- 2022 Previewers
Erin Jane Nelson. Erin Jane Nelson is an Atlanta-based artist and writer who received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in 2011. Her work was recently included in the 2021 New Museum Triennial: Hard Water Soft Stone in New York and Making Knowing: Craft in Art 1950-2019 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Chapter (NYC), and DOCUMENT (Chicago). Nelson is a 2020 recipient of the Rabkin Award for Arts Journalism and from 2018-2021 served as the Artistic Director of Burnaway, a non-profit publication dedicated to contemporary art and criticism from the American South. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes' "30 under 30" in Arts & Culture. Prior to Burnaway, she co-directed Species, an artist-run gallery with her husband Jason Benson, and served as the Curatorial Assistant in Photography and Folk & Self-taught Art at the High Museum of Art. Her work is included in numerous institutional and public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (USA), the Fries Museum (NL), and KADIST (USA), and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Artforum, ArtNet, Frieze Magazine, Cultured Magazine, T Magazine, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Chicago Tribune, and Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles.
Amy Shimshon-Santo. Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and arts administrator who believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. Her interdisciplinary work connects culture, education, and ecology. Her teaching career has spanned research universities, community centers, K-12 schools, arts organizations, and spaces of incarceration. She has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Singapore at venues including the Kennedy Center for the Arts. Amy has edited two books amplifying community voices: Et Al: New Voices in Arts Management (Illinois Open Publishing Network), and Arts = Education (UC Press). An essayist and poet, she is the author of Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (Unsolicited Press), Endless Bowls of Sky (Placeholder Press), and the forthcoming Catastrophic Molting with FlowerSong Press (2022). Her work appears in Prairie Schooner, ArtPlace America, Zócalo Public Square, Entropy, Tilt West, Boom CA, Yes Poetry, GeoHumanities, Routledge, SAGE, UC Press, SUNY Press, and more. Recently, she participated in Everything Connected: Land, Body, Cosmos with Self Help Graphics on Google Arts and Culture, appeared on Radio Educación, and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, the UK’s BBC Radio, the Writer’s Project Ghana, and Goethe Institut in Accra. She was recognized on the National Honor Roll for Service Learning, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry (2020), a Rainbow Reads Award in poetry (2020), Best of the Net in poetry (2018), and a Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction (2017). Amy represented the State of California at the National Endowment for the Arts’ Education Innovation Institute, and was a founding member of CREATE CA. She was consulting producer for PBS So Cal’s episode on Arts Education. Earlier in her career, she co-founded the Brasil Brasil Cultural Center, directed the ArtsBridge Program at UCLA, and directed the Arts Management Program at Claremont Graduate University. She founded CREO Changemakers committed to generating a just society, amplifying community knowledge, and catalyzing great ideas into action.
Dr. Shimshon-Santo serves on all three 2022 Southern Prize and State Fellowships juror panels.
- 2022 State Fellowships Juror Panel
elizabet elliott. Elliot joined Alabama Contemporary Art Center in November of 2018. Elliott has twelve years of experience in curating at both the grass-roots and institutional level. Prior to coming to Alabama Contemporary, she served 5 years at the Mobile Museum of Art, and 4 years as the founding director of the Rumor Union, a grassroots community art organization that organized site-specific installation, performance, and new media festivals, guerrilla exhibitions, outreach programs, and artist services. Elliott has also served on several boards and in community action groups, including 2 years as Vice President of the Creative Wellness Foundation. She received her BFA with First Class Honors from Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand in 2009, and her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College in Port Townsend, WA in 2014, focusing on Social/Civic practice. She enjoys action movies and dirty jokes.
Floyd Hall. Floyd Hall is a media strategist, engineer, cultural producer, writer, and documentarian from Atlanta, Georgia. As an artist and curator, his work often relates to the intersection of culture, media, and technology as platforms to construct narratives of place.
His current and past work spans several areas, including Aerospace, Brand Management, Digital Media, Nonprofit Arts, Nonprofit Media, Public Art, and Social Change. He holds a BS in Mathematics from Morehouse College, a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech, and an MBA from Columbia University.
Floyd is an Idea Capital artist grant recipient; a Fulton County Arts & Culture artist grant recipient; a Hambidge Cross-Pollination Art Lab Fellow and a Hambidge Creative Residency Fellow; and has presented as a guest lecturer at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Spelman College, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and the Hudgens Center for Art and Learning. He also produced Pop-Up Zine Atlanta, a live storytelling event that featured non-fiction, multimedia stories about life in metropolitan Atlanta.
Amy Shimshon-Santo. Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and arts administrator who believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. Her interdisciplinary work connects culture, education, and ecology. Her teaching career has spanned research universities, community centers, K-12 schools, arts organizations, and spaces of incarceration. She has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Singapore at venues including the Kennedy Center for the Arts. Amy has edited two books amplifying community voices: Et Al: New Voices in Arts Management (Illinois Open Publishing Network), and Arts = Education (UC Press). An essayist and poet, she is the author of Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (Unsolicited Press), Endless Bowls of Sky (Placeholder Press), and the forthcoming Catastrophic Molting with FlowerSong Press (2022). Her work appears in Prairie Schooner, ArtPlace America, Zócalo Public Square, Entropy, Tilt West, Boom CA, Yes Poetry, GeoHumanities, Routledge, SAGE, UC Press, SUNY Press, and more. Recently, she participated in Everything Connected: Land, Body, Cosmos with Self Help Graphics on Google Arts and Culture, appeared on Radio Educación, and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, the UK’s BBC Radio, the Writer’s Project Ghana, and Goethe Institut in Accra. She was recognized on the National Honor Roll for Service Learning, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry (2020), a Rainbow Reads Award in poetry (2020), Best of the Net in poetry (2018), and a Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction (2017). Amy represented the State of California at the National Endowment for the Arts’ Education Innovation Institute, and was a founding member of CREATE CA. She was consulting producer for PBS So Cal’s episode on Arts Education. Earlier in her career, she co-founded the Brasil Brasil Cultural Center, directed the ArtsBridge Program at UCLA, and directed the Arts Management Program at Claremont Graduate University. She founded CREO Changemakers committed to generating a just society, amplifying community knowledge, and catalyzing great ideas into action.
