), and Site/Work/S(Director: 2000-2002).
Cameron’s work in the fields of art and design has been featured nationally and internationally since 1977, including broadcasts by CNN, The Discovery Channel, and other networks, and in print publications such as The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
His writings have been published in various media, including Metropolis, Cite, Sculpture, and other periodicals. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Cameron spent his childhood primarily in Canada and the United Kingdom. Following studies at The American School in London, Oberlin College and theInstitute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), he graduated from Yale University, M.Arch. ’81.
He lives with his wife, Terrell James, in Houston, Texas.
Henry G. Sanchez
Originally a Houstonian, Henry is an interdisciplinary, project based artist and curator. Sanchez’s work has been exhibited and screened at Electronic Arts Intermix, New York, NY; Greenpoint Film Festival, Brooklyn; Rooster Gallery, NY; Guggenheim Museum, Soho; Pera Musuem, Istanbul Turkey; Lab Gallery, NY; Jersey City Museum; Here Art Center, NY; Pierro Gallery, South Orange, NJ; Rupert Ravens Contemporary and Affero Gallery in Newark, NJ; City University of New York; 58 Gallery, Jersey City, NJ; Taller Boriqua Gallery, NY; Schmidt Center Gallery, Florida Atlantic University; Ben Shahn Center, William Patterson University; and Centro de Arte de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
His curated exhibitions include AQUA-CULTURE at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, Texas (2014),GEO-LOCO at Outpost Artists Resources and DATA-DADA at Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn, NY.
Mr. Sanchez received his M.A. in International Relations from Rutgers University in 2000. After a brief career in politics and working in non-governmental organizations, he has devoted his time and efforts to his art in Bushwick, Brooklyn where he lives and works since 2006. He is a recent graduate of the M.F.A. Art Practice program at the School of Visual Arts, 2014. Professor Sanchez takes a multi-disciplinary approach to project based initiatives that concentrate on history, the environment and politics.
He currently teaches fine arts digital media at the School of Visual Arts. He is looking forward to assisting and programing the water borne elements of Exquisite Corps.
Catherine D. Anspon
Since 1998, Catherine has covered the Texas art scene monthly PaperCity Magazine, where she is currently Executive Editor, Visual Art + Features, reporting for Dallas and Houston desks of both print and online editions.
Along the way, this Pittsburgh native has penned coverage from new museum buildings to artist studios, traversed Art Basel Miami Beach and all the Texas art fairs, and has traveled from the Houston Museum District to Shanghai and recently, Moscow in pursuit of art and cultural stories. Holding a Rice University B.A. in Art History and History, with an M.A. in Art History from the University of Missouri, Catherine also serves as the Houston correspondent for ARTnews and has written features for Art & Antiques and currently contributes to the newly launched magazine ArtDesk.
She is also the author of exhibition catalog essays and has curated shows for a number of Houston artspaces, as well as serving as a juror. In 2010, Anspon published her first book, Texas Artists Today, highlighting 62 contemporary Texas talents in studio (Marquand Books). This survey — now sold out — marked the first book in a decade to document the state's significant visual arts scene. Volume Two is now in the works.
Beryl Basham
Board Emeritus. Founder of Basham Associates, LLC, a management, organizational development, and marketing consulting firm that provides best practices and innovative solutions to unleash an organization’s potential growth and sustainability.
Prior to Basham Associates, LLC, Ms. Basham was a Senior Vice President of Bank of America N.A., where she provided advisory services from board governance to growth and strategic planning for over 300 financial institutions nationally.
Ms. Basham is an art collector and a patron of the arts.
Pete Gershon
Editor and publisher of Houston-based experimental music journal "Signal to Noise" and an author of Painting the Town Orange. Gershon, an alternative art enthusiast writes about the stories of McKissack’s Orange Show installation and how it spawned more of its kind in the Bayou City.
Places like the Beer Can House, the Flower Man’s House, Pigdom — one woman’s “shrine to swine” — and a flourishing art scene that has been committed to preserving Houston’s art environments.
Elizabeth Ann Stein
Passionate about social engagement and community as envisioned by creative commons and HIVE programing. Ms. Stein is an Activist, Blogger and Producer of Execution Watch, a live radio show on Houston’s KPFT, hosted by Ray Hill which seeks to communicate and investigate the conditions surrounding justice and capital punishment and human rights.
