Open Studios

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.

Jaime Bull builds a cast of sparkly clad forms that embody a strong, sexy, dangerous female presence. She is a collector and uses found, repurposed materials in her work to reference the body with a feminist perspective. Spending her time dumpster diving at the recycling center or scouring Goodwill to amass second-hand tube tops and sequined prom dresses, Bull’s sculptures have the rhinestone aesthetic of a bedazzled jean jacket or a Mardi Gras float. She examines and questions our relationship with the environment by highlighting a preoccupation with hoarding mass quantities of “stuff.”
Bull received her MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Georgia, Athens in 2013. She is a recipient of the Willson Center for the Arts research grant for her thesis work Lady Beasts: An Investigation of Womanliness. She has exhibited in Atlanta with Whitespace, Camayuhs, Hathaway Gallery and at the Airport in Terminal E. Regionally, she has shown work at the Zuckerman Museum of Art, University of North Georgia, Auburn University, Albany Museum and the COOP Gallery in Nashville. Most recently, her sculptures were featured in a two woman show with artist Melissa Brown (Brooklyn, NY), entitled Fountain, at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. She is a Vermont Studio School Fellow, attended a two-month residency at the Bernheim Arboretum in Louisville, KY and was an Atlanta Contemporary Art Center Studio Artist in Residence from 2016-2019. She was featured in and on the cover of the 219th edition of Ambit Magazine, London.

Sonya Yong James (b. Knoxville, Tennessee) lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. She received a BFA in Printmaking from Georgia State University where she focused on etching and sculpture. James has exhibited nationally and internationally for the past twenty years and has been the recipient of several grants, awards, and residencies. She has most recently received the Artadia Award in 2019 and the Idea Capital Antinori grant in 2021.

Her work is held in numerous corporate and private collections including Art in Embassies in Mauritania, Africa. James has been exhibited in galleries and museums locally such as MOCA GA, Atlanta Contemporary, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Albany Museum of Art, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art. She was formally a resident at the Studio Artists Program at Atlanta Contemporary and is represented by Whitespace Gallery.

Tyler Beard (b. 1982, Olathe, KS) holds an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a BFA from the University of Kansas. He has had solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, CO; Central Utah Arts Center, UT; Robischon Gallery, CO; and Hathaway Gallery, GA. Additionally, He has been featured in exhibitions at ROCKELMANN&, Berlin; Victori + Mo, NY; Coop Gallery, TN; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CO; and the Biennial of the Americas, CO. He has participated in numerous artist residencies including the Montello Foundation, NV; Anderson Ranch Arts Center, CO; Ceramic Center Berlin, GER; Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, MN; and OffShore, NY. Beard currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Dana Haugaard received his MFA from the University of Iowa and is a graduate of Emory University. Dana has been a resident in the Atlanta Contemporary’s Studio Artist Program and is a Hambidge Fellow. He has recently been shown at the Zuckerman Museum at Kennesaw State University, the Macon Museum of Arts and Science, and the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids Michigan. As an artist working with sound and sensation, Dana investigates how our self-awareness in any given moment functions in relationship to our presence in space, place, and time. He works with sensation and perception to create environments that provoke a heightened sense of awareness of one’s self. Dana uses and manipulates sound, reflective surfaces, and vibrations to construct experiences that draw attention to and call into question our relationship to our surroundings. These situations play with physical, spatial, and temporal reference points to take what is often a minimal presentation and make it an overwhelming experience. Dana currently teaches Visual Art at Emory University as part of the Department of Art History.

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.

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.

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.

MaDora Frey, originally from Georgia, employs a diverse artistic practice to explore her romantic regard for both the natural and built environment and her search for the sublime. Frey’s work takes the form of temporary installations created outdoors, of which only a photograph remains, large-scale public works, and studio works. Her notable commissions include large-scale outdoor public works created for the Katonah Museum of Art, Dashboard US at Woodruff Park, and Perennial Projects. Frey’s recent exhibitions include solo and two-person shows at Massey Klein Gallery, NY, Georgia State University Welch Gallery and Camayuhs Gallery, Atlanta GA. 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.

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.

Joe Camoosa makes drawings and paintings that focus on complexity, order, and the uncertainty of meaning. Working within abstraction, he searches and strives for what doesn’t exist and hasn’t been seen before: the un-nameable. Mystery and ambiguity loom large; his work contains a number of things that might look familiar yet can’t quite be named—a map, a glimpse under a microscope, a scientific model containing arteries or clusters of organs and bodily shapes, or something in bloom, coming alive. His work is informed by many ingredients: maps, aerial landscapes, music, trains, graffiti, architecture, the sensation of rhythm and movement, the grid of New York City, and the tattered subway map from his childhood.

Camoosa was born in Asbury Park, NJ, and lives and works in Atlanta. He received an MFA in painting and drawing from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia and graduated from Florida State University, where he studied mass communication and anthropology. Camoosa has exhibited throughout the Southeast, and his work is held in numerous corporate and private collections.

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.

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.

James Cramer moved to Atlanta from LA 2 years ago and has been learning about the craft of bartending ever since. With no bartending experience whatsoever upon arrival to Atlanta, James began working at Biltong Bar in Ponce City Market. Very quickly James began to learn about the craft of making cocktails and is now the Head Bartender and is responsible for making signature cocktails for the menu.

Mike Stasny is an installation artist, performance artist, and sculptor from the midwest currently working out of Atlanta. He primarily works with raw building materials and broken furniture converting them into “creatures” inspired by natural history museums, sci-fi, and his grandfather - an eccentric taxidermist whom let Mike play in his basement with numerous dead things. His most notorious work to date is “what what in the butt” - a youtube viral video that conflates homosexuality, blackness, and religion into an absurd / escapist cartoon like universe. On occasion, he provides “MUSIC YOU NEED” for art related events.

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.