ON VIEW

Altar of Care is a gathering place. A thank you, a living archive of how we care for each other.
Here, the altar is both form and framework—bringing together Lualo’s communal artistic and cultural movement-based work through archival materials, installation pieces, collective memory, art-making workshops, collaborations and story circles.
Rooted in Houston, Texas - this exhibition emerges within overlapping conditions - migration, environmental crises, attacks on trans youth, and ongoing educational erasure. Amid these pressures, practices of care continue to persist and evolve. Altar of Care asks: How do communities resist isolation and disposability to build networks of care and joy? What does care look like in our daily survival and organizing?

Guided by their pillars of culture, healing, embodiment, storytelling, and collaboration, Lualo Studio approaches art as a relational practice—one that understands culture as shaping how we see and move through the world, healing as collective, the body as a site of knowledge, storytelling as a tool for narrative shift, and collaboration as essential to building more just and connected futures.

This altar is a ritual: a practice where memory, labor, grief, and love are held together. Here, care is not abstract - it is everyday acts, it is mutual aid, the quiet labor of tending to one another, and showing up when systems do not.

Visitors are invited to engage as both witness and participant—to reflect on the networks of care that have held them, honor unseen labor, contribute their own stories, and imagine futures rooted in collective care.

Altar of Care is a continuation—
a reminder that the future we are building is shaped by how we care for one another now.

This exhibition is dedicated to our friend Rachel Jackson (1987 - 2025).

ABOUT LUALO STUDIO
Lualo Studio, lualo (loo•wall•oh) meaning prayer or offering in Ilocano, is a Houston-based cause-driven creative studio, formed to support community-centric work. Through storytelling, movement-building, and creative gatherings, the studio asks collaborators: How can our work or our lives be a moving prayer? How can we make space to create spaces of deep connection through the gifts we each have?

Their work is guided by four pillars: Culture and community-informed approaches, Healing through collective action, Embodiment of rights and freedom, Storytelling as a means of advocacy, and Collaboration for inclusivity. Lualo Studio consists of four artists (Jenah Maravilla, Trisha Morales, Rea Sampilo, and Christian Toledo), with roots as founding team members of Pilipino American Unity for Progress, Inc Texas Chapter (2016-2020).

Altar of Care is a living testament to the collaborative nature of the studio; highlighting the interconnected struggles and triumphs of the Houston community in the current political climate. Highly interactive programming activations will touch on themes of identity, land, migration and belonging, knowledge sharing, and communal art, in the hopes of story sharing, deep listening, and imagining a kinder, more caring future.

PAST EXHIBITONS 2026


April 25 - May 23

OPENING RECEPTION
April 25 | 6 - 8 PM
CEREMONIAL CLOSING
MAY 23 | 11 - 1 PM

An exhibition by Lualo Studio ~
Jenah Maravilla, Trisha Morales, Rea Sampilo & Christian Toledo

An artistic extension of Nurturing The Feminine, a ceremonial practice created by sisters Brittany and Devan Mayfield.

Nurturing The Feminine: Veils is an artistic extension of Nurturing The Feminine, a ceremonial practice created by sisters Brittany and Devan Mayfield. Inspired by lived experience, ancestral remembrance, and embodied healing, this exhibition brings ritual into the gallery space—positioning our art as a site of nourishment, devotion, and reflection.

Drawing from our backgrounds in somatic healing, esoteric arts, floral design and holistic health, we create an immersive environment that reflects the natural magic of earth and the self. Veils unfolds as an exploration of the Divine Feminine through ritual, imagery, and installation. This work honors the feminine as layered, cyclical, and sovereign.

The exhibition functions as a nurturing offering and a space of reverence. It is an invitation to witness and contemplate the Divine Feminine as it exists within the body, earth, and the unseen.

Veils holds space for quiet observation, inviting reflection on the thresholds between visibility and mystery, form and spirit. Through this unfolding, the work affirms the feminine as a sacred presence—ever-changing, eternal, and whole.

ARCHIVING MEMORY

Featuring original work by Texas Southern University art students & Professors Crystal Coulter and Mark Francis.

APRIL 13 - 19, 2026

12PM - 5PM OR BY APPOINTMENT

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC


Exhibitions

The Collective’s exhibition program helps prepare emerging artists for a professional career and also serves to increase interest in artistic work and creativity.

Mid-career and more experienced local and international artists often participate in the exhibitions to encourage/be accessible to the emerging artists and expand their markets.

Artists are also introduced to other adjunct aspects of the arts universe beyond production of their work, which broaden their understanding of the interdependence of the industry. We also plan exhibitions in collaboration with other entities at other venues.

Exhibitions are instructive to the viewers in that they have the opportunity to glimpse the variety of talent, especially in the local arts community, and appreciate/recognize the many forms in which the talents are manifested. We are open to working with other entities to increase the development of venues to support the public display of work (especially) by African American artists.



Exhibitions Archive

ARTrepreneurship Workshop Series 

ARTrepreneurship Workshop Series is a program within the Community Artists' Collective Entrepreneurship Pillar and is designed to spotlight professional artists who share their artistic journey and career path in conversation with CAC Leadership. The overall goal is to provide insight into what it takes to achieve the level of a professional artist and how to prepare for the journey. Support for the workshop series was supported by H-E-B.

View Workshop Video Archive