G5 Collective is a Houston-based artist collective co-founded in 2020 by University of Houston MFA graduates Liz Gates and Doug Welsh. Created while Gates and Welsh were pursuing their MFAs at UH and named for the new UH graduate art school building and parking garage (G5), the collective emerged out of necessity early in the Covid 19 pandemic, when artist residencies and exhibition opportunities were dwindling or completely unavailable. What began in the spring of 2020 as a grad student, problem-solving initiative has evolved into a cohesive handful of artists dedicated to supporting and promoting each other’s work, to showing their work together as a group and to serving the art community by committing to at least one significant group volunteer project per calendar year.