St. Mark's Hosts ISAS Fine Arts Festival

Click here to see photos and video recordings from the Festival. 

This spring, St. Mark’s School of Texas was honored to serve as host of the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest (ISAS) Fine Arts Festival, the nation's premier annual regional arts festival for independent schools. With 39 participating schools, over 3,000 students, and 487 hours of programming across three days converging at 10600 Preston Road, the event marked the first time St. Mark’s had hosted the Festival since 2010.

Founded in 1967, the ISAS Arts Festival has grown from a modest choral invitation among three schools into a celebrated gathering that spans the performing and visual arts. Unlike traditional competitions, the Festival centers on sharing and growth, offering student artists the opportunity to receive critiques from professional artists and performers, collaborate across school lines, and push the boundaries of their own creative work. The result is an environment where artistry thrives not through rivalry, but through mutual inspiration.

St. Mark’s has long been committed to the arts as an essential dimension of a boy’s education: cocurricular activities where young men develop discipline, voice, and the confidence to take creative risks. The ISAS Festival embodies those same values on a regional scale.

“There is something remarkable about what happens when thousands of young artists occupy the same space,” said Scott Hunt, Festival Co-Chair, Tony Vintcent Fine Arts Department Chair and photography instructor at St. Mark’s. “You see students studying each other’s work with the same careful attention they bring to their own — noticing composition, asking questions, taking notes. That kind of exchange is irreplaceable, and it's exactly what this festival is designed to create. I am deeply grateful to our extraordinary Fine Arts faculty and to every faculty and staff member and parent volunteer across the School who gave so much of themselves to make this weekend possible.”

“The ISAS Festival has always held a special place in my heart,” said Marion Glorioso, Festival Co-Chair and Head of Lower School, who previously served as St. Mark’s drama teacher and Fine Arts Department Chair. “Whether on a stage or in a gallery, young artists grow in ways that are difficult to put into words when they are seen, heard, and genuinely celebrated. Bringing the Festival back to St. Mark’s after 16 years felt meaningful, not just for our students, but for every school that joined us this weekend. This is the arts community at its best.”

St. Mark’s campus came alive across the weekend with performances, exhibitions, and the particular energy that comes from thousands of student artists gathering in one place — each one representing the artistic identity of his or her school, and each one finding common ground with peers they may never have otherwise met.

For St. Mark’s students involved in the Festival, the experience offered a rare opportunity to see their own creative work reflected against a broader community of young artists, and to be reminded that the pursuit of excellence in the arts is far from a solitary endeavor.

“Watching the 17 months of hard work, planning, and dedication unfold over a period of three days was surreal,” said Fine Arts Board co-chair Michael Finn McKool ’26. “Performances like St. Mark’s rock band concert, a huge hit the first night, and our exceptional one-act play, showcased the hard work by our student body in the preceding months.”