Open Studios

Known for incorporating the “glitch” aesthetic into the ceramic vernacular, A-Johnson’s work addresses thoughts of memory, technological integration, mark making, and perceptual consciousness. While his original draw to the ceramic medium was the physical nature in which it is manipulated, during Graduate school at Arizona State University, He found clay to be a relevant medium to explore the relationship of illusion and form, thought and physicality. A-Johnson has continued the exploration of these ideas and processes through multiple relocations, including time spent as a visiting artist at the College of Creative Studies in Detroit, and an Assistant Professor at Buffalo State College. He most recently transitioned from being a full time studio artist in Copenhagen, Denmark to join Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA as an Assistant Professor. A-Johnson’s work has been recognized nationally and internationally through awarded grants, exhibitions, and residencies. In 2012 he was awarded the Emerging Artist Award through NCECA, and most recently received an exhibition grant from the Danish Cultural Ministry to complete a residency and exhibition opportunity through C.R.E.T.A. Rome. For this opportunity he continued to integrate digital processes with traditional forming and surface treatments. This act reflects the current state of human experience, as we navigate between actuality and the illusions presented by our screens.

Brotherton’s Killskreen paintings use the cast-off shapes and spaces from `80s video games as points of depar- ture into abstraction. 8-bit players who were good could blast though enough levels to exceed the arcade game’s memory, resulting in a frozen, glitched “kill screen.” This tableau, so charged, becomes the zone for Brotherton to push the limits of oil and acrylic paint, glitter and terrycloth.

These paintings present viewers with images as bright and playful as video games. But the contrasting geometries and varying textures, the hybrid of analog and digital gestures, and the remixed artifacts of a virtual past allow us to pause our game and take a look around.

Brotherton regularly exhibits his work in solo and group exhibitions, museums, art centers, and art fairs, nationally and locally. He has been reviewed in many newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, Creative Loafing, The Albuquerque Journal, Burnaway, ArtsAtl, dArt International Magazine, NY Arts Magazine, and Flash Art Magazine. Brotherton received his MFA in painting and drawing from the City University of New York at Brooklyn College, and his BFA from the University of New Mexico. He currently lives and works in Atlanta, GA., and is represented by Causey Contemporary Fine Art in New York City.

MaDora Frey’s sculptural paintings describe an internal geography, one influenced by the both the rural, rugged terrain of her youth and the cities she has lived in. Materials with a strong physical presence, such as wood and paint, are paired with those that possess spiritual or even mystical associations, such as mirrors and light. Whether one interprets the work as object, portal, painting, or perhaps “artifact” from the future, the effect is one of visual complexity and wonderment. In coupling real with illusory space, the work evokes the uncanny sense of inhabiting two places at once, without being fully present in either.

Frey is a cross-disciplinary artist, originally from Georgia. Frey has exhibited domestically with solo shows in Seattle, Washington, and New York City and group shows in Austria and Spain. She was recently commissioned by the Katonah Museum of Art to create a large-scale outdoor public work on the museum campus. Accolades include the Prince of Wales Fellowship in Normandy, France, publication in New American Paintings, and residency grants from Jentel Residency, Vermont Studio Center, and Marble House Project. She subsequently serves as an advisory board member and juror. Her past memberships include NYC art collective, tART, and currently, Future Present Creative Assembly. Frey has instructed and lectured at Hunter College, Rutgers University, New York Academy of Art, Auburn University, LIM College, Abbey Road International Program, and Georgia State University. She received her MFA in painting, magna cum laude, from the New York Academy of Art and her BFA, with a concentration in drawing and printmaking, from Auburn University. Additionally, Frey studied at the Florence Academy, Florence, Italy. Her work is held in numerous private collections. She is represented by Massey Klein Gallery in New York City.

Greene uses a diverse photographic practice to explore representations of race. Greene is currently working on a new body of work that uses African textiles as a material and pattern to explore her own relationship to culture. She received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Photography and has completed residencies at Light Work in Syracuse New York and the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Her work is in the permanent collection of Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, and the Princeton University Art Museum. Myra Greene’s work has been featured in nationally exhibitions in galleries and museums including The New York Public Library, Duke Center for Documentary Studies, Williams College Museum of Art, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta, Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and Sculpture Center in New York City. Myra Greene was born in New York City and received her B.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and her M.F.A. in photography from the University of New Mexico. She currently resides in Atlanta Georgia, where she is an Associate Professor of Photography at Spelman College.

