ART

 

Joseph Dixon was born September 6, 1962 in Houston, Texas and resides in Pearland, Texas. With over twenty five years’ experience, he works to provide art services in the areas of art for education, art for your home art for community outreach. Dixon has conducted over a thousand workshops, residencies and performances in the Houston, Dallas, Beaumont and San Antonio areas through the collaborative partnerships with schools and organizations, such as Young Audiences of Houston, Port Arthur Library, Kujawa Elementary and Avondale House.

Currently Dixon serves as a teaching artist for various non-profit art organizations that include The River Performing and Visual Arts Center, Katy ArtReach, Young Audiences of Houston and Young Audiences of Southeast Texas, along with providing serves as arts instructor for Avondale House, working to implement a fine arts program that provides interventional music activities and visual art projects designed for students with Autism and disabilities that will support the growth of communication and social skills, encourages fine and gross motor development and life skill improvements. Art activities allow kids with autism to exercise creativity and social skills, as well as, improve fine and gross motor development. 

From 2008 -12, He served as Program Manager for Young Audiences of Houston’s Community Services, that provided art programming for three unique populations, which include at risk youth in detention and residential treatment facilities, children with disabilities, such as autism and other related disabilities and youth cancer patients at Texas Children’s Cancer Center. As Program Manager for Young Audiences of Houston’s Community Services, responsibilities focused on implementing customized programs for at risk youth in detention and residential treatment facilities, children with disabilities, such as autism and other related disabilities and youth cancer patients at Texas Children’s Cancer Center.

Working closely with roster artist and music therapist Catherine Taylor, they designed and implemented the customized program Music 4 Everyone, which since its initial start in 2008, was implemented at 6 local schools in Houston and Pasadena, provided over 920 service sessions and worked directly with an estimated 200 students and over 135 teachers, teaching aids, school administrators and parents. He conducted a 6-year artist residency at Gardens Elementary that not only provided music programming and performance opportunities at sites like The House of Blues and Discovery Green, but led to a two-year partnership with Pomeroy Elementary, also located in Pasadena ISD. During the 2012-13 school year YAH collaborated with the Methodist Hospital Center for Performing Arts Medicine and the National Center for Human Performance to complete a six-month evaluation to collect data that can be compared to existing data on other school interventions that have measured increased “Active Engagement” as a measure of the program’s success.

Dixon’s visual art includes a body of work with over 300 originals works created and a series titled “Faces of Autism”, that includes more than 75 works along. The series in pencil and acrylic, features images of students with special needs, individuals involved in innovative research and the arts and portraits of families and friends with a child or children with Autism including his son. This ongoing work in progress is an effort to promote awareness of individuals living with Autism and other related learning and physically developmental challenges.

Dixon’s work also includes countless numbers of workshops, exhibitions, and performances. He has played percussions with groups such as Kuumba House Dance Theater, MEDIA, Second Generation Dance Company, the South African formed group SECHABA that performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and several seasons in the Ensemble Theater’s production of Black Nativity. He has served on the Artist Advisory Board for Diverseworks and grant review committees for the Houston Arts Alliance (formerly the Cultural Arts Council of Houston), United Way and the Texas Commission on the Arts-Arts Respond Grant review committee for since 2010.

 

www.josephdixonart.com

www.facebook.com/DYoungArtistsEnsemble  www.youtube.com/dixonsart.

https://twitter.com/dyoungartists

 

To schedule workshops, performances or residencies please contact Joseph Dixon by email at dyoungartists@yahoo.com  or call  281.896.2914.