Offering Veterans opportunities for healing, wellness and community through engagement in the arts.

Every Veteran has the opportunity to experience the healing power of the arts.

Bihl Haus Arts (BHA), collaborating with Vet TRIIP, both located in San Antonio, Texas, has launched an innovative program offering professionally taught drawing and painting classes to veterans who are experiencing depression or are clinically or self-diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The mission of Forward, Arts! is to offer veterans opportunities for healing, wellness and community through engagement in the arts. 

The potential for healing that comes through hands-on, creative engagement with art-in this case, painting and drawing-is proven. While BHA’s pilot class is a pioneering endeavor in San Antonio, it emerged from national military initiatives in the arts and BHA’s nationally recognized arts program.

Developed in 2007, the Go! Arts program offers painting, drawing, craft, creative writing and yoga classes-along with special art and literary workshops and regular gallery exhibits and events-at Bihl Haus Arts and other locations in San Antonio. The aim of the program is to empower and inspire our "Goldens."

Must reside in either the Primrose at Monticello Park Senior Apartments or one of the locations below.

Click here to see the current class schedules at

• Bihl Haus;
• The Alicia Trevino Lopez and Doris Griffin Senior One-Stop Centers (co-operated by the Wellmed Charitable Foundation and the City of San Antonio Department of Human Services);
• the Elvira Cisneros Center by Wellmed;
• Merced Housing’s Casitas de Villa Corona and Casitas de Somerset;
• and these City-operated Senior Centers: West End, Kenwood, District 2, District 3 (NEW), Cortez, Distict 5, Normoyle, Bob Ross and District 10. 

Please call individual  sites for membership and age requirements. Access the interactive map here.

Please refer to the calendar for location-specific times and contact information.

Classes include art supplies provided FREE to qualified senior participants.

Your support helps Bihl Haus Arts Create Community through the Arts with these programs:

• GO! Arts offers free art and writing classes plus all supplies for under-served older adults, unleashing creativity and building individual contentment and wellness.
• Forward, Arts! offers veterans opportunities for healing, wellness and community through engagement in the arts.
• Contemporary Art: Exhibitions and related events at the Bihl Haus Gallery nurture and promote the work of diverse visual and cultural artists and provide a forum to consider issues of broad social and environmental interest and concern. Check out our new Virtual 3-D Exhibition, Love and Death in Times of Pandemic by David Zamora Casas here. Watch the related gallery talk by David Zamora Casas with a reading by Marisol Cortez here.
• The annual On & Off Fredericksburg Road Studio Tour promotes the work of artists in surrounding neighborhoods and enables tour-takers to meet face-to-face with artists and see them making art in their work spaces. Depending upon the situation, On & Off Fred may be virtual this year, but it will still take place and guests will have opportunities to purchase artworks online directly from the artists.

Click here to make a donation.