Atlanta Artists To Watch

It’s exciting to contribute to the Art21 blog – and I wanted to share some details about my work as a lead-in to my post about Atlanta.

As you might know from reading my bio here, I’m the Executive Director at Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue, which is a national arts organization dedicated to supporting both individual artists and the communities in which they live and work. It’s a great privilege to visit and learn from the exceptional artists recognized through our program in our partner communities from Atlanta to Boston, Chicago, Houston, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Last week we announced the inaugural awardees for our Artadia Awards Atlanta program and I wanted to introduce them here through their work to the Art21 community. There’s a copy of the full press release on our website here.

Tristan Al-Haddad, Don Cooper, Ruth Dusseault, Fahamu Pecou, Jerry Siegel, Larry Walker, and Angela West were the seven artists selected for the inaugural program out of a very competitive pool of 300 applicants from the metro Atlanta area. Some images of their works are below.

Tristan Al-Haddad, "Virtual Doubling," 2008. Steel, polymers, wood, light, 384 x 48 x 120 inches.

Don Cooper, "A Connection to the Whole," 2008. Oil on canvas, 56 x 66 inches.

Ruth Dusseault, "Mill Substructure, During Demolition (Atlantic Steel Project)," 2000. C-print, 48 x 68 inches.

Fahamu Pecou, "They Shootin: Made You Look," 2008. Acrylic on canvas, 66 x 51 inches.

Jerry Siegel, "Graffiti bus, Highway 80," 2006. Photograph, 11 x 17 inches.

Larry Walker, "Listen to da Beat," 2008. Mixed materials on birch ply, 72 x 98 inches.

Angela West, "Untitled Portrait #12 (from Sweet 16 series)," 2002. C-print, 24 x 30 inches.

Thanks for reading! I’ll post more about several galleries I visited in New York this past weekend tomorrow.