Summer has come to Texas, and we can’t think of a better way to weather the heat and humidity than to sit in a cool, dark room with a bowl of popcorn watching movies! So, we asked our staff and friends to recommend some recent must-sees that explore disability themes or feature disabled actors. You can find our top picks below, but we hope you share your own recommendations in the comments! (We’ve included trailers for every recommendation below.) Thelma (recommended by April Sullivan) This summer I saw the new movie Thelma with my sister and mother and mother-in-law (really, she is my sister ..read more

by Silva Laukkanen Introduction Gunilla Sjövall, or Gee or grandma Owl as we all know her, has been a disability activist since 1949. Gee has spent the past 17 years channeling her advocacy through dance. In the 1990s, Gunilla played a crucial role as the education secretary of Kynnys ry (The Threshold Association), the Finnish civil rights association of disabled people, in bringing Finland its first inclusive dance workshop, led by Bruce Curtis from the United States. Although she admired the workshop, something held her back from fully engaging and dancing. Gee, an elderly woman seated in ..read more

by Ms. Boye Introduction I’m thrilled to introduce our featured artist and Art Spark Texas, June 2024, Artist of the Month, Birdman AKA Birdman313. Birdman, author of 13 poetry books and 4 chapbooks, is also a videographer and multi-instrumentalist with a newfound passion for the bass guitar. Retired and living in Houston with his partner Dianna Simmons, Birdman has been a dedicated participant in our Lion & Pirate Inclusive, Accessible Open Mic at Malvern Books, both virtually and in person. Instead of writing about him, we’ll let Birdman’s storytelling shine. Here’s an excerpt from his p ..read more

by Mobi Warren Some Morning Thoughts This morning while out on a walk I paused several times to take a closer look at some small being, honing my attention to a tiny, more-than-human space:  a Monarch caterpillar balanced on a Zizotes milkweed leaf, a leafcutter bee asleep in the yellow cup of a Mexican prickly poppy, a Salt Marsh Moth caterpillar with long black and red-orange hairs crawling the length of a grass blade.  These small frames of encounter and attention are where I often find the beginnings of poems. I am particularly drawn to insects, and as both a poet and a puppete ..read more

by Jerry Slayton Artistic Vision This year, over Spring Break, a group of young photography interns set out from the Art Spark offices each morning in search of realizing their Artistic Vision. At their lead, Anthony Maddaloni, a local pro photographer, art educator, and darkroom wizard. Over the course of 5 days each intern made genuine strides in developing their photography skills, but also in connecting with one another as artists. Anthony and I sat down last week to recap and share a few stories about the class. As a visual art teacher myself, I was very interested to hear how Anthony or ..read more

by Silva Laukkanen Dwayne Scheuneman is a dancer, artistic director, and teacher as well as a kind, funny, and all-around amazing human being. Dwayne served eight years in the US Navy and then in 1995 became paralyzed in a diving accident. After the accident, Dwayne found himself in the depths of despair, and as he was searching his way out of that despair, he wound up on a team playing wheelchair rugby and track and field. In 2002, he was looking for some sort of cross-training activity when he saw an ad at the local VA. Someone was looking for dancers in wheelchairs. Dwayne answered the ad a ..read more

by Lila Milam-Kast “Pick one!” Did you ever hear that as a child, as you stood there, unable to decide which item to choose? How about the more common, “Don’t straddle the fence,” idiom? It traces back to some Bible verse, according to the Internet, and means that you shouldn’t try to take both sides of an argument. I never liked anyone telling me what I should or shouldn’t do. Like the girl with the gleeful joy in her eyes, below, I try to find a way around most things. A girl dressed in bright pink and blue smiles as she stands with one pink boot on either side of a metallic line that runs a ..read more

by Jerry Slayton Our March 2024 Artist of the Month is Lila Milam-Kast. Lila has been our intern for six weeks now, and in that time, we’ve had many opportunities to talk “art.” Though Lila is a multi-medium artist, it came out in our conversation that she considers her primary medium to be color. And in looking through her paintings I would have to agree. I’m drawn to her use of light and shadow, and the drama created through complementary and analogous hues. In Lila’s oil painting “Hamilton Pool,” a cool blue-green pool of water is framed by a warm rocky cave above and to the sides of the p ..read more

by Kristen Gooch Attention Disabled Actors, Playwrights, and Fellow Theater Geeks! My name is Kristen Gooch. I’m a disabled actress, poet, and advocate from Austin, Texas. I am writing this blog because I wanted to let you know that my friends Liz Ross, Kristi Taylor, Claude Chibib, James Burnside, Tom Common, Lettie Common, Brie Hall and I are organizing a Disability Play Festival called TUBU Fest (Theatre for Us, By Us). It will be from July 18th-20th of 2024 in honor of Disability Pride Month, at Ground Floor Theatre here in Austin, Texas. In the TUBU Fest logo, red and yellow icons of dram ..read more

My Capricorn Connection by April Sullivan Our February 2024 Artist of the Month is Austin artist Diane Perez. I have known Diane for several years. Her art takes many forms, such as black and white silhouette portraits, colorful abstracts, graffiti style, and so much more. She paints in her free time and loves doing commissions. Only recently did we realize that we were born one day apart in the same year. We both turned 50 years old at the end of December 2023 and first talked about how that feels. Diane Perez smiles for the camera Diane said, “I feel fabulous about turning 50! It gives me su ..read more