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.

Marc Brotherton is currently an Artist in Resident at the Atlanta Contemporary. He regularly exhibits his work in solo and group exhibitions at museums, art centers, and art fairs throughout the US. Brotherton has exhibited at White Columns, Causey Contemporary Fine Art, George Billis Gallery, The Brooklyn Arts Council, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Hathaway Gallery, Day & Night Projects, Sandler Hudson Gallery, and Kiang Gallery. Brotherton received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the City University of New York at Brooklyn College in NYC, and his BFA from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Killskreen Painting is best thought about as metaphor. Brotherton plays with images and language that reference the digital screen. He wants to activate the viewer through painting. Some would say that there is a need for Killskreen Painting.

-Killskreen Painting to fight the Machine
-Killskreen Painting for never giving up
-Killskreen Painting to help heal the psyche
-Killskreen Painting to help make you more attractive
-Killskreen Painting for going beyond.

MaDora Frey’s sculptural paintings and outdoor installations describe an internal geography, one influenced by the both the rural, rugged terrain of her youth and the cities she has lived in. Frey is a cross-disciplinary artist, originally from Georgia. She has exhibited domestically with solo shows in Seattle, WA, and New York City, NY and internationally with exhibitions 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 and has a new public art project slated to open in Atlanta this Summer. Accolades include the Prince of Wales Fellowship in Normandy, FR, and publication in New American Paintings. Residency grants include Jentel, Vermont Studio Center, and Marble House Project, where she subsequently serves as an advisory board member and juror. 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.

Myra Greene uses a diverse photographic practice and fabric manipulations to explore representations of race. Greene is currently working on a new body of work that uses African textiles as a material and pattern as well as color as medium to explore her own relationship to culture. 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, the Princeton University Art Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem. 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, 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. Myra is a Professor of Photography, and the Chair of the Department of Art & Visual Culture at Spelman College. She is represented by Patron Gallery in Chicago, and Corvi-Mora in London.

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 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 Arts 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 Burch eld Penney Art Center in Buff alo, NY and her video work is being archived at the Rose Goldsen Archive at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. In 2020, she received a $5000 “Artist’s Relief” Grant.
Hornbacher’s work, “Precession of the Simulacra” a five-monitor installation was shown at MOMA/PS! In J in a year-long exhibition, January 2018. In March 2019, she represented Atlanta with a projection of Numerical Studies III at the Everson Museum’s year-long exhibition, “Video in America”. In 2020, her work, “Precession of the Simulacra” was selected by curator, Laura McGough for Hallwall’s “Signal, Skin, Pixel, Camera”, an online series which ended on July 31 Her installation “Precession: Flag Finale” is currently on exhibit.at OCA’s t Gallery 72, through the Inauguration on January 20, 2021.

Jaime Keiter is an artist working primarily in the medium of ceramics. She graduated with an art degree from the University of Georgia in 2001 and worked as a photo editor at various fashion and design magazines in New York City for 15 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 and Poem88 in Atlanta. Her art has been featured in various publications including Sight Unseen, Design Milk, Architectural Digest and Vogue.

Julia Kouneski investigates notions of empathy, embodiment, and the fluidity of the self through performance, video/film, and installation. She received her BFA from the University of Minnesota and her MFA from the University of Southern California Roski School of Art and Design, and has independently studied multiple movement and Somatic modalities. Her work has been exhibited 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. She has been supported by the Jerome Foundation and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and has guest taught and lectured at Otis College of Art and Design (Los Angeles), Goldsmiths University (London), Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MN), Macalester College (St Paul, MN), and Emory University (Atlanta, GA).

Kelly Taylor Mitchell (b. 1994, USA) is an artist and educator who lives and works in Atlanta, GA where she is currently an Artist-in-Residence with the Studio Artist Program at The Atlanta Contemporary and a Working Artist Project Fellow at MOCA GA. Kelly is an Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture and the Art Program Director at Spelman College. Kelly’s multidisciplinary practice centers oral history and ancestral memory woven into the fabric of the Africana Diaspora, in order to present speculative futures, specifically related to concepts of community autonomy, swamp marronage, and inherited/constructed identity. Utilizing printmaking, papermaking, sculpture, and textiles her work manifests as immersive installations, performative objects, 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.

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.

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.