Sara Hornbacher is a pioneer of video art and digital imaging. After receiving an undergraduate degree in Fine Art, she completed at Masters Degree at SUNY Buffalo where she studied video with the Vasulkas at the Center for Media Study. Hornbacher was Guest editor of the first CAA ART JOURNAL issue on Video in 1985. She completed her first residency at the Experimental TV Center in 1976 and her annual residencies at ETC continued through 2011. Her annual Signal Culture residencies began in 2014 and continue in 2018 The artist’s single-channel video works and multi-media installations have been exhibited throughout the USA, Europe, Australia, and Japan, including MOMA, PS1,The Whitney Museum Art, The Kitchen, Postmasters and New Math Gallery, The Bronx Museum for the Arts in NY, MOCA/GA , the Fay Gold Gallery, and The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center where she mounted a large-scale interactive installation environment, “A Thousand Plateaus” in 2001. She  is currently a Studio Artist at The Contemporary. Hornbacher has received numerous grants and awards including a 1985 Media Production grant from NYSCA and The Mayor’s Fellowship in the Arts from the Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs in 2000. ”Transfigured Time”, a 40’ photomural composed of 128 portraits of Atlantans was commissioned for Course E at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. In 2012, she became a Legacy Artist at The Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY and her video work is being archived at the Rose Goldsen Archive at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

Jaime Keiter is an artist working primarily in the medium of ceramics. She graduated with a BFA from the University of Georgia in 2001 and worked as a photo art director at various fashion and design magazines in New York City for 14 years before returning to Atlanta in 2016. Her ceramic sculptures are collaged from individually handcrafted and glazed porcelain tiles. Her process begins with cutting geometric and organic shapes from porcelain slabs, underglazing patterns and textures, and then finishing each tile with a variety of different mid-fire glazes including copper washes, turquoise, creamy pastels, and bold primaries. These elements are then collaged together to create the sculptures. The works are inspired by the Bauhaus art of 1920’s Pre-War Germany and the Postmodern Memphis design movement of the 1980’s. She is interested in the intersection both of these movements have between fine art and craft that combine to make functional and non-functional design objects. She has exhibited with Daily Operation in Brooklyn, New York as well as Swan Coach House in Atlanta. Her art has been featured in various publications including Sight Unseen, Design Milk, and Architectural Digest.

Julia Kouneski (b. Long Beach, CA, 1985) works with the sensing body and investigates notions of empathy, embodiment, and the fluid self through performance, installation, and video. She received her BFA from the University of Minnesota and her MFA in 2014 from the University of Southern California. Her work has been shown in the US and in Europe, including Night Gallery in Los Angeles, Annka Kultys Gallery in London, and De Hallen Haarlem Museum in the Netherlands.

Kelly Taylor Mitchell centers oral histories woven into the fabric of the Africana Diaspora, specifically related to concepts of land tenure, territorial claims, community autonomy, swamp marronage, and inherited identity. Her work manifests as immersive installations and partnered artists books offering a venue for the sensorial –specifically smell- to connect to, convey, and reimagine rituals and rites of autonomous kin, collectives, and individuals of the Africana Diaspora. Kelly and her practice are deeply tied to familial roots in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Pennsylvania. Her interdisciplinary practice spans printmaking, papermaking, installation, book arts and sculpture. She has completed residencies at The Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Anderson Ranch Arts Center. She is an upcoming artist-in-residence at The Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. Her work is in the collections of The RISD Museum, Providence Public Library, Fleet Library Special Collections, Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. A selection of her gallery and museum shows include: Not Gallery, Austin Texas; Anderson Brickler Gallery, Tallahassee, Florida, Second State Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Meek Eaton Black Archives and Museum, Tallahassee, Florida, Project Row House, Houston, Texas, and RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island. Kelly has taught and mentored in community and academic contexts including: The Rhode Island School of Design, Virginia Commonwealth University, New Urban Arts (Providence), and The Visual Arts Center of Richmond. She received her BFA in Printmaking from Tufts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts; and her MFA in Printmaking from The Rhode Island School of Design with a certificate in Collegiate Teaching. Kelly is currently lives and works in Atlanta, GA where she is an Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture and The Art Program Director at Spelman College.

Kirstin Mitchell is a multi-media artist living in Atlanta, Georgia. Mitchell creates experiential environments in various mediums including, painting, installation and performance. Her work has been shown throughout the East Coast and Internationally, in Austria and Italy. Mitchell is a recent MOCA GA Working Artist Project Fellow. She has performed with the support of the Franklin Furnace Fund in Manhattan, New York. Mitchell’s work has been featured in publications including Art in America, Art Papers and Flash Art magazines.

Erin Jane Nelson (b. 1989, Neenah, WI; lives in Atlanta, GA) received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in 2011. Her work has recently been exhibited in “Between the Waters” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and “Photography Today: Public Private Relations” at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. She has had solo shows at Document Gallery, Chicago (2015, 2017) and Hester, New York (2015) and was included in ATLBNL: The Atlanta Biennial at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (2016) among numerous group exhibitions at Downs & Ross, New York (2017), Honor Fraser, Los Angeles (2016), Galerie Division, Montreal (2016), and Ellis King, Dublin (2015). She has contributed to publications including BURNAWAY, The Creative Independent, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Art Papers, and has curated exhibitions at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta Contemporary, and elsewhere. In 2016-17, while she and her husband, artist Jason Benson, were studio residents at Atlanta Contemporary, they operated the artist-run space Species out of their shared studio. Species continues to occasionally produce exhibitions itinerantly, most recently presenting the work of Rhode Island-based artist Harry Gould Harvey IV at Atlanta Contemporary earlier this year.

