Led by Educators, Writers, and Mentors
Our staff has a strong commitment to enriching the lives of our community’s residents through artistic expression. They are experts in arts management and use their creative energy to bring the arts alive for you.
The Iconoclast Artists team brings together experienced educators, writers, poets, and mentors who believe in the power of young people’s stories.
In classrooms and communities across Houston and Galveston, they build the steady, trusting relationships that keep students writing, sharing, and growing.
Matthew Russel
Matt is an academic, activist, pastor, professor and teacher. He is on staff at Chapelwood United Methodist Church in Houston and is the Executive Director of Iconoclast Artists and projectCURATE (a non-profit educational and social enterprise incubator that seeks to build bridges across cultural, economic, religious and racial divides in Houston). He has taught at Duke Divinity, Fuller Seminary and completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge in Psychology and Religion. In 2010, he completed his Ph.D. at Texas Tech University in Human Development where he explored how women construct alternative narratives of redemption from years of sustained trauma and abuse. Prior to this he planted and pastored a church called Mercy Street, a “church for people that hated church”. Matt has worked extensively with ex-offenders and recovering addicts. In collaboration with other Houston educators he is developing an innovative curriculum for public schools that seeks to provide pathways of learning and economic opportunity for kids in the inner city. Matt is married to Michele and they have three wonderful boys: Miguel, Lucas, and Gabriel.
