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Pongos Helping Pongos Collaborative Artists
Meet The Collaborative Artists for Pongos Helping Pongos
Brad Moody
Brad moody is a painter currently living in Houston, Texas. A graduate of Rice University with a B. of Arch. (where he received the prestigious William Ward Watkins Traveling Scholarship), he has also studied at London’s Architectural Association and the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC. A Southerner, born and bred, he has spent most of his formative years in NYC, with a stint in Savannah, Georgia.
While in NYC working as a designer, Brad was featured in People Magazine and reviewed in the NYTimes, W.W.D., New York Magazine, Texas Monthly, etc. His designs have been featured in countless fashion and lifestyle magazines, along with the covers of Cosmopolitan, Hamptons Mag., and Shape. After moving to Savannah, Ga., he returned to architecture and real estate where he received numerous “Salesman of the Year” awards.
Brad moody first picked up a paintbrush in 2009 and has not stopped. His work is known for its figurative and frequently controversial content. A strong proponent of art as narrative, the paintings are known for their energy and intensity with a decidedly raw, outsider edge. bmoody has been in 4 “POP UP” shows in the 3 years he has been painting and is currently showing at “G” Gallery in Houston, Texas, where he is also gallery manager.
Cindy Ward
EDUCATION:
B.F.A. / Studio Art The University of Texas – Austin, Texas
B.F.A. / Environmental Design University of Houston – Houston, Texas
Continued Studies / Painting Glassell School – Houston, Texas
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Maintains a studio at Winter Street Studios - Houston Texas
Goldman and Rolph Architects – Designer - Houston, Texas
ISD Interior Architecture – Designer - Houston, Texas
ASID Member 1985 – 2002
Set Designer
AWARDS:
Houston Chronicle ASID Design Award
Outstanding Senior Design Student – University of Houston
Commission – Children’s Study Center – Houston Heritage Society
B.F.A. / Studio Art The University of Texas – Austin, Texas
B.F.A. / Environmental Design University of Houston – Houston, Texas
Continued Studies / Painting Glassell School – Houston, Texas
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Maintains a studio at Winter Street Studios - Houston Texas
Goldman and Rolph Architects – Designer - Houston, Texas
ISD Interior Architecture – Designer - Houston, Texas
ASID Member 1985 – 2002
Set Designer
AWARDS:
Houston Chronicle ASID Design Award
Outstanding Senior Design Student – University of Houston
Commission – Children’s Study Center – Houston Heritage Society
Glenn Ruthven
From going to the Houston Zoo and sketching the animals, to enjoying other outdoor adventures, Glenn Ruthven developed an abiding love and respect for nature. It is out of this background that inspired him to study painting at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, receiving a degree in Fine Arts. It also led him to travel through Europe and Africa shooting documentaries for the Church of England, and he has also worked as an editor and animator. After moving to Austin he began to paint professionally, and created both murals and portraits. He has combined those two specialties into his current work with animals. While not painting he volunteers with a Search and Rescue team and still communes with nature with his family.
“I like to find the lighter side of animals. I also like to work with really forced perspectives, so an elephant is perfect because you’ll be focused on the end of the trunk and it’ll be very three-dimensional like he’s really reaching through the painting at you. I’ve always been interested in animals and have always worked with them in one capacity or another. I grew up coming here to the Houston Zoo. My mom used to drop me off with my sketchbook and I’d spend hours just wandering around as a kid so I’ve always been a part of it.”
Patricia Hernandez
Patricia Hernandez was born in Corpus Christi, Texas and has lived and worked in Houston since 1985. She received her B.A. in Art and Art History and her B.F.A in Painting from Rice University in 1989 and 1990, respectively. She earned her MFA in Painting from the University of Houston in 2000, receiving her first solo exhibition in Houston in 1998. She has taught as an adjunct instructor of art at the Glassell School of Art, San Jacinto College, the University of Houston, Clear Lake, and Houston Community College. She has exhibited in Texas, Tennessee, New York, and Vaxjo Sweden. Last year, she presented a solo exhibition at DiverseWorks in Houston, titled Parody Of Light. She is also the founder of a nonprofit, Studio One Archive Resource, which will assist Houston’s alternative arts spaces with preserving their historical records.
Esther Delaquis
I am originally from Ghana, West Africa. I studied at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science technology, Ghana, where I graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting. I continued my studies at Texas Tech University with a Master of Fine Arts in painting and a minor in printmaking. Currently, I teach painting, drawing and printmaking at Houston Baptist University.
My art emanates from both African traditional sources and international post-modern influences of the neo-expressionism mould. I apply certain traditional motifs in textiles and other African symbolism in sculpture as basis for expression. My artistic philosophy is to try to apply outmoded African traditional art-forms into a modern context by creating a visual synthesis that would have a universal aesthetic appeal despite an inherent pessimistic mood due to human conditions in the world. I aspire for an art-form that would break away from ethnocentric stranglehold yet remain or retain an African-ness that is essentially modern.
Maria Valdez
Ms. Valdez is a visual artist whose research is concentrated in the media of painting, printmaking and drawing. She received her BFA and BA in Psychology from Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, and an MFA-Painting from Boston University. Currently, she serves as an Assistant Professor of Art at Houston Baptist University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in venues located in Massachusetts, Texas, England, France, Italy and Mexico. Ms. Valdez holds various awards such as the Ester B. and Albert S. Kahn Career Award, the Dean’s Scholarship and a Visual Arts scholarship from Boston University. She was candidate for the Joan Mitchell Award and the Hunting Art Prize. Ms. Valdez was selected to exhibit in the international exhibition Go West at UNESCO’s headcounters in Paris, France and locally at Williams Tower in 2011. She was a driving force for spearheading the first Global Art Competition for UNESCO’s Multi-Cultural and Religion Workshop/Conference on Human Vulnerability in Rome, Italy.
Her professional research has focused on the archetype of home through investigations of architecture and proximity, both locally and abroad. Since 2008, with the calamity of hurricane Ike, her interests have been even more focused on her immediate environment, ¬the landscapes/cityscapes of Houston, Texas. Recent work explores how architectural structures: contemporary/historical buildings, houses, highways, streets, refineries and factories, function in identifying our community. The compositions have a duplicitous nature, taking on investigations of space and simultaneously defining an identity of place.
