Open Studios spotlights the artists in our Studio Artist Program. This event is one of three nights a year where we invite you to join us and meet the artists, see their work firsthand, and perhaps add some art to your collection.

Virtual Open Studios

To encourage social distancing and maintain the safety of our patrons and artists, this installment of Open Studios will be entirely virtual. On Saturday, May 22 and Sunday, May 23 studio artists will host virtual tours of their studios. Virtual Open Studios is FREE for all viewers.

Who Will Be In Attendance

Open Studios supports our vision to build a community that offers ever-expanding support for the creation and appreciation of contemporary art. All are welcome to attend including artists, creatives, professionals, students, as well as anyone who is simply interested in art, community, and connections. 

Watch the Studio Tours Online

This event will be live streamed via Zoom. Register for each time slot and drop in when your artist is speaking, or register for all for slots to join all weekend. 

Saturday May 22, 12-2pm | Register

Emma Chammah 12-12:30pm
Jeffrey Wilcox Paclipan 12:30-1pm
InKyoung Chun 1-1:30pm

Saturday May 22, 2:30-4:00pm | Register
Sabre Esler 2:30-3pm
Tracy Murrell (Nexus Fund Studio) 3-3:30pm
Jane Foley 3:30-4pm

Sunday May 23, 12:00-1:30pm | Register
Sergio Suarez 12-12:30pm
MaDora Frey 12:30-1pm
Marc Brotherton 1-1:30pm

Sunday May 23, 2:30-4pm | Register
Dianna Settles 2:30-3pm
Kelly Taylor Mitchell 3-3:30pm
Carol John 3:30-4pm

This virtual event will be streamed via Zoom.

Watching via Zoom
Viewers can watch via Zoom. Zoom participants can join in via audio, video, and text chat during the open conversation portion of the lecture. Zoom participants are capped at 100 people.

Zoom Conversation guide

First-time users can watch this video on how to join a Zoom meeting.

  • Zoom viewers will enter the conversation with audio and video muted. Please stay muted until the open conversation portion. We promise we want to talk to you!
  • Start by introducing yourself with your name and pronouns.
  • We are here to grow and learn! Be open to different styles and areas of knowledge.
  • Share the floor – Be conscious of others joining in with questions and comments.

Bios

Marc Brotherton

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.

Emmanuelle Chammah

(Emma)nuelle Chammah is a sculptor and designer based in Atlanta, GA. She earned a Master of Architecture I from Tulane University in 2007. Her early wearable artworks were exhibited and performed in New Orleans, LA and Brooklyn, NY. In 2010, she completed a Digital Sculpture Residency at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, and went on to work in New York and California for agencies in architecture, art fabrication, theater and fashion. While building her art practice and working in the cultural arts, she developed expertise in creative placemaking and community art. Currently, Emma continues her radical use of fabric in many forms including wearables, tapestries and sculptures. She completed residencies at The Hambidge Center, GA and the Penland School of Craft in Penland, NC. Her work has been shown at the Oceanside Museum of Art, the Atlanta Contemporary, MINT Atlanta and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. Forthcoming in 2022, her wearable pieces will be shown at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC for the “Coined in the South” exhibit and she will be preparing new work for a solo exhibition at MINT in Atlanta. She is currently an Artist-in-Residence in the Atlanta Contemporary’s Studio Artist Program.

InKyoung Chun

Born in Seoul, South Korea, In Kyoung Chun received the Emerging Artist Award 2012-2013 by the City of Atlanta Mayors Office of Cultural Affairs. Chun has participated in exhibitions including High Museum of Art of Atlanta, Athens Institute of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, Poem 88 gallery, Hathaway Contemporary, Mint Gallery, Gallery 72 of Atlanta Mayors Office of Cultural Affairs, Aqua Miami Art Fair, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Albany Museum of Fine Art of Georgia and 1780 Gallery, Virginia Museum of Fine Art of Richmond.

In the spring of 2020, Chun joined the Atlanta Contemporary Studio program and had her two-person show at Project:ARTspace in New York City. She recently participated in the following exhibitions; She Is Here at Atlanta Contemporary, In Search For Home at Dalton gallery of Agnes Scott College and Light Up Midtown in Columbus, Georgia. In 2021, Chun had her solo show ‘Table and Cloud’ at Blue Heron Nature Preserve of Atlanta and participated in the ArtFields in Lake City, South Carolina.

Chun’s work has been included to its permanent collection of High Museum of Art, the City of Atlanta Mayors Office of Cultural Affairs and Fulton County Public Library of Atlanta.

