Eric Avery entered medical school at UTMB with a degree in art in 1970. He completed his psychiatry residency in 1979 at The New York State  Psychiatric Institute. 

For 40 years Dr. Avery worked at the intersection of visual art and medicine. For 25 years he was a faculty psychiatrist at UTMB. As a member of the Institute for Medical Humanities at UTMB, he made art that reflected his work as an HIV psychiatrist. He is married to David Paar MD, who was one of the Infectious Disease faculty at UTMB. 

He has made prints since his childhood in Pecos, Texas. As an artist physician he expanded the boundaries of printmaking to include clinical art actions in art museums. He retired from clinical practice in 2012. 

He lives and works as an artist activist in San Ygnacio, Texas, a small South Texas border community near Laredo. He has had many exhibitions and is widely collected in museums in the United States. Currently two of his HIV related prints are in Melinda Narro’s exhibition Do No Harm: Artists Confront Health Crises at the Houston Museum of Fine Art. In 2027, the British Museum is including his Stash House print in their traveling exhibition Masterpieces of Printmaking 1465 to Now. 

His website is www.docart.com  

Julia Bryan-Wilson is Professor of Contemporary Art and LGBTQ+ Studies at Columbia University.  As Curator-at-Large at the Museude Arte de São Paulo (MASP), she co-organized the major group exhibitions Women’s Histories, Histories of Dance, and Queer Histories. Her books include Louise Nevelson's Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face, and in 2024 she served as the President of the International Jury of the 60th Venice Biennale.

Violette Bule studied at the Escuela Activa de Fotografía in Mexico City and earned her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Houston. Her work has recently been featured in several group and solo exhibitions, including the biennial La Poli/Gráfica de Puerto Rico y el Caribe: Bajo Presión / Under Pressure in San Juan (2024); Day Jobs at both the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University and the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas (2023–24); and Echo Chamber at the Transart Foundation for Art and Anthropology in Houston, among others. She was awarded the 2023 Horton/Artadia Award in Houston, TX. In 2024, Bule was an artist-in-residence at the University of Texas at Austin and previously held a residency in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University in 2022. Her book De la Lleca al Cohue: Photography in Venezuelan Penitentiaries was recently published by Roga Ediciones and was selected as the Book of the Month by the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in July 2024. She was also part of Round 57: Southern Survey Biennial II at Project Row Houses in Houston.

Frances Cava-Humphrey (they/them/siya) is a community archivist and artist living in Austin, Texas. Their passion is critical and accessible archiving that preserves the under/misrepresented histories of diasporic and queer communities, and approaches audiovisual media with a love for truth-excavating collective storytelling. They are an Archival Technician with TAMI, and manage the workflow of preserving footage of Houston’s LGBTQ+ community from the TAMI’s KPRC-TV Collection.

Mo Cortez is an intersex activist, musician, poet, and actor from Houston, Texas. As a co-founder of (THIS) The Houston Intersex Society, he is an advocate for intersex people's rights and visibility. Mo is passionate about legislative policy and criminal legal advocacy. He doesn't believe in policing people or bodies, and envisions a world that leads with care, not cages. 

Sol Diaz-Peña is a transdisciplinary artist and community organizer whose work explores identity, cultural memory, and the transformative power of collective storytelling. Rooted in painting, photography, and public practice, Diaz-Peña draws from queer and Indigenous traditions, family archives, and ritual to examine diasporic experiences and the sacred within the everyday.  They have exhibited at Lawndale Art Center, Blaffer Art Museum, and Project Row Houses, with their work featured in New American Paintings No. 174. Diaz-Peña has held residencies at Lawndale Arts Center, Project Row Houses, and the Artists’ Literacy Institute (NY), and was honored with the 2024 Arts and Media Award from the Houston Transgender Unity Committee. Diaz-Peña is a core member of artist collectives OpenMFA and Kitchen Table Puppets + Press.

Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri Espeut (she/her/hers) currently serves as Advocacy Director for The Normal

Anomaly Initiative, Inc, and has worked with NASTAD, Yale, AIDS United, GLAAD,

Gilead/Compass Initiative, Transgender Law Center, SUSTAIN, and CDC, and has appeared in

Houston Chronicle, Time Magazine, Pink News, and Fox26 Houston’s “Isiah Factor

Uncensored”. She currently serves on the Yale CIRA community advisory board. In 2023, she

became a graduate of the American Express Leadership Academy, as well as a graduate of the

Victory Empowerment Fellowship program of the LGBT Victory Fund. She has been awarded

the ‘Carrying The Torch’ Award at 2022’s Houston Trans Pride and the 2022 Monica Roberts

Award from The Houston LGBTQ Political Caucus. She currently serves on the Board for

allgoPOC. In 2024, she became the first Black Trans Woman to be voted female-identifying

Grand Marshal for Pride Houston. In January 2026, she was voted onto the Houston LGBTQ+

Political Caucus board as Vice President.

free feral (they/them) works with sound, song and story to explore cultural technologies of survival and memory.  As a musician and composer, they create scores for film, theatre, and dance using strings, loops, and vocals.  As a writer, they like to explore non-fiction narratives through a poet’s eye view.  In addition to their work as an audio producer, they have scored dance, theatre, and film projects. In 2026, they released We Are the Promised Land, a multimedia altar to Black land legacies in the Mississippi Hill Country. They hold a BM from Oberlin Conservatory, a Certificate in Documentary Studies from the Center from Documentary Studies at Duke, and an MA in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi.

