<span>Usher is a painter and he shares his art with the narrator. They also read poetry, stories, and share music.</span>
The verb used would be ‘is’ because we’re talking about a group of people in the present tense. I feel we would use ‘are’ only if there were specific things were were talking about, like [we] are, [you] are, [jack and jill] are, etc. Though, this wouldn’t be the case with he and she, because they always need to be in present tense.
Everyone defined "ignore" differiently from past experiences and perspective.
Being ignored, in my opinion, is an action where the individual pretend it's not there.