Weihong
Born in Taiyuan, China in 1965, Weihong graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She currently lives and works in Beijing, China and Houston, USA.
Her most recent solo exhibition was at Songzhuang Art Museum in Beijing and Arts Alliance in Houston. Her solo exhibitions also include the Beijing’s National Art Gallery and Courtyard Gallery, China; Galleria Carla Sozzani in Milan, Italy; Art and Culture Museum in Lescar, France; Lawndale Art Center and Barbara Davis Gallery in Houston; Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas, USA; and public art performances during 2010 Art Basil Miami; 2007 at The Menil Collection, Houston, USA.
Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions at venues that include Beijing’s National Art Museum of China; Beijing Center for the Arts; Shanghai Art Museum, The Biennial Art Fair in Guangzhou, China; Lab Gallery in New York; DiverseWorks and Blaffer Museum in Houston, USA among others. Weihong’s visual and performance work is in both public and in private collections that include the National Art Gallery of China, Vantone Foundation and Songzhuang Art Museum in Beijing; Free International University World Art Collection in the Netherlands; NYSE Euronext Foundation in New York; Wendi Deng Murdoch, Giorgio Armani, Carla Sozzani, Lester Marks, Dr. Mark Qiu.
Jenni Rebecca Stephenson
Executive Director of Fresh Arts. Jenni holds bachelors of music from the Moores School of Music and Masters of Fine Arts in Theatre Directing at UH, where she directed for the Stuart Ostrow Musical Theatre Collaboration and the Edward Albee New Playwrights Workshop, as well as three full-length operas at the Moores Opera. Additionally, she has served as assistant director for The Ebony Opera Guild at Miller Outdoor Theatre under Buck Ross and Theatre Under The Stars.
In 2006, Jenni Rebecca co-founded Nova Arts Project, a nonprofit theatre company dedicated to recreating classics and inspiring new works. With Nova, Jenni Rebecca directed Antigone in Oedipus3, as well as The Joy Luck Club, a collaboration between the Asian Pacific-American Heritage Association and the Houston Public Libraries for the NEA’s Big Read Campaign.
In 2009, Nova’s founders won one of the first annual Houston Press MasterMind Awards for the company’s work. After working in development for Theatre Under the Stars, Jenni Rebecca joinedSpacetaker as Managing Director and was named Executive Director in 2010.
In 2011, she initiated and navigated a successful merger between Spacetaker and Fresh Arts Coalition, ushering in a new era for the combined organization– now known as Fresh Arts.
Robert Rosenberg
A self employed Attorney who studied at the University of Houston Law Center, Mr. Rosenberg is also a visual and performance artist, fondly known as “Chef Bob”.
He was active in the original Commerce Street Art Warehouse CSAW during the early 1980’s, producing the acclaimed Bayou Queen Pageant and other relational performances such as the anti entertainment apocalyptic dinner theater Chez Imbecile.
Sehba Sarwar
A writer and multi-disciplinary artist whose prose, poetry, and video/art installations explore displacement and women’s issues at a domestic and global level, moving between Pakistan, her home country, and the United States.
Her essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in anthologies, newspapers, and magazines in Pakistan, the United States, Canada, and India, in publications including Asia: Magazine of Asian Literature, The New York Times’ Sunday Magazine, and Callaloo. Her first novel, Black Wings, was published in 2004, and she currently is working on a second manuscript tentatively entitled Island. Her video/art installations have been exhibited in Pakistan, Egypt, India, and the United States, and she is a recipient of three Houston Arts Alliance Creative Awards.
A member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop, Ms. Sarwar is listed on the Texas Commission on the Arts’ Touring Artist Roster. Based in Houston, she serves as the Artistic Director and Founder of Voices Breaking Boundaries (VBB), an alternative 13-year arts organization. She directs VBB’s living room art productions.
Suzan Ozcelik
An Architect-in-Training & Urban Designer with past collaborations concerning the repackaging of shipping containers and re-purposement of the existing environment for community-centric activities, Suzan devotes principles that will reflect the progressive outlook of the co-housing at 1609. Through use of sustainable building strategies to provide well-designed spaces that benefit people and their activities, she hopes to accommodate what is potentially a rapidly growing community in Houston through design and social psychology.
