Vicki Fowler- Senior Advocate

Starts her seventh year as a full-time faculty. Her specialties include social practices and performance art.

She was born and bred and sun tea steeped in the concrete of Houston inner city backyards. She graduated from Kinder HSPVA in 1992 and is thrilled to come full circle and return as a faculty member of the Visual Art Department. She received her BFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002 and her MFA in Performance Art in 2012 from the Chicago Art Institute. Her teaching experiences include consulting at HSPVA, YES College Preparatory, Bayou Village Waldorf School, Westside High School, and residency mentoring at Chicago’s Link’s Hall. Fowler is a life artist, interested in blurring the lines between art and life. Daily, she looks for art opportunities, from the poetic possibilities of a good installation to be arranged on the glass refrigerator shelf to allowing “collaborative” drawings from her daughter over her art works. She is interested in artists as thinkers and the various ways of being an artist. She looks for a variety of ways to connect to her audience particularly in irreverent displays of formal works outside of gallery or museum contexts. She has long led and followed with her gut in her Whole Artist food works and gulped with her heart in her efforts of transformation in ceremony like performance. Fowler is currently working on a memoir that steals from life moments and her daughters on dream like seven year old perspective. Fowler has curated, organized, and conceived of artist run spaces including, CSAW Performance Bay of Houston TX and Mutherland, Chicago Il.

She has shown work in the likes of spaces such as: Diverse Works, Blaffer Museum, Lawndale, Project Row House; Houston, The Triangle Space; San Antonio, The Lab, The Luggage Store; San Francisco, old dusty private apartment attics, Links Hall, Sullivan Gallery; Defibrillator; Chicago, PERFORM NOW; LA, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Craft Winston Salem NC, and in the cab of her truck driving...looking for an open field.

Chadwick Gray- Sophomore Level Advocate 

Chadwick Gray is an artist and educator teaching in Houston since 2013. Professor Gray is a world-renowned painter, muralist and sculptor. He has a B.F.A in sculpture and education from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Master of Fine Arts in art history and practice from the University of California at Berkeley. When he’s not creating stuff in his studio, Gray loves to travel and experience art and nature around the world.  

Ellen Phillips- Ninth Grade Advocate

Ellen Phillips is the 9th Grade Visual Art Coordinator at HSPVA.  Phillips is an alum of the Visual Arts Department. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Within personal studio work, Phillips explores shifting narratives and the concept of multiples through works on paper, sculpture, photography, and text. She has shown works nationally in Texas, Maryland, Missouri, and California.

Fun facts about Ms. Phillips:

1. She is an INFJ personality type.
2. She is addicted to thrift shopping!
3. She loves writing and has participated in reading her short stories at various reading events in Houston.
4. After college, Ms. Phillips worked at the Rothko Chapel and was the in-house photographer/archivist for a mid-century modern furniture store.
5. She grew up in an artist household - both of her parents were painters.
6. In her free time, Ms. Phillips makes work in her studio and spends time with her mom plus four legged friends.

David Waddell-  Junior Advocate and Chair

David Waddell has been teaching at HSPVA since 2007.  He became the Chair of the Art Department in 2016.  He teaches a variety of Independent Studio Classes, Idea Development Courses, Art Criticism and Ceramics.  From 2008-2016, Waddell was the junior level advocate and technology/media arts coordinator in the art department.  From 2016-2023, he was the senior level advocate. 

A 1999 graduate of HSPVA in Visual Arts, Mr. Waddell earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art from The University of Texas at Austin and his MFA in painting at the American University in Washington D.C. He enjoys the joys of family life and the daily fun in the art department. His background experience in education includes his role in Blaffer Gallery's Young Artist Apprenticeship Program, teaching film at the Aurora Picture Show, and instructing at the American University, the University of Houston and Sam Houston State University.

Mr. Waddell has participated in residency programs at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and Lawndale Art Center. He has been included in shows and screenings at Fotofest, the Katzen Art Center, Lawndale Art Center, Front Gallery, MFAH and Gavin Brown's Enterprise, among others.  

Mr. Waddell has seen the evolution and changes of HSPVA and the art department throughout the years.  He is proud of the school and the department during transition years- including the move to our downtown location, the pandemic and a handful of challenging climate hurdles.  Mr. Waddell had the privilege of working with Eileen Montgomery and the mentorship of David Sheard.  Both of these people were impactful and influential figures in designing our current space and the curriculum for our independent studio program.    

CONSULTANTS

Geison Alvizures (Sculpture)  is a welder, woodworker, craftsman, and lifelong artist. Beginning with working in his parents' carpentry shop as a child, he began to develop finer skills and started his business as a teenager. He developed his artistic eye at HSPVA and is glad to be returning as faculty. Geison loves working with students to hone their skills in welding, business, and communication. In his free time, he enjoys camping and spending time in nature.

Sebastien Boncy (Elective Narrative Structures)  born in Haiti and shipwrecked in Texas, is all six members of the Pugilist Press collective. In the last decade, he’s maintained a hyperlocal practice centered around an online photographic archive of the city: Purple Time Space Swamp. Sebastien is currently doing the adjunct shuffle in the City of Syrup. He takes pictures daily, distributes them freely, does it for the culture. 

Jordan Bolduc (Printmaking) starts her first year teaching at HSPVA! She is obsessed with everything printmaking related, often feeling like a (controlled) mad scientist in the print studio, and is thrilled to share her obsession with the students. After graduating from University of Houston in 2021, she founded Moonie Drip Studios, became the studio assistant to public artist Dixie Friend Gay and print assistant to master printer Patrick Masterson. In her personal studio work, she loves to experiment with printmaking, cyanotypes, lumen prints, papermaking, and collage -often combining several processes to see what happens. She is very excited to be a part of the HSPVA team!

Katie Christman (Textiles, Contemporary Art History) started teaching textiles in 2018 and is excited to be returning this year.  She is a Kinder HSPVA alum.

Kevin Lopez (Drawing) is a visual artist working in oils, graphite, charcoal, and wood. He earned a BFA in Art from the University of Houston. He has shown work at Lawndale Art Center, the Fort Bend Museum, and the Consulado General de México en Houston. Lopez is currently represented by Catapult Gallery and has work in the Carolyn Farb collection. He has taught at Art League Houston as well as Incarnate Word Academy and is the Vice President at BOX 13 ArtSpace. 

Elisha Luckett (Photography)

Jacinta Majithia (Ceramics, Video, Independent Studio)

Alexis Pye (Elective Painting)

Corey Sherrard (Elective Sound)