|
About / Staff
Aurora Picture Show Staff
 |
Delicia Harvey
Executive Director
Email Delicia Harvey
The product of a South African and a Texan, Delicia Harvey balances BBQ with high tea just fine. So, she was naturally a good fit for the sequin-wearing founder of Aurora, Andrea Grover, when she came to the microcinema three years ago as Associate Director. Appointed Executive Director in December 2007, Harvey has over ten years experience in the non-profit art field, and previously served as Public Relations Manager for the Alley Theatre for seven years. She also worked with the independent film theatre chain Landmark Theatre Corporation, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's film department. She has an MA in Public Communications from Fordham University and a BA from University of California, San Diego. She lives with her husband John, their beautiful son Wynn (spoken like a mom), and their cairn terrier Margot (think Toto) in the Houston Heights. |
 |
Mary Magsamen
Curator
Email Mary Magsamen
After moving to Houston in 2006, Mary was thrilled to discover Blue Bell ice cream and Shiner beer and not so happy to learn about the extensive variety of bugs in Houston. Mary is a video artist, working collaboratively with her husband, Stephan Hillerbrand, who teaches in the Photography/Digital Media program at the University of Houston. Their work has been exhibited internationally in video screenings, galleries and museums. Mary and Stephan have two children, Madeleine and Emmett and her dog, Onyx.
Mary grew up in Littleton, Colorado and graduated from the infamous Columbine High School. She received a BFA from the University of Denver and a MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has taught video, sculpture and interdisciplinary art at the University of Toledo, Bowling Green State University, the New School University and the University of Houston. Mary was also as the Program Coordinator for the MFA in Media Art Production at the City College of New York and she was a Post-Production Coordinator at Berwyn Editorial, a commercial video editing facility in New York City. She has worked on numerous curatorial projects including co-founding an artist run space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and curating video screenings for the College Art Association and the Society for the Performing Arts Houston. |
 |
Rachel Blackney Tepper
Associate Director
Email Rachel Blackney Tepper
Rachel grew up in Houston, but had to leave and come back to really appreciate that fact. She is the wife of the very amusing David Tepper (who you can listen to daily on the Houston ESPN 97.5 FM radio station) and the proud guardian of two wonderful dogs, Coach and Madden. Rachel has been working in film and production since leaving the University of Texas at Austin. After moving to Los Angeles, like all naive and starry-eyed film students do, she worked in the production offices of several film and TV productions that you have probably never heard of before. Longing for big yard and friendly faces, she returned to Austin. After working on a few more crews (The Alamo being the most memorable), she switched gears to non-profit media arts with a position at the Austin Film Society and Austin Studios. But Houston is a better sports radio market for her husband and her family lives here too. So when an opportunity presented itself, she made the move to Houston. Luckily, through the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) leadership retreat, she already loved Aurora Picture Show. And now, happy to be the Associate Director for Aurora, Houston is really home again. You can catch her some mornings running the dogs around Memorial Park or at a local yoga class every other day. But every other weekend, Rachel is sweating microcinema style putting on unique cinematic experiences that you will not soon forget. |
 |
Camilo Gonzalez
Media Arts Instructor and Video Archivist
Email Camilo Gonzalez
Camilo Gonzalez is a person that will never be able to quite figure out art, and as consequence, he tries to make it. He studied fine arts in his homeland in Colombia at the Universidad Nacional and then ended up in Texas with a BFA on Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston. His work focuses on time-based media that tends to revolve around the idea of absence and the truth embedded in memory. Ultimately his goal is to find a way to be making art and grilling next to an mind-boggling beach. |
 |
Guy Harrison
Facility Manager
Email Guy Harrison
Guy enjoys being behind the curtain at screenings and pushing the "play" button. He says he's never worked with a better group of people than his Aurora family, and is grateful the director hired him in one of her weak moments. He also enjoys catching alternative performance art at some of the less polished venues around town. |
 |
Sinai Tirado
Membership and Office Associate
Email Sinai Tirado
Adopting the artistic tendencies of her family back in Venezuela, Sinaí uprooted herself in Houston and received her BA in Media Production from the University of Houston where she discovered her love for video editing. A passion she strives to pursue on various production projects around the world. Besides helping create a unique cinematic experience, you can probably find her riding her bike, trying hearty food, or explaining to people how to pronounce her name (Xena-E). |
Aurora Picture Show VIPs
 |
Andrea Grover
Founder
Andrea Grover is a migrant curator, artist and writer. In 1998, she founded Aurora Picture Show, a now recognized center for filmic art, that began in Grover’s living room as “the world’s most public home theater.” She curated the first exhibition exploring the phenomenon of crowdsourcing in art (PHANTOM CAPTAIN, apexart, New York, 2006), and, with artist Jon Rubin, organized an exhibit in which worldwide participants created a photo-sharing album of their imaginings on Tehran (NEVER BEEN TO TEHRAN, Parkinggallery, Tehran, Iran, 2008). She recently programmed an evening of films for Dia Art Foundation at The Hispanic Society of America, New York (LESSONS IN THE SKY, 2009); and has inaugurated a new semi-annual screening series, FROM THE MENIL FILM ARCHIVE, with The Menil Collection. In Fall 2009 she curated 29 CHAINS TO THE MOON, an exhibition for Carnegie Mellon University’s Miller Gallery, which continued her research into cooperation and distributed thinking across disciplines. She has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from Syracuse University and was a Core Fellow in residence at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. |
 |
Carlos Lama
Master DJ and Karaoke Spinner
Carlos Lama has been involved in the Houston art scene in one way shape or form since the late '80s. After marrying the Aurora Picture Show at the dawn of the new millenium, he immediately put his technical prowess to good use, and has been on call ever since. After a long week at the CAMH 9-to-5ing it, he likes to relax by spinning vinyl platters from the obscure vaults of classic rawk hell, down at the Montrose lefty radio station. He's also been know to croon a song or two for a willing audience. |
|