Dean Ruck
Born in Hamden, Connecticut on March 4, 1962, Dean Ruck has lived and worked in Houston since 1987, and is represented by Hiram Butler Gallery in Houston, TX.
The artist works in all mediums, creating large and small sculptures, ambitious installations, and unconventional two-dimensional “drawings.” His work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the City of Houston, Cranbrook Art Museum, and numerous private collections.
Diane Barber
Managing Director of the East End Foundation and Curator with more than 20 years of experience in the Visual Arts. Projects include major exhibitions and public projects with an international roster of artists presented in arts organizations, galleries, universities, schools, and other public spaces and institutions.
Previously, Barber served as Co-Director/Visual Arts Curator of DiverseWorks ArtSpace (Houston, TX). During her 14-year tenure, Barber curated more than 65 exhibitions for DiverseWorks giving particular emphasis to commissioning new works and site-specific installations and to developing programs with charged cultural and political undertones. Prior to that, Barber served as Exhibitions/Publications Coordinator for FotoFest International, the largest photography biennial in the United States.
Professional affiliations include the Warhol Initiative, NPN’s Visual Arts Network, the NAMAC 2009 Leadership Institute, the Advisory Board of FotoFest, the Board of Directors of the Friends of Women’s Studies at the University of Houston, and ArtTable. She is past board president of the National Association of Artist Organizations and former Chairman of the Houston Coalition for the Visual Arts. Barber is also a founding member of the Independent Arts Collaborative (now known at MATCH), a Houston-based organization working to develop a multi-tenant arts complex in Houston’s urban core.
Will Gruy
A Senior Management Consultant at Infosys Ltd., Will has an M.B.A. from the University of Texas, Austin, and a B.A. in Humanities from John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. Will’s professional management experience includes three years of international sporting event organization. Will also gained financial experience as an analyst for two private investment funds here in Texas. Will brings insights regarding operational strategy and fiscal organization."
Paul Kittelson
Born in Wheaton, Minnesota, 1959. He received his BFA in 1982 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his MFA from the University of Houston in 1985.
Since 1992 Kittelson has served on the faculty of the UH School of Art. Besides teaching, his professional practice includes studio-generated works in a multitude of media and large-scale public art projects. His studio work has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries.
For over 25 years Kittelson has engaged the larger public audience through temporary site-specific works and community-based projects. Kittelson has also completed several large-scale permanent installations that have become Houston landmarks.
Sharmila Anandasabapathy
M.D. is a Professor of Medicine in Gastroenterology and Director of Baylor Global Initiatives and the Baylor Global Innovation Center at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. In her current role, she oversees Baylor’s global programs and affiliations. The Baylor Global Innovation Center seeks to develop novel, environmentally appropriate technologies and approaches to addressing global disease burden. This includes the development and validation of innovative mobile-applications for clinical care, point-of care diagnostic technologies, and portable, low-cost devices for the diagnosis and management of chronic, non-communicable diseases worldwides.
Zach Moser
An artist based in Houston, TX. Through his artistic practice, he facilitates collaborative and interactive investigations, designed to discover alternative methods of communication and new expectations of human potential. His work focuses on pursuing knowledge, alleviating the critical effects of injustice and participating in creative communities.
He received a BA in studio art from Oberlin College in 2002 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2008. In 2001, he founded and facilitated the Big Parade of Oberlin, OH, and in 2003, he co-founded the youth development organization Workshop Houston.
He has exhibited his work and projects at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, the Glassell School of Art and Diverseworks Art Space. Moser received the Compton Mentor Fellowship in 2003, the Artadia Award in 2006, the Idea Fund in 2008, in 2011, was an Artist in Residence at the University of Houston Mitchell Center for the Arts, and in 2012 received a Creative Capital Visual Arts Award.
He is currently founder and director of Shrimp Boat Projects, an arts research and presenting organization that focuses on the intersections of work, landscape, and culture, specific to the Houston, Texas region.
Selven O’Keef Jarmon
A Houston based artist whose approach to art making is built around the profound meanings drawn from social and cultural existences within the mundane experiences present in daily lives both current and historic.
Using the mediums and materials traditionally associated with other facets of art, Selven invites an audience into introspective spaces often leading to or created collectively as an activity. Within this work Selven is directly and metaphorically making references to individual interconnections with the broader world.
