About

DisabilityArts/Bay Area is a website that supports and champions all disabled artists and disability arts in the Bay Area. DisArts/BA also recognizes and celebrates the international disability arts community.

Our vision is a future for artists with disabilities that nurtures radical self-expression and inclusion, expands the creative community, and welcomes critical thinking.

We make the distinction between Disability Art, the expression of the disability experience, and the disability arts, the broad scope of artistic expression created by people with disabilities. All who have any claim to the arts and disability are welcome. Whether it is performances of dance or music, or a gallery exhibit DisArts/BA is a home. The fine arts have a place alongside art from recreation programs.

Katie Murphy

Katie Murphy works at San Francisco State University, satisfying her special interest in higher education while fulfilling her lifelong dream of herding cats professionally. In her off time, and to the concern of her parents and physicians, she does more paid and volunteer work as a freelance audio describer and autistic self-advocate. When she’s not scrutinizing grant proposals or creating tailormade audio description, Katie writes critical and transformative works about speculative fiction from a disability studies perspective. As she applies her two gender studies degrees in her characteristically scatterbrained-but-hyperfocused way, Katie remains unsurprised that she hasn’t been invited to serve on any alumni panels.

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Fran Osborne

Fran Osborne grew up in a farming family in the UK and loves to grow things and give away seeds. She also loves connecting people who need to meet each other, and thoroughly enjoys her financially precarious career as an independent consultant for museums and cultural organizations. In 2015 she curated two exhibitions with the local disability community: “DIS/PLAY: a disability take-over” at SOMArts in San Francisco and “Patient No More” with the Longmore Institute on Disability at the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley. She was an Equity Fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and is a board member of Cultural Connections. She has a BA (Hons) in Typography & Graphic Communication from Reading University and worked as a freelance designer and educator in London before moving to California in 2008. She completed her masters in Museum Studies at San Francisco State University in 2011 and is excited to be starting a Social Justice Residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute in Feb/March 2018. You can reach her directly via www.franosborne.com.

Renee Starowicz

Renee Starowicz is a native of Syracuse, New York where her love for morning walks near bodies of water began. She delights in developing multimedia art projects, the effects of bleach on clothes and learning about other folks’ passions. She began studying Critical Disability Studies at Syracuse University and has continued as an educational researcher in the Joint Doctoral Program in Special Education at San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley. Locally, she has worked with the Paul Longmore Institute on Disability for their exhibit “Patient No More.” She enjoys exploring and expressing her experiences of disability, anxiety and PTSD through meditation and creative non-fiction writing.

Anthony Tusler

Since discovering the disability community in 1972, Anthony Tusler explains, and enjoys the world through, and from a disability perspective. In his professional and personal activities his goal is to improve the lives of people with disabilities and encourage disability self-determination and culture. Tusler is a writer, photographer, consultant, trainer, and advocate on disability issues. He was the founding Director of the Disability Resource Center at Sonoma State University for 22 years. He co-curated probably the first fine art show, D&A2, that had disability as its explicit subject matter. He has helped to launch a number of non-profits, including the Institute on Alcohol, Drugs, and Disability, Community Resources for Independence, Disability Associates, and the National Center on Disability and Journalism. His photographs are currently featured at the Ed Roberts Campus, Berkeley, and numerous independent living centers across the United States. His photos have been shown at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta, SomArts, and the de Young Museum, San Francisco.

Juan Cuatlatl

Juan Cuatlatl is an East Bay native who attends California State University, East Bay majoring in Communication with a concentration in Strategic Communication and Marketing. When he is not in the classroom or at the library, he enjoys spending time with his friends, family, and his dog. But what he finds most fascinating about his studies and being surrounded by people close to him. He is willing to learn and get familiar more with his community and understand the good things that make it diverse and unique. With changes going around in the Bay Area, he always looks to work with organizations and programs that give back the people who are suffering from the sudden change. With hopes of completing his studies, he looks to grant opportunities to members of his community who are struggling from financial hardships and provide equal space to others who are discriminated or disapproved based on their gender, nationality, mental or physical disabilities.