Steven L. Anderson’s work is about the power of Nature, and the nature of power. His artistic practice attempts to view the systems of the natural world from the perspective of a plant or a tree—hoping to bring a whole new way of seeing the world, which can open up new ways of seeing our human systems.

Alone and collaboratively, and across several media, Anderson engages in projects that use this shaman-like empathy with nature to perceive, identify, and work with the energy flows that surround us. Many of these “energy strategies” are manifested in the studio, artworks which function as tools for activating energy in individuals and communities.

Anderson’s artistic goal is “to make images, things, spaces, and situations that fuse the exhilaration of the human spirit with the ferocious beauty of Nature to make a palpable, tingling essence.”

Anderson’s collaborations have included working as Ecstatic Energy Consultants Inc. with Tom McKenzie; publishing Cakewalk Magazine; projects with Atlanta artists Sandy Corley, Mark Leibert, and Craig Dongoski: and making things with many other amazing people.

Anderson is a 2015 Hambidge Fellow, and a 2014–15 Walthall Artist Fellow. His art has been seen in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago. Anderson is represented by {Poem 88} Gallery in Atlanta.

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.

Lillian Blades was born in Nassau, Bahamas in 1973 and currently resides in Atlanta, GA. She completed a BFA in Painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah Campus and a MFA in Painting at Georgia State University. Lillian works predominately in mixed media assemblage. Her childhood home of Bahamas, ancestral background of West Africa, and her late mother, who was a seamstress, influences her art. These influences appear through use of her color palette and objects that evoke memory and history. In addition, Lillian has studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and Caversham in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, as well as The Bahamas, Trinidad, Germany and South Africa. Her public commissions include Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Jean Childs Young Middle School. As a public artist she enjoys collaborating with other artists and groups on large-scale assemblages such as The East Atlanta Library. Her artwork is also in the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art and the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. A few of Lillian’s favorite things to do are drumming and dancing. 2016 ‘Excellence in Arts’ Awardee - The Bahamas Consulate, Atlanta, GA, 2016 Visual Artist Awardee - National Black Art Festival (NBAF)

Craig Drennen is a painter and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. He was a participant in Atlanta Contemporary’s studio program from 2010 through 2013 and was included in Painters Panting at Atlanta Contemporary in 2012. His MOCA GA Working Artist Project exhibition took place in 2017. His recent solo exhibitions include Old Athenian & at Stove Works in Chattanooga, TN, and Merchants, Bandits, and Certain Senators at Laney Contemporary in Savannah, GA. He has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, MacDowell, the Triangle Arts Fountation, and Skowhegan. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Artforum, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe. Drennen served as Dean at Skowhegan, teaches at Georgia State University, and manages THE END Project Space in Atlanta. Since 2008, he has organized his studio practice around Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens.

Emerson graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1998 and completed her Masters Degree at Goldsmiths College, London in 2000. She has exhibited her work in galleries throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, including White Columns, NY, Cosmic Gallery, Paris, the MOCA Jacksonville, Fl., and the High Museum in Atlanta, GA. Her work has been published in Noplaceness: Art in a Post Urban Landscape, Stickers Deluxe: From Punk Rock to Contemporary Art, and New American Paintings in 2012, 2007, and 2003. In 2014 Emerson was awarded the 2014/2015 MOCA GA Working Artist Project Grant selected by Siri Engberg, Senior Curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Emerson is represented by Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta.

Mark Leibert was born and raised in Honolulu. His practice includes drawing and painting, time-based works, photography, and installation. His works explore the intersection of nature, human culture, and the built environment. He has been known to make his own paint, mediums, and refined linseed oil.

Leibert received his BA from University of California–Berkeley and MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. His work has been shown and collected nationally and internationally.