His current work titled, “360 DEGREES VANISHING” features 4 large beaded tapestries, over 450,000 beads, that will cover the exterior walls of the Art League Houston. This work is being fabricated by 16 South African Beaders and to this point over 1000 volunteers from around Houston and beyond whose ages vary from 5 year to 92 years of age have participated in the fabrication process. Dedication date of this piece is expected Fall 2015. Selven studied Music at Texas Southern University.
His achievements have been frequently documented in numerous articles and periodicals as well as TV and radio media. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Dallas Art Fair, Poissant Gallery, Deborah Colton Gallery, Project Row Houses and is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in collaboration with the Art Guys piece “Suits Make the Man”. Other artist collaborations have included “The Ballad of Here and Now” with Artist David Wayne McGee for the Art-N-Context Project at Rhode Island School of design.
In 2003, Selven was inspired to incorporate social consciousness into his work wherein he began working from both the United States and South Africa leading to 7 years of living and working there with several communities throughout South Africa on various social oriented art based projects including the designing and development of the complete Academic Regalia Aesthetic for the newly formed Walter Sisulu University (WSU) and the creation and implementation of the “New Imaginations for School Uniforms - (NISU)” Project funded by the Nelson Mandela Institute.
Selven was recently honored in 2014 as the first Profiles in Arts recipient from the Center for the Arts Leadership at University of Houston and a recipient for the Missouri City Links Chapter “Our Choice” Award for the Arts.
Sally Reynolds
In addition to her teaching, she maintains her keen interest in the arts.
Since beginning her business in 1977 as a dealer, consultant and curator of fine art, Mrs. Reynolds has been responsible for the commissioning of eleven public sculptures, served as curator of several corporately underwritten public exhibition spaces, and as a consultant to individuals and corporations in the acquisition of fine art.
She has fulfilled a wide variety of leadership responsibilities for not-for-profit organizations and foundations including the Houston Chamber of Commerce, Cultural Arts Council of Houston, University of Houston Moores School of Music, University of Texas Health Science Center, Rice University, Friends of Fondren Library,YWCA, The Women’s Home, Stages Repertory Theatre, Texas Children’s Hospital Pi Beta Phi Library, The Women’s Fund, Olshan Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, and the Houston Symphony.
She is currently serving on the Board of Trustees of the Friends of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, DaCamera of Houston, the Houston Symphony League, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, and as a Commissioner of the Houston Municipal Art Commission. She is a member of the 2001 Class of Leadership Texas.
Jason Nodler
Artistic Director of The Catastrophic Theatre. His original plays include Bluefinger: The Fall and Rise of Herman Brood, Life is Happy and Sad, Speeding Motorcycle, Meatbar, King Ubu is King, and In the Under Thunderloo. He has directed more than 50 productions in Houston, Austin, Atlanta, Providence, Pittsburgh, and New York. For Catastrophic he directed Marie and Bruce, The Pine, Waiting for Godot, Fleaven, American Falls, Endgame, Anna Bella Eema,There Is A Happiness That Morning Is, Crave, Bluefinger, The Designated Mourner, Our Late Night, Life is Happy and Sad, Hunter Gatherers, Spirits to Enforce,The Strangerer, and Big Death and Little Death.
Jason is a NEA/MacDowell Colony fellow, a four-time MAP Fund grantee and recipient of an individual artist grant from Creative Capital. He was artistic director of Infernal Bridegroom Productions for ten years.
Divya Murthy
Co-Curator for Exquisite Corps
A project-based artist, independent curator and writer. She curated an exhibit “It’s a Phase” at a public park in the city of Bellaire, TX, which was featured in Sculpture magazine. She co-curated “Eco-logic” at the Community Artist Collective, Houston in conjunction with the “Life is Living” event. Her various projects, and installations have been exhibited throughout the United States at venues that include Galveston Arts Center, Blaffer Museum, Houston, Diaspora Vibe, Miami, EnFoco, New York, Baltimore Contemporary Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Some of Divya's awards and grants include an Art League Artist Grant, En Foco New Works Award, a Carol Crow Fellowship from the Houston Center for Photography, The Yousuf Karsh Prize in Photography and an AIGA World Studio Foundation Grant. Ms. Murthy holds an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University in Boston