Masud Ashley Olufani (MAO) is an Atlanta based actor and mixed media artist whose studio practice is rooted in the discipline of sculpture. He is a graduate of Arts High School in Newark, N.J., Morehouse College and The Savannah College of Art and Design where he earned an M.F.A. in sculpture in 2012. Masud has exhibited his work in group and solo shows in Atlanta, Georgia; New Orleans; Louisiana; Chicago, Illinois; Richmond, Virginia; Lacoste, France; and Hong Kong, China. The artist has completed residencies at The Vermont Studio Center; SCAD Alumni Artist in Residence in Savannah; The Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences in Rabun, GA.; and Creative Currents in Portobello, Panama. He is a recipient of a 2015 Idea Capital Grant; a Southwest Airlines Art and Social Engagement grant; a recipient of 2015-16’ MOCA GA Working Artist Project Grant, and is a member of the 2014-15’ class of the Walthall Fellows. He has appeared in numerous television shows including Being Mary Jane, Devious Maids, Satisfaction, and, Nashville, and will be a featured actor in the feature film All Eyez on Me: The Tupac Shakur Story.

Maryam Palizgir is an interdisciplinary artist and educator who was born and raised in Iran. She received her MFA from Georgia State University in 2018. She has presented her work in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, UK, France, Russia, Germany, and Iran. Palizgir’s work has been featured in many major publications. She won the first prize for conceptual arts in the 6^th Iran International Green Film and Visual art Festival (IIGFF6). She was an artist in residence at the Cornelius Art Foundation in Lagamas, France in 2014, and received a grant from Triangle Network in London.

Maryam Palizgir practice is an amalgam of subject matter process study and material- manipulation of forms in space. She seeks to capture the tensions existing between traditions and contemporaneity, reality and aspirations, individuality and community, localism and universality, authority and freedom, conformism and self-expression. She is preoccupied with finding new ways of seeing through the experimental cross-fertilization of drawing, printmaking, sculpture, painting, and photography which stimulated a philosophically oriented questioning of vision and perception. Exploring the ways we exchange knowledge, and how perception widens our perspective, and how observation deepens our understanding of the reality in which we live. She challenges viewers’ perception and seeks works of art that activate once the viewer is involved.

The material study steers her to think about the flexibility of materials. Palizgir has been working with multi-layered industrial materials like fiberglass screen mesh, reflective sheets, natural and artificial light, and acrylic paint. The net visual embodiment of her installation creates a transition of dimensionality, depicting the state of ephemerality and constant change, combined with the possibility of the viewers’ displacement.

JD Walsh is a multimedia artist. He has exhibited at galleries internationally including Halsey McKay, Cleopatra’s, 106 Green, Brennan & Griffin, and Nicole Klagsbrun in New York, Galerie Steinek in Vienna, and Cooper Cole in Toronto. In 2012 his public art installation “Ensemble for Mixed Use” was commissioned by the City of Toronto for the 2012 Nuit Blanche festival. His work has been written about in Artforum, Flash Art, and Sculpture Magazine, among others. His ongoing music project Shy Layers has garnered critical acclaim and was listed as one of the top 20 electronic albums of 2016 by Pitchfork. Walsh is interested in tuning, perception, framing devices, context, serialism, thought-mirrors, rhythm, time signatures, appropriation, shapeshifters, random number generators, echoes, hallucinations, compresssion, phases, castoffs, generative art, John Cage, texture, thresholds, and visual crossfades.

Once upon a time in Bavaria, the German landscape was covered in snow and fog. As mist loomed through the air, a gentleman was in the town square and set up with a cart selling tasty sausages on crusty bread with mustard, a simple edible handwarmer. From there, the inspiration was born.

We made our name early on at a small table stand in 2011 and moved to a take away shop in downtown Decatur in the spring of 2015. We kept evolving and growing all the while staying true with the philosophy of using the best ingredients we can get our hands with a locally made influence and turn those into classics born out of traditional and adventurous combinations.

Tales of the Cocktail Foundation profiled five black female bartenders influencing the Americas drink scene and Louisiana/Texas native, Tiffanie Barriere, was one of the chosen mixologists. Barriere spent seven years as the beverage director at One Flew South receiving ‘Best Airport Bar in the world to travel in by Forbes Magazine, NY Times, and USA Today. Known around circles as “The Drinking Coach,” Barriere now calls herself an independent bartender, opting to create cocktail menus for pop-up dinners, host mixology lessons all around the nation, and connect the culinary and farm culture with liquid creativity. Tiffanie is a James Beard 3-time attendant, Bar Smart graduate, Top 50 Tastemakers of the South and sits on the Tales of The Cocktail Grants Committee and James Beard Beverage Advisory Board. Currently the Brand Ambassador for Perfect Puree and Real Brands, Barriere has a main goal, and that is education, service, culture and fun come with every pour.