Christopher Cascio was born in New Orleans, but raised in Houston. After graduating from HSPVA in 1995 he received a bachelor’s degree in painting/drawing from the San Francisco Art Institute. It turns out that degree isn’t worth much in “the real world.” The next four years Mr. Cascio spent in Los Angeles, working a variety of reality television jobs and making art and music as part of the collaborative team Uncomfortable Jams. Uncomfortable Jams was represented by New Image Art Gallery and played shows regularly in and around Los Angeles. Mr. Cascio returned to Houston in 2003 and eventually found employment as Marketing and Outreach Manager with Da Camera of Houston, a chamber music and jazz presenter located in the museum district. He is a working artist. In addition to being on the Board of ArtStorm, Mr. Cascio is also the Director of Marketing.

Megan Whitenton was born and raised in Houston, where she graduated from HSPVA in 1997. She went on to San Francisco Art Institute for two years, and then moved to southern California to graduate with a BFA from Cal Arts in 2001. Megan has participated in and curated countless shows for independent gallery spaces and burgeoning art organizations in Houston and California, and also organizes visual art exhibitions for Café Brasil in Houston. She is the Public Relations Captain for Peel Gallery Shop, also in Houston, as well as serving on the installation advisory board for Houston’s annual Five-A Citywide Exhibition in 2008. Currently, she works in Communications and Marketing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and is director of PR for ArtStorm.

Alicia Seale was born in Houston, Texas in 1977. She attended HSPVA and graduated in 1995. She went on to attend San Francisco Art Institute, School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and HCC visual arts programs. She is currently working as a video production assistant in Houston where she resides with her family. In an effort to curb her self-destructive behavior, she has founded the ArtStorm Glee Club - “Shimmying through reality, one extra curricular activity at a time…”.

Monte Large After high school at HSPVA, Monte attended Bard College and Columbia University, graduating in 2000 with a BA in art/architecture. From 2000 – 2004, Monte lived in New York City, creating window displays and working for a startup fashion and art magazine. Since his return to Houston in 2004, Monte has focused on the built environment as a medium to create community while questioning land use conventions. A Co-Founder of ArtStorm and a Real Estate Broker with Wulfe & Co., Monte is working to bridge the mediums of art and business with projects that attempt to open a new dialog on fresh, cross-disciplinary art practices.

Eli Sebastian Brumbaugh was born and raised in Houston, where he graduated from Stratford High School in 2004. He is currently working on a degree in Visual Communications. He admires the arts of this great city and feels it has so much more to offer if only passionate individuals work together. To see that this city receives the recognition it deserves from creating great works of art and that the sea of talent waiting to be discovered here is tapped. Eli has shown in and helped put together countless independent art shows here in and outside of Houston. In his free time he paints, designs, works in photography, and writes. Eli has a published book of poetry and is currently working on a second to be released in 2009. He loves to collect books, movies, records, and old cameras. He has described himself as having a “bad case of wanderlust” and loves to travel. Eli believes in ArtStorm and sees it as a breath of fresh air for a suffocated city.

Isela Aguirre was born in Houston. She graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in 1995,and received her bachelor’s degree in studio art/photography from the University of Houston in 2001. Through out the next six years Isela tried to balance teaching grade school and being an active artist in the Houston art community. Ultimately she was unable to successfully balance these two aspects of her life and one or the other always suffered. Looking for a more meaningful way to be a part of the Houston art scene Isela joined forces with fellow artist friends to help found ArtStorm in 2007. ArtStorm was founded to create an accessible, approachable and affordable gallery space for emerging and unrepresented artists. Isela currently teaches at HSPVA as an art consultant and hopes to encourage and model enthusiastic, meaningful, and fresh ways of contributing to and being a part of an art community.