Arts & Resilience
Since its launch in Fall 2017, the Arts and Resilience Program has welcomed highly accomplished fiction writers, musicians, actors, painters, poets, and filmmakers to engage with members of the McGovern Medical School and UTHealth Houston communities.
Artist Talks for 2025-2026
Upcoming
Lisa Cain
January 27, 2026
12 – 1 pm
Register
Join us for an inspiring session with Lisa Cain, PhD, a self-taught memory painter whose vibrant folk art style celebrates the joy and culture of growing up in Canton, Mississippi. Her mixed media works combine traditional acrylic painting with vintage photography, creating powerful pieces rooted in the lived experiences, cultural traditions, and historical narratives of Black communities in the United States. Through her art, Dr. Cain shares stories of unity, love, hard work, and spirituality, inviting viewers into a world rich with heritage and meaning.
In addition to her artistic achievements, Dr. Cain is a distinguished academic leader, serving as Associate Vice President of Faculty Affairs and Development at UTHealth Houston and Professor at the School of Dentistry.
Mark Chen
March 27, 2026
12 – 1 pm
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In his lecture on Pilgrimage of Light, Mark Chen shares how he travels to remote wilderness sites to project galactic imagery directly onto the land, temporarily transforming vast natural spaces before capturing them through photography. The result is a body of work that collapses distance between the cosmic and the terrestrial, asking where humanity fits within forces far larger than itself.
Grounded in rigorous experimentation, Chen invents and repurposes tools to make his concepts physically possible, pushing photography beyond documentation into something closer to lived experience. This process was further developed during his residencies at Grand Canyon National Park in 2023 and 2024, where scale, light, and isolation became active collaborators.
Chen’s recent and upcoming engagements include artist residencies at Music@Menlo, exhibitions with Texas A&M University, Write Gallery, Hong Kong Art Week, and the International Art and Science Museum. His work was also featured in National Geographic Magazine (March 2025) in the article Where Space and Time Merge. This talk offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at how ambitious, site-specific photographic work is conceived, engineered, and executed—at the intersection of art, science, and the unknown.
This Year’s Past Talks
Laura Spector
October 21, 2025
12 – 1 pm
Laura Spector presented a special session in the 2025 Virtual Arts & Resilience Lecture Series, where she offered an intimate look into her exhibition, “Personal Stories,” at The Jung Center. This lecture will provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse into Spector’s creative process, inviting participants to explore the richly layered narratives and symbolic imagery in her paintings.
Dina Brodsky
November 14, 2025
12 – 1 pm
Video forthcoming
Renowned miniature painter and curator, Dina Brodsky, will share insights into her intricate visual storytelling and the role of art in navigating personal and collective transformation.