Koomah is an intersex and genderfluid multidisciplinary artist, community organizer, and educator. Involved with nonprofit and arts organizations, Koomah is co-founder of The Houston Intersex Society, advisor to the Transgender Foundation of America, and member of the DiverseWorks artist board. Koomah’s art and social practice has received accolades including the BIPOC Arts Network and Fund’s individual artist award and recognition at the White House Pride Celebration in 2022. Koomah’s artwork is held in private collections in the US and abroad. Outside of the arts, Koomah serves as a legislative policy advisor and strategist for intersex, rare disease, and other community issues

Brandon Mack is an activist, educator, and founder of B.Mack Strategies, a consulting firm advancing equity through education, advocacy, and organizational training. His work focuses on expanding access, building community power, and creating more just systems for historically excluded communities.

A longtime Houston leader, Mack serves as President of the Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus and Chair of the Harris County LGBTQIA+ Commission. He previously organized with Black Lives Matter: Houston and has more than 17 years of experience in college admissions, including leadership roles at Rice University and the International Association for College Admissions Counseling.

L. Frank Manriquez (they, them, pó), is a Tongva/Acjachemem/Rarámuri two-spirited artist, writer, tribal scholar, decolonizationist, native canoe maker/revivalist, and indigenous language activist. Pó is one of seven founding Board Members of the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival and a former Board Member of the the California Indian Basketweavers’ Association, two cornerstones of contemporary California Indian cultural life and renewal. Most recently, L has convened a group of indigenous and ally water protectors and land stewards into a new organization called ‘Eyaa Paar (meaning ‘Same Waters’ in Totoongvetam language), to further land and culture-based work in their homeland of Tovaangar (LA). Pó lives and works in Santa Rosa, California and their art has been exhibited widely in California, in many cities of the US and globally,, and has been featured in various publications. In 2023, pó received a Doctorate in Humane Letters honoris causa from the University of San Francisco.

Throughout her nearly twenty-year career, Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud has created art across disciplines about geography, mapping, the environment, and the African diaspora. Her work is often minimal, abstract, and introspective. She has participated in exhibitions and residencies throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and the U.S. Recent awards include the Texas Women in Conservation – Terry Hershey Award through the Texas Audubon; Rachel’s Network Catalyst awardee for mid-career environmental leaders of color; the BIPOC Arts Network and Fund; and an Artadia finalist award. Born and raised in Houston, Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud studied Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Art Practice at the School of Visual Arts. 

Ayanna also leads environmental advocacy, education, and cultural strategy, and currently serves as co-executive director of Bayou City Waterkeeper, where she works on collaborative efforts on water quality, wetland protection, and flood resiliency. Before this, Ayanna launched public programs at a botanic garden, led multidisciplinary and cross-cultural program development at nonprofits and universities throughout the U.S., and founded labotanica, a cross-disciplinary creative studio.   

A Curatorial Associate in the Prints & Drawings department of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Melinda Narro holds BA and MA degrees in art history from the universities of Tennessee and Kansas, respectively. Prior to joining the MFAH in January 2022, Melinda completed internships at the Dallas Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Her research interests include American visual culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, comics, and the intersections of art and public health.

Chris E. Vargas is a video maker & interdisciplinary artist currently based in Los Angeles, CA whose work explores the complex ways that queer and trans people negotiate spaces for themselves within historical & institutional memory and popular culture. He is the Executive Director of MOTHA, the Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art, a critical and conceptual arts & hirstory institution highlighting the contributions of trans art to the cultural and political landscape. Vargas is the co-editor, with David Evan Franz and Christina Linden, of the volume Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects (Hirmer, 2024), a project of MOTHA.

Nick Vaughan (he/him/his) & Jake Margolin (he/him/his) are co-founders of Rendezvous Center for Art and Houston-based interdisciplinary artists. Their life’s work, an ongoing series of 50 interdisciplinary installations inspired by little-known LGBTQI2 histories from each state, involves extensive original archival research and deep collaborations with local LGBTQI2 communities. They have completed six installations in this 50 States Project (Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, Arkansas, and Louisiana) and have had solo exhibitions at The Blaffer Art Museum, DiverseWorks, the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, the Invisible Dog Art Center (NYC), Art League Houston, Aurora Picture Show, McClain Gallery (Houston), Devin Borden Gallery (Houston) and non-traditional community-facing venues including Pride Festivals in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and Houston, Houston Community College Campuses, Houston Public Library, University of Houston MD Anderson Library, and numerous queer bars.