Dr. Shimshon-Santo serves on all three 2022 Southern Prize and State Fellowships juror panels.
Sarah Workneh. Sarah Workneh has worked in alternative education spaces for artists for over 20 years. She has served as Co-Director of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture since 2010. Primarily focused on the educational program, and off-season programming with Alumni, Sarah leads all efforts to support artists in the expansion of their practices. Understanding the holistic nature of the program, Sarah oversees the admissions process, facilities usage, and expansion under Skowhegan’s Master Plan, as well as the educational daily life on campus. Sarah has lectured widely as a Visiting Artist/Critic at schools & programs around the US and has served as an advisor to both academic and residency programs, particularly around issues of equity. Sarah has published a variety of texts -- most recently an essay on participatory education and a catalog essay on radical education published by the New Museum. She serves on the boards of Colby College Museum of Art, the Black Lunch Table, RAIR in Philadelphia, Buxton School in Williamstown, MA and is a member of the Lake Wesserunsett Association Conservation Committee in Maine. In 2020, she partnered with Linda Goode Bryant & Project Eats to convert one of the organization's farms into a food pantry in Brownsville, NYC. Sarah has a BA in Linguistics & Russian and pursued graduate work focused on Social Movement Theory, Political Economy, & Liberation Theology.
- 2022 Southern Prize Juror Panel
Anne Collins Smith. Anne Collins Smith has been the Curator of Collections at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art since 2003. She is a cultural curator, art historian, and cultural worker in the literary, visual, and performing arts. Smith received a bachelor’s of art degree in English and art from Spelman College and a master’s of art degree in visual arts administration from New York University. Smith was a Romare Bearden Fellow at the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College where she curated The Space Between: Artists Engaging Race and Syncretism (2003).
Smith has curated the permanent collection exhibitions Showcase & Tell (2009), Multiple Choice: Perspectives on the Spelman College Collection (2013), and PRESENCE: Meditations on the Spelman College Collection (2019). Maren Hassinger . . . Dreaming (2015) and Howardena Pindell (2015) are among the other exhibitions she has co-organized. Smith has participated in the Art Leaders of Metro Atlanta; Independent Curators International’s Curatorial Intensive; Getty Leadership Institute’s Museum Leaders: The Next Generation; Association of Art Museum Curator’s Mentorship program, and the BURNAWAY Art Writers Mentorship program. She serves on the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) Arts Council and the board of trustees of the Association of Art Museum Curators.
Garth Johnson. Garth Johnson is the Paul Phillips and Sharon Sullivan Curator of Ceramics at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. Johnson is a self-described craft activist who explores craft’s influence and relevance in the 21st century. His research interests range from 1960s and 70s artist-led movements in the field of ceramics to the intersection of clay, video, and performance. His recent exhibitions at the Everson include The Floating Bridge: Postmodern and Contemporary Japanese Ceramics, Renegades & Reformers: American Art Pottery, and Earth Piece: Conceptual and Performative Works in Clay. His writing has been published nationally and internationally, with recent contribution to the books Repositioning Paolo Soleri: The City is Nature and Victor Cicansky: The Gardener’s Universe.
Amy Shimshon-Santo. Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and arts administrator who believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. Her interdisciplinary work connects culture, education, and ecology. Her teaching career has spanned research universities, community centers, K-12 schools, arts organizations, and spaces of incarceration. She has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Singapore at venues including the Kennedy Center for the Arts. Amy has edited two books amplifying community voices: Et Al: New Voices in Arts Management (Illinois Open Publishing Network), and Arts = Education (UC Press). An essayist and poet, she is the author of Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (Unsolicited Press), Endless Bowls of Sky (Placeholder Press), and the forthcoming Catastrophic Molting with FlowerSong Press (2022). Her work appears in Prairie Schooner, ArtPlace America, Zócalo Public Square, Entropy, Tilt West, Boom CA, Yes Poetry, GeoHumanities, Routledge, SAGE, UC Press, SUNY Press, and more. Recently, she participated in Everything Connected: Land, Body, Cosmos with Self Help Graphics on Google Arts and Culture, appeared on Radio Educación, and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, the UK’s BBC Radio, the Writer’s Project Ghana, and Goethe Institut in Accra. She was recognized on the National Honor Roll for Service Learning, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry (2020), a Rainbow Reads Award in poetry (2020), Best of the Net in poetry (2018), and a Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction (2017). Amy represented the State of California at the National Endowment for the Arts’ Education Innovation Institute, and was a founding member of CREATE CA. She was consulting producer for PBS So Cal’s episode on Arts Education. Earlier in her career, she co-founded the Brasil Brasil Cultural Center, directed the ArtsBridge Program at UCLA, and directed the Arts Management Program at Claremont Graduate University. She founded CREO Changemakers committed to generating a just society, amplifying community knowledge, and catalyzing great ideas into action.
Dr. Shimshon-Santo serves on all three 2022 Southern Prize and State Fellowships juror panels.