Get to know the Founders

Lisa Steed is a Nacogdoches local, but she’s seen the world beyond the county line. Born and raised in East Texas, she was the first tour guide at Millard’s Crossing before she graduated from Nacogdoches High School. She was on a path to a BA in theatre and mathematics at SFA when city life beckoned and Lisa couldn’t resist. She spent the next decades of her life in the biggest cities in America, in a series of demanding positions that have provided her with a broad organizational and creative skill set and a deep cultural literacy.

Lisa first went to work for Harry Brown, special assistant to the Chairman at Pennzoil in their shiny new Philip Johnson-designed building in downtown Houston and was immediately involved in getting the Elissa Tall Ship to Galveston at the Pennzoil dock. She also worked with then-US Ambassador to China George H.R. Bush to host Premier Deng Xiaopeng on an offshore oil rig, which opened up offshore drilling and open trade in China. After her boss retired, Lisa moved to Los Angeles and worked with a “stockbroker to the stars,” hosting Warren Beatty, George Burns and Roy Orbison regularly. At this time, Lisa started working with high-end private art collections.

She returned to Houston, and went to work at the Houston Chronicle in the Promotion/PR/Ad Art Department. Over the next ten years, Lisa moved up quickly from Assistant to the Director of Public Relations to PR Coordinator where she single-handedly created the paper’s Events/Trade Show department, photographing events, writing copy and putting together promotions and events. Her duties also included extensive college and pro sports promotions, including the Houston Astros, U of H Cougar Football, and two NBA Championship titles for the Houston Rockets. It was at the Chronicle that Lisa began working daily with artists for the first time.

Lisa’s next move was to New York City to work in a bigger market. She became the right hand and personal assistant to the CEO of The itsy bitsy Entertainment Company, an emerging force in the industry who had made TV’s Teletubbies an international hit. Lisa was in charge of high-profile events such as Eloise at the Plaza (featuring Joan Rivers), award-winning International Toy Show and Licensing Show displays, while managing her boss’s multi-million dollar art collection and his four homes in three states. After this company suffered a hostile takeover, Lisa worked freelance for many high visibility entertainers and society figures in New York. One such client was a billionaire power couple with ties to finance and television. Lisa managed their entire household, including a townhouse across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an estate in the Hamptons, a staff of 10, and the family’s extensive art and wine collections. Another client was a former guitar player for Tina Turner, and he happened to be an artist as well. Lisa put together many art shows for him in various NYC venues and did it all: choosing which pieces to hang, having them framed, hanging the art itself and promoting the shows.

In 2009 Lisa returned to Nacogdoches to be close to family. She was first Director of the First Street Arts Center in Lufkin where she met many local artists, musicians and promoters. In 2010 Lisa was hired as interim director of Cole Art Center, and concurrently managed the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. After two terms as interim director, she was hired as Event Coordinator there in 2012, where she co-founded the wildly popular Day of the Dead Fiesta and helped bring leaders from the art world to her hometown. Fallout from the pandemic caused the entire Cole Center staff to be laid off in 2020.

In 2021 Lisa opened Falling Star Art Gallery in a 19th-century Victorian home near the Fredonia Hotel. She donated her time and expertise to this venture and hosted exhibitions for 12 wonderful local artists and groups, including students and faculty from SFA and Nacogdoches High School. Lisa is eager to foster more artists and more arts events in Nacogdoches and to continue expanding opportunities for artists through NAC. I have discovered that there are so many artists and performers in our part of East Texas, and many more have recently moved here. But there is no place to show or sell art in Nacogdoches. This absence has put us on a mission to provide a friendly arts space for the growing artistic population and the community who supports them. It's show time!”

CC Conn is an arts professional with a deep background in education, mentoring and theatre technical skills. Since 2005, CC has taught theatre at SFA where she is currently professor of sound and lighting. She holds a BA from Ball State University and an MFA from Indiana University, and her work has been seen and heard in hundreds of plays, musicals and radio plays at SFA and in theaters and entertainment venues across the US. CC’s skills at SFA have been recognized with several teaching and creative awards, including the 2021 Teaching Excellence Award and a 2021 President’s Innovation Grant. In 2022, she was elected to serve as Faculty Senate chair-elect which will make her the 2023-24 Faculty Senate Chair.

Although CC began her artistic career as a union lighting technician, her resume soon expanded to include award-winning lighting designs for productions in Atlanta, GA, such as The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, and several events for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. CC has designed sound and/or lights for Phoenix Theatre Ensemble in NYC, Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, the OutProud Theatre in Atlanta GA, Middle Tennessee State University, the Honeywell Foundation’s Ford Theatre, Indiana Festival Theatre and many others.

In addition to her theatre design work at SFA, CC has conducted extensive research in Mentoring. She created a Peer Mentoring program in the School of Theatre to support incoming students during their first year of college experience. CC’s peer mentoring program led to five years of presentations at the University of New Mexico Mentoring Conference about the program’s development and her subsequent research.

Despite hailing from out-of-state, CC now has deep roots in Nacogdoches. When she was hired by SFA in 2005, CC moved to town with her 8-year-old son. He grew up here, where he attended Raguet Elementary, Mike Moses Middle School and Nacogdoches High School. When he went to college in Colorado in 2016, CC realized that she had fallen in love with East Texas in general and with Nacogdoches in particular. She purchased a home and moved her mother here from Indiana. CC has served on the Friends of Caddo for several years as an officer and is currently the treasurer for that organization. She was with many volunteers and Caddo visitors on the Caddo Mounds Historical Site property when it was hit by a massive tornado in 2019. She is currently active with those volunteers and Caddo in the rebuilding of the grasshouse and other Caddo memorial art pieces on the site.

With so many connections to Nacogdoches, it’s only natural that CC would search for additional ways to connect with the arts community here, and that’s one of the reasons Nacogdoches Arts Collaborative came into being. As founder and Executive Director of Nacogdoches Arts Collaborative (501)(c)(3), CC continues to serve the arts community of Nacogdoches County. Annual community projects now supported through this non-profit include “Junior Jacks,” a children’s theatre summer camp CC created in 2009 and the Lavender Prom, an alternative event for teens established in 2017 with other community leaders. More information can be found on her website at www.stagewavedesign.com.

CC looks forward to continuing to create an abundance of arts opportunities for Nacogdoches County and leading NAC to continue to nurture creative projects for the benefit of all.