EXPERI
MENTAL
ACTION
Experimental Action, Houston, Tx
Exploration. Creation. Evolution. Subversion. Community.
Innovation. Experimentation. Connection. Growth. Action.
Rebellion. Question. Destruction. PERFORMANCE ART.
Julia Wallace
Creative Director
Julia Claire Wallace is a Houston based creator. She received her BFA in painting from the University of Houston in 2009 and is currently working towards her MA in Arts Leadership at the University of Houston. She served as a facilitator to Performance Art Lab, one of Houston’s most mischievous art collectives, and was one of the founding members of their guerilla flash dance project sexyATTACK. She is the creator and curator of Houston’s Performance Art Night, an event that strengthened the growing performance art scene in Houston. She is also a founder and former facilitator of Continuum, a social sculpture consisting of a group of performance artists joined in the aspiration to create a safe and encouraging space to grow through performance art. She was a co-director and Lone Star Explosion 2014 as well as Experimental Action 2017.
THE
TEAM
Experimental Action is
ARTIST LED.
The festival is made possible only through the collective efforts of countless creatives woven throughout Houston's rich, arts culture.
The ship is driven by a management team consisting of seven talented and passionate performance artists, dedicated to bringing cutting edge performance work to our city.
Jonatan Lopez
Management Team
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Jonatan Lopez is an interdisciplinary artist living in Houston Texas. His performance and installation works address personal struggles and issues of debate, often becoming self-healing rituals and social experiments seeking to open valuable community dialogue. His sculpture and commercial works employ recycled metals and found objects, ranging from life size figurative sculpture to metal crafts.
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Jonatan has shown at numerous venues in Houston, from alternative art spaces such as Project Row Houses and DiverseWorks ArtSpace to traditional venues like Bayou City Art’s Festival. In 2011, he co-founded with Julia Wallace the local performance art group Continuum, which led both to the opportunity of curating and directing Lone Star Explosion 2014. Currently Jonatan is involved with his long time collaborator Julia and a team of prolific young artists preparing for the second installment of Experimental Action.
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KARREN LOVELADY
Management Team ( & Marketing Queen)
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Currently, Karren Lovelady is the Marketing Director of Experimental Action where she designs the on-going marketing strategies for the organization. Her performance art experience includes her on-going project, Performance Art Dinner, as well as assisting other artists on their performances. She first became involved with Experimental Action in 2016 when starting the branding and marketing campaigns for the 2017 inaugural festival. Currently, she is building her own marketing consulting business, Phenomena.
Karren graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing.
"I am always doing that which
I can not do, in order that
I may learn how to do it." - Pablo Picasso
Evan McCarley
Management Team
Evan L. McCarley is a performance artist, musician and photographer born and raised in Houston, TX. After studying Art History at University of North Texas in 2008, she moved back to Houston and immersed herself in the local music and arts community. She co-facilitated CounterCrawl, a local arts event, from its second to sixth iteration, and performed with Continuum Performance Art from 2012 to 2015. Evan was a member of the artist board and a lead volunteer for Lone Star Explosion International Performance Art Biannale in 2014, and co-founded Experimental Action Performance Art Festival. She also serves as a lead coordinator for Zine Fest Houston. Her performance work examines themes like experimenting with human interaction, secrecy and communication. She is currently pursuing her bachelor of Fine Arts at University of Houston-Downtown, and resides in the Montrose area with her husband and three cats.
JENNIFER FREE
Management Team
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Jennifer Free is a recent graduate from the University of Houston, achieving a B.A. in psychology. A lover of poetry that brought her to the art scene in Houston and introduced her to performance art. A one night stand performance has turned into a lustful love affair. Jennifer has been performing and volunteering in the art scene for the past two years, including working with Experimental Action.
Jennifer’s performances tend to focus on personal aspects of life from the mundane to the traumatic, socio-political issues, women and queer life, and the affirmation of sexual power through performance art, poetry, and recently photography. Jennifer also founded the community group and local meet-up, Divine Feminine, in late 2015.
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CHANTAL WALLACE
Management Team
Chantal Wallace is a shibari artist, teacher and performer from Houston, Texas that goes by the name ShatteredPulse. She is one of the Directors of BIGHT (Bondage In Greater Houston Texas), a group in Houston dedicated to bondage education. In addition to teaching locally within her community, she has presented and performed for audiences across the country.
was a local artist in the Experimental Action 2017 Local showcase. She recently branched out and began broadening her approach to performance art within the Houston performance art community. She is excited to join the team and help make Experimental Action come to life again in 2019.
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DEAN LISCUM
Management Team, Strategy, Content Marketing & Social Media
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Dean is a member of the Marketing Team for Experimental Action. He manages the Content Marketing effort, runs the ExA blog, and works with the social media team to generate a buzz about Performance Art in Houston and the Experimental Action 2019 festival.
Dean's no artist, but he is an active appreciator. He's written for art blogs, published essays, served on non-profit boards, volunteered at art events, and participated in performance art pieces.
Currently, he runs his own company of one, This-D.
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JOY HARRIS
Jeanette Joy Harris is a Houston-based artist, writer, curator and speaker interested in the intersection of performance and political dialogue. Joy completed her MscR in history of art at University of Edinburgh College of Art and was a scholar in residence at the Hannah Arendt Institute at Bard College.
Joy’s art practice is project-based, and she has shown work in London, the Netherlands, Venice (IT), Brindisi (IT), Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Miami, Chicago, and Houston. Joy workshopped with the International Performance Association in conjunction with Venice International Performance Art Week (Italy). She currently writes an ongoing series of articles, “Art of Politics, Politics of Art,” for Political Animal Magazine and is a contributing writer for Experimental Action.
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