South Arts honors two Atlanta artists in annual fellowship

Regional non-profit association South Arts announced its annual class of Artist Fellows on May 13, recognizing the highest quality artistic work in the region. This award marks the first group of State Literary Arts Scholars since the program began in 2017.

The 2024 State Fellows for Literary Arts and State Fellows for Visual Arts each included nine artists from the region: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

The two Georgia fellows, Zipporah weaver and sculptor Camille Thompson and experimental writer Constance Collier-Mercado, are based in Atlanta.

“South Arts is truly committed to ensuring that Southern artists are at the forefront of our work more than ever before,” said Vice President of Programs Joy Young, Ph.D. Artists are the creators and producers of works that tell the story of who we are. »

The 18 artists received an unrestricted $5,000 after applying for the grant and being chosen by a jury. They also have the chance to compete for the $25,000 Southern Prize Award, with finalists receiving $10,000. The non-profit association created the program in “recognition of a gap in regional funding for artists across disciplines.”

Currently, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies ranks Georgia last in per capita arts funding – just $0.14 per person.

Vice President of Programs Joy Young, Ph.D., noted that certain art forms like literary arts are an “underfunded resource area.” That’s why, after several years of focusing on the visual arts, the organization expanded the scholarship to include a group of fiction writers.

“2024 represents a major milestone as South Arts continues to recognize the incredible works of the region’s visual artists, but begins the journey of celebrating the writers who live and create in the American South,” Emmitt Stevenson, director of South Arts by Artist Engagemen.tsaid.

Young said the Southern literary and storytelling tradition “deserves to be rewarded and commended,” recalling the history of Southern literary giants like Zora Neale Hurston and Flannery O’Connor.

“Our literary arts fellows speak about who we are in the 21st century with a diversity of voices and a diversity of stories that speak to diasporic life, that speak to time and place, that look back and forward,” said Young said.

That’s how judges chose artists like Zipporah Camille Thompson, an Atlanta-based weaver and sculptor who “explores alchemical transformations through clay and woven textiles.” Through his award-winning art, Thompson explores ancestral stories, myths, magic and reconstituted power. Constance Collier-Mercado, also an Atlanta artist, is an experimental writer and female cultural worker who focuses on black language and collective memory.

However, a one-time payment is only part of the scholarship. President and CEO Susie Surkamer said the South Arts mission “advances the South vitality through the arts. Vice President Young said support comes in many forms.

“We recognize that it is one thing to honor artists; it’s another to ensure their work is seen by the public,” Young said.

After awarding the $5,000 to each creative, the literary artists will participate in a panel discussion at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson, MS. The visual artists will showcase their works in a traveling exhibition that debuts in Hollywood, Florida in October. The winner of the Southern Prize will benefit from a residency in an artist retreat space.

Young said the opportunities also function as resume boosters and community builders.

“We recognize that the only way to advance the vitality of the South through the arts is to invest in those who produce it,” Young said.

According to the vice president, South Arts focuses on the vitality of the South because in the South, stories are “so buried” and although artists have produced amazing works, they are often not recognized on a larger scale. She also finds the region to be a place of “many contradictions” and many different stories and hopes the 2024 class of artists reflects that.

“Among this cohort, we also have artists who have chosen that and in the staging, and within the choice is a beautiful story that tells us who we are becoming,” Young said. “We are a region of immigrants, of locally born migrants who leave and sometimes stay away, then come back once they realize that their country has a history and a story that needs to be told. »

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