2011-12 Administrative Staff

Joshua Turner serves as VBB's Interim Executive Director. He has a BA from the University of Houston in English Literature. He manages VBB’s finances, marketing and offers essential support for VBB’s art productions. Contact: joshua<at>vbbarts.org

2011-12 Artistic Team

VBB Artistic Director/ Founder Sehba Sarwar is the visionary for VBB, and has been leading the organization for a decade. She is a writer, multidisciplinary artist and activist. Her published works include a novel (Black Wings, Alhamra, 2004), and essays, short stories, and poems (in journals, anthologies, and newspapers including the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Callaloo and Asia). Her video collages have been screened in Pakistan, Egypt, India and around the US. Sarwar has been visualizing and producing VBB shows since 1999, and she produces VBB's living room art productions. Contact: sehba<at>vbbarts.org

Teacher Workshop Faciltator Marcela Descalzi runs the Teacher Workshop: Writing for Self-Discovery workshops. Descalzi is a VBB co-founder, educator and performance artist and has been writing intensely and performing on stage for many years by herself and through Houston Playback Theatre. As an educator, she works with writers and performer ages nine through sixty-three; she is fascinated by the many ways art and community intermingle to produce sublime manifestations of beauty.

Project and Technical Coordinator Eric Hester is a photographer/ filmmaker, who served on VBB’s very first Board while he was still at high school. Since then, he has earned a bachelor’s degree from Rice University, and has exhibited his work with VBB as well as at other spaces around Houston.

Shadi Jam, born in Tehran, Iran, was raised in Houston, Texas and Stavanger, Norway. A licensed New York attorney, she spearheaded the International Department for the Royal Bank in Baku, Azerbaijan, she recently returned to Houston to begin The Party Czar, an event planning company. Volunteer Coordinator for the Texas Chapter of the ACLU, she serves on the Advisory Board of Zan Magazine, and is involved with the Houston Palestine Film Festival, Our Image Film Festival and Pink Iftar.

Burnell McCray is a photographer who has been documenting VBB since its inception at a bookstore in southwest Houston. He has exhibited his work at the Houston Center for Photography and at different venues around the city.

Jacsun Shah, (M.F.A., Ph.D.–Creative Writing, University of Houston), writes poetry and creative non-fiction. She is a founding member of VBB, has received grants from the Houston Arts Alliance, and serves as the primary instructor for VBB’s youth workshops.

Jennifer Palermo (MA, LPC) is a Licensed Professional Counselor with a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Houston Clear Lake and an undergraduate Bachelor of Arts Degree in Art and Art History from Rice University. She has specialized training in art therapy and her first decade plus long career was as an arts professional producing the Art Car Parade as Assistant Director of the Orange Show Center for the Visual Arts. Her interests include the transformative power of creative artistic expression and the implementation of social change through discourse.

Yunuen Perez Vertti serves as VBB's Production Manager. She is working alongside Sehba Sarwar on VBB's living room art productions. Originally from Mexico City, Vertti is a photographer and filmmaker. Her films have been screened at Fotofest and at the Michelle Brangwen Dance Ensemble. Vertti also manages VBB's website. Contact: yunuen<at>vbbarts.org

Filmmaker Faroukh Virani has created three documentaries about VBB, including our 10-year anniversary video and Patti Smith’s performance with VBB. Based in Los Angeles, Virani continues to work with actively with VBB to create videos about our work.

2011-12 Co-Curators

Performance Artist, Autumn Knight is a native Houstonian. She has performed internationally with Elevator Repair Service and is a co-founder of Jelly Jar, a performance-based collective. She is working with VBB on our 2011-12 living room art productions.

Kafah Bachari Manna was born in Iran and raised in Texas. She serves as director of the Houston Palestine Film Festival and is the the co-founder of an interfaith program, Pink Iftar. Most days you can find her climbing trees with her sons, or laboring over a novel and a collection of short stories in the sunroom of her 100-year-old house. Bachari Manna is co-curating VBB’s next production of will be co-curating VBB's February East End Live Art What's Color Got to Do With It.

Solkem N’Gangbet is the Program Director of the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC). Born in Chad, N'Gangbet has lived in France, Cameroon, England, Japan and Houston. Her life has been one of migration-building bonds with a community from one country to another, one language to another, one culture to another, from one home to another. N'Gangbet will be co-curating VBB's February East End Live Art What's Color Got to Do With It.

Visual Artist, Robert A. Pruitt was born in Houston’s Third Ward and is a founding member of the artist collective Otabenga Jones & Associates. He has exhibited widely at spaces including The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Dallas Museum of Art, and was a participating artist in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. He is working with VBB on our Fall 2011 living room art production.

Sima Shakhsari is a postdoctoral fellow in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Houston; she received her Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. Her current research focuses on Iranian transgender refugee applicants in Turkey. Shakhsari is co-curating VBB’s East End Live Art production POLITIQUEER.

Jennifer Tyburczy received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Performance Studies with a concentration in sexuality studies, display cultures, and the performance of gender. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Tyburczy is co-curating VBB’s next production POLITIQUEER.