Eric Mack (b.1976, Charleston) creates mathematically based renderings with a distinct post-modern twist. Works are informed with super imposed grids, patterns, and portals. Layered surfaces are created with paint, found objects, natural fibers, and synthetic substrates that explore the systems of our visual world. His most recent show “Charting the Terrain” was on view at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. The show was covered by the Los Angeles Times, KCRW, and LALA Magazine. His last solo exhibitions were “Alpha Numerics” at Channel to Channel in Nashville, and “Impossible Architectures” at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Recent group shows include “Abstract Mind” at The Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, South Korea; “Small Works 2017” at Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn; “Checkered History”, Outpost Artist Resources, Brooklyn, N.Y., and “The Art of the Matter” at The Contemporary Museum of St. Louis. Group exhibitions include “This Postman Collects”, Clark Atlanta University Galleries, Atlanta; “Hard Edged: Geometrical Abstraction and Beyond”, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, California, and “New Grounds” at The International Institute for Art & Theory, Mangalia, Romania. Recently, Mack has exhibited at The Hartsfield- International Airport in Atlanta, Canvas Gallery in Malibu, Channel to Channel Gallery in Nashville and The Four Seasons Atlanta. Arts ATL invited Mack into their collaboration on a monthly t-shirt series with Fallen Arrows and Alternative Apparel. The limited edition t-shirts featured exclusive designs by Mack, and eleven other artists chosen by Arts ATL. Most recent commissions include Modera Luxury Apartments/Buckhead, R & S Records/Belgium, CBRE Headquarters/Atlanta, and Atlanta City Studio for the City of Atlanta Department of City Planning. Recent press publications include Atlanta Magazine, Voyage ATL, Burnaway, Artforum, Brooklyn Rail, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and Blouin Art Info. He is, a newly added board member for the Wylde Center, and sits on the board of the Goethe-Zentrum German Cultural Center.

Multidisciplinary artist Michi Meko (b. 1974, Florence, Alabama) draws influence from Southern culture and contemporary urban. He has an uncanny ability to inspire an urbanized aesthetic that is innovative, challenging and thoughtful. The works allude to conditions both physical and psychological. His work is a proclamation of strength, perseverance and remembrance. He is represented by Alan Avery Art Company, Atlanta. Michi Meko lives and works in Atlanta.

Jiha Moon (b. 1973) is from DaeGu, Korea and lives and works in Atlanta, GA. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Her works have been acquired by Asia Society, New York, NY, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, The Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, Smithsonian Institute, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC and The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA. She has had solo exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, GA, Taubman Museum, Roanoke, VA, the Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, The Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN and Rhodes College, Clough-Hanson Gallery, Memphis, TN and James Gallery of CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY. She has been included in group shows at Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MI, the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA, Asia Society, New York, NY, The Drawing Center, New York, NY, White Columns, New York, NY, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, and the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC. She is recipient of Joan Mitchell foundation’s painter and sculptor’s award for 2011, MOCA GA Working Artist project fellow 2012-13, Artadia award 2016. Her mid-career survey exhibition, “Double Welcome: Most everyone’s mad here” organized by Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art and Taubman Museum has toured more than 10 museum venues around the country until 2018.
Moon gestural paintings, mixed media, ceramic sculpture, and installation explore fluid identities and the global movement of people and their cultures. She says, “I am a cartographer of cultures and an icon maker in my lucid worlds.” She is taking cues from wide ranges of history of Eastern and Western art, colors and designs from popular culture, Korean temple paintings and folk art, internet emoticons and icons, fruit stickers and labels of products from all over the place. She often teases and changes these lexicons so that they are hard to identify yet stay in a familiar zone.

Ann Rowles is currently a studio artist at the B-Complex in Atlanta (GA). She has exhibited widely in the USA as well as in Hungary and New Zealand. Her work is in the collections of The William King Regional Art Center in Abingdon (VA), and the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching in Cullowhee (NC). Grants and awards include a five-year residency at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the North Carolina Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship, a NC Arts Council Scholarship to the conference Public Art Dialogue Southeast, the Triangle Arts Award (Durham, NC) and the Emerging Artist Grant from the Durham Arts Council. Rowles received her MFA in Sculpture from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, NC Central University, Durham Technical Community College, and Western Carolina University. Active in the Women’s Art Movement since the 1980s, she has been a National Affiliate member of SOHO20 since 1992. Rowles is the co-founder of the Women’s Caucus for Art of Georgia and served on the National WCA Board of Directors 2004-2016.. She previously served in multiple positions on the Board of Directors of Center/Gallery (Carrboro, NC), the Durham Art Guild (NC) and Tri State Sculptors Educational Association, (NC/SC/VA) and was a mentor in the ArtShare program of the Youth Art Connection and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta.

Cecelia Kane is a nationally exhibiting artist with twenty five + solo shows since earning her MFA from Georgia State University in 1997. She is a painter, fabric artist, performance, video and earth artist whose work delves inside the universe of self and being, aging, death and our connection to nature and community. She has been a curator, visiting artist, guest lecturer, performer, community artistic project director, teacher and graphic producer. She has held numerous residencies and been the recipient of several grants to produce artistic projects. Cecelia is a mother and grandmother who lives and creates in Peacham Vermont, a small rural hill town in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.