Legacy in Focus: Exploring the Impact of Donald Locke

Masud Olufani is an Atlanta based multidisciplinary artist born in Los Angeles, California and raised in multiple cities including New York, Miami, New Orleans, Dallas, and Atlanta. He is an assistant professor of art and visiting arts fellow at Morehouse College and he also teaches at the United States Federal Prison in Atlanta, Georgia. The artist has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. He is a featured artist in the 2024 Dakar Biennale in Senegal. The artist has completed residencies at The Vermont Studio Center; The Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences; and Tallier Portobello Norte in Panama. He is a 2018 Southern Arts Prize State Fellow; and a recipient of a 2015-16’ MOCA GA Working Artist Project Grant. The artist enjoys traveling, exercise, reading and long meandering conversations.

As an actor, he had a recurring role on the BET series The Quad, and has appeared in numerous television shows including Greenleaf; Being Mary Jane, Devious Maids, Satisfaction, and Nashville. He is a featured actor in the film biopic All Eyez on Me. He was the co-host of the PBS news based investigative journalism show Retroreport, which premiered nationally in the fall of 2019. He is the co-host of the podcast series Undaunted, which centers the work of social justice changemakers. He is the lead actor in No Cowards in Our Band about the life of Frederick Douglass, set to premiere at Hudson Valley Opera in Hudson Valley, New York in the fall of 2024.

As a writer, Masud has published articles for Burnaway; Baha’i Teachings; and is a featured contributor for the Jacob Lawrence Struggle Series catalog, produced to coincide with a major exhibition of the Struggle Series paintings. His forthcoming memoir is presently in production.

Paul Stephen Benjamin received his BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his MFA from Georgia State University. In 2019, he exhibited Pure, Very, New at Marianne Boesky Gallery, NY and participated in the Havana Biennial in Matanzas, Cuba. He’s been included in solo and group exhibitions at a variety of institutions and art spaces, including Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA (2018), Telfair Museum Jepson Center, Savannah, GA (2018), The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY (2017), Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, GA (2017), High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (2016), among others. He has received a range of awards and fellowships, including The Southern Art Prize (2018), The State Fellow of Georgia (2018), Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia Fellow (2017), Artadia Award (2014), Winnie B. Chandler Fellowship, Hambidge Distinguished Fellowship, and the Forward Arts Emerging Artists Award. Benjamin is a finalist for the distinguished Hudgens Prize in Georgia (2019). He was born in Chicago and lives and works in Atlanta.

Kevin Cole received his B.S. from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, an M.A. in art education from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and an M.F.A. from Northern Illinois University. Within the last 32 years, he has received 27 grants and fellowships, 65 awards in art, 51 teaching awards. and over 35 public art commissions. His artwork has been featured in more than 470 exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. Cole’s artwork is included in more than 3500 public, private and corporate collections throughout the United States. Public collections include the new National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, The Georgia Museum, Athens, GA, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.; William Jefferson Clinton Library, Little Rock, Ark.; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Ark.; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.; The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, La.; The David C Driskell Center University of Maryland at College Park; Dayton Institute of Art, Dayton, Ohio; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, Pa.; The Georgia Museum of Contemporary Art, Atlanta, Ga.; Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Tampa Museum in Tampa, Fla. Corporate collections include Bank of America, Charlotte, N.C.; IBM, N.Y. and King and Spaulding Law Firm, Atlanta, Ga. Cole has also created more than 45 public art works, including the Coca-Cola Centennial Olympic Mural for the 1996 Olympic Games.

Atlanta-born Shanequa Gay (b. 1977) holds an MFA from Georgia State University and BA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Gay’s accomplishments include selection for Off the Wall, a city-wide Civil Rights and Social Justice Mural initiative led by the Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee (2019). Her recent exhibitions include Atlanta Biennial, Atlanta Contemporary (2021); Le Monde Bossale, Montreal, Canada, in (2021); Adorned, McColl Center for Arts and Innovation, Charlotte (2020); Holding Space for Nobility: A Memorial for Breonna Taylor, Ackland Museum, Chapel Hill North Carolina (2020); and Lit Without Sherman, Hammonds House Museum, Atlanta (2019). Gay has exhibited her work in the United States, Japan, and South Africa and will participate in the European Cultural Centre’s exhibition within the context of the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, Gay is a visiting Professor at Atlanta’s Spelman College.

Ato Ribeiro (b. 1989) is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of media including sculptural installation, drawing and printmaking. He was born in Philadelphia, PA and spent his formative years in Accra, Ghana. He is currently serving as a 2022/2023 MOCA GA WAP Fellow, and was recently a 2022 Atlanta Artadia Awardee and a MINT 2021 Leap Year Artist. Ribeiro was the 2017 Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Emerging Artist Award recipient, Artist in Resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany, and received Fellowships at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, The Studios at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Madison, ME among others. He earned his B.A. from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and his M.F.A. in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Kevin Sipp is a fine artist, independent scholar, and curator with expertise in printmaking, painting, sculpture and multi-media installation. A Florida native, he has lived and worked in Atlanta, Georgia since the early 90’s where he received a BA in Printmaking from the Atlanta College of Art.

Sipp’s fine art works have appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout the country and internationally. His fine art prints have been featured in exhibitions by noted curators such as renowned South African Master Printmaker Malcolm Christian, Founder of Caversham Press in Balgowan, South Africa. His foundational aesthetic focus examines the spiritual, political, social, and historical influence of African derived culture in the world often making references to African Myth, Afro-Futurism, Cultural Identity, Colonial History, past and contemporary music, politics and comics.

An accomplished writer and poet, his writings have appeared in art and literary publications such as Art Papers magazine, International Review of African American Art, ISLAS magazine,and the poetry anthology Sons of Lovers. He has also been a featured poet during the National Black Arts Festival, sharing the stage with luminaries such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and the poets of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

Sipp has been a Visiting Scholar at a host of art and educational institutions, including Brandeis University’s International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, Babson College, and most recently, Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum.

Sipp is Director of Visual Production at Sipp Creative, a fine art consulting, design and production studio whose current project is a Graphic Novel “The Amazing Adventures of David Walker Blackstone”. Set in the Victorian age, the graphic novel introduces the world to a heroic narrative of high adventure inspired by classic pulp fiction of the past.