Sabre Esler

Sabre Esler is an Atlanta based multi-disciplined artist. She creates works and environments that are fueled by her interest in human behavior. Her latest body of work is inspired by the book “Thinking: Fast and Slow” which compares AI to the capacity of the mind in the lens of behavioral economics. Esler, an Ohio native, graduated from Miami University, Oxford, OH with a BFA in graphic design/illustration and a minor in biology. She continued her art career, first in advertising and design and began a fine art career after leaving the corporate world. She received her MFA in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in 2015. She taught Foundation Studies at SCAD, (Atlanta Campus) 2018. She will teach at Georgia Perimeter/GSU (Dunwoody Campus) in 2019. She has had solo shows in Boston, Charleston, Knoxville, and Atlanta. Her work has been exhibited at Art Basel the last three years. She is a Hambidge Fellow. To date she has completed four installations in the Atlanta area, taking her sculptures to room size works. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of Ritz Carlton, SunTrust Bank, Oglethorpe Bank, Preferred Office, Georgian Bank, Atlantic Capital Bank, Waycross Bank & Trust, Boardwalk Inn at Wild Dunes, Hilton Hotels, Schell, Bray, Aycock, Abel & Livingston, Crowell & Moring, AdvantEdge Executive Offices, Reaction 35, The Lofts at Capitol Quarters, Hilton Hotels, and Public Collections at The Federal Reserve Bank, Miami University, Tufts University, Fulton County Arts Council, as well as over 500 private collections.

MaDora Frey

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.

Jane Foley

Jane Foley has created public sound sculptures for the Architecture Triennale in Lisbon, Portugal and La Friche Belle de Mai in Marseille, France with Zurich-based Sound Development City, as well as composed sounds that played in taxicabs throughout the 5th Marrakech Biennale in Morocco. In Atlanta, they have created works for the High Museum, Flux Projects, The Atlanta Contemporary, and the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport, among others. Foley currently teaches art at Georgia State University and Emory University while raising a son who is also an artist and assists on many projects.

Carol John

Carol John is a painter living and working in Georgia. She received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, in New York. Carol John is a consummate studio artist, rigorous in her practice and time, she produces a plethora of images and works of all scale. Her work is in the collection of the High Museum of Art, in Atlanta. John exhibits her work in Georgia and New York.

Kelly Taylor Mitchell

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.

Dianna Settles

Dianna Settles is a Vietnamese-American artist in Atlanta, Georgia who received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2014. Her current work explores moments of joyful stillness amidst the cascading series of crises called modern life, accomplished through her synthesis of traditional Vietnamese and classical European painting styles. Recent exhibition highlights include the two person show “The One That Got Away” at Delaplane in San Francisco, CA, her solo show “99 Flowers” at Versa Gallery in Chattanooga, TN, and participation in “Of Origins and Belonging” at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. As the inaugural artist of Living Walls’ international exchange program, she completed the 180’ long mural To Our Friends / Á Nos Amis in Paris, France in July of 2019, adding to her portfolio of work as a muralist in Atlanta, Oakland, and Pittsburgh. She was a finalist for the 2019 Forward Arts Foundation Edge Award, and was recently accepted into the Atlanta Contemporary Studio Artist Program. Currently, she is preparing a large portfolio of new paintings for upcoming shows, including an exhibition with Gerald Lovell and Jurell Cayetano at MINT Gallery in Atlanta and a solo show at Institute 193. In addition to her own art practice, Dianna runs Hi-Lo Press, a print studio and art gallery in Midtown Atlanta, which is home to drag figure drawing nights, the Atlanta Paint Club, an 1843 Robert Mayer Parks lithography press, and regular poetry readings, film screenings, dance parties, potlucks, and a variety of other events and workshops.

Sergio Suarez

Sergio Suárez (B.1995) is a Mexican-born, Atlanta-based visual artist and printmaker. He uses the mediums of printmaking, painting, and sculpture, to explore language and the structure of materiality in relation to narrative and contradiction. He often borrows small parts of systems of thought and production in an attempt to create a space balanced between past and present. His work has been shown around Atlanta, most recently at the Consulate General of Mexico in Atlanta, the Atlanta Contemporary, MoCA GA, Day&Night Projects, and THE END Project Space. Internationally he’s shown at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair in London, the Haugesund Internasjonal Relief Festival in Norway, OPED space in Tokyo, and the Ionian Arts Center in Greece. Residencies include The Hambidge Arts

Center (2021) and The Ionian Arts Center in Greece (2017-2018). His work is included in the SGCI archives of the Zuckerman Museum. He lives and works in Atlanta Georgia.

Jeffrey Wilcox Paclipan

Jeffrey Wilcox Paclipan received an AA degree from International Fine Arts College in Miami, FL. His gallery solo and group exhibitions include Hathaway Contemporary Gallery, Mason Fine Art, Galerie Tew, Bill Lowe Gallery, Mammal Gallery, Life on Mars, NY, and Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, NY. Atlanta-area exhibitions and installations in museums and public institutions include MOCA GA, Slotin Folkfest, Chastain Arts Center, EBD4, Fulton Country Arts and Culture Acquisition Program, Fulton County Aviation and Community Cultural Center, Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center, High Rise Show with ShowerHaus Gallery, The Atlanta Financial Center, Lenox Square, and ARTFIELDS 2020. Paclipan’s mixed media collage submission “Salvador Del Mundo” was highlighted in a Miami Herald art review of the 36th Hortt Museum Exhibition in 1994. Recent group exhibitions in 2020 include MINT Gallery, Marietta Cobb Museum of Art and he is currently an Artist-in-Residence at Atlanta Contemporary. He is a multidisciplinary processed-based artist compelled to create objects with non-traditional materials and to imbue them with greater meaning. His development as an artist has followed the same path as his ongoing quest to coherently embrace his definition of “self”. He was born in the Philippines and lives in Atlanta, GA.


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