South Arts is proud to announce the following jurors reviewing applications for the 2021 Southern Prize and State Fellowships.
2021 Previewers
Rosie Gordon Wallace | Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator - Miami, FL. Rosie Gordon-Wallace is a recognized curator, arts advocate, community leader, and pioneer in advancing contemporary diaspora art. She founded the Diaspora Vibe Culture Arts Incubator (DVCAI) to serve as a local and global laboratory dedicated to promoting, nurturing, and cultivating the vision and diverse talents of emerging artists from the Caribbean Diaspora, artists of color, and immigrant artists. Twenty-five years later, DVCAI is recognized as a global resource and one of the region’s leading platforms dedicated to providing diaspora artists with a venue to explore and experiment with new forms and themes that challenge traditional definitions of the Caribbean and Latin American art. DVCAI artists have traveled and engaged in conversations with artists in France, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Antigua, Suriname, and Guadeloupe. In addition to her service on several prominent boards, she is an active member of the PAMM Fund for African American Art and serves on The Cultural Affairs Council for Miami Dade County and Florida’s Department of Cultural Affairs panels. Her awards include The African Heritage Cultural Arts Center Third Annual Calabash Amadlozi Visual Arts Award, International Businesswoman of the Year, One of South Florida’s 50 Most Powerful Black Professionals. Her most recent curation of Inter | Sectionality: Diaspora Art from The Creole which closed at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture in March January 2021, opens in the Miami Design District on February 5th, 2021, and will run through May 31, 2021.
Jerushia Graham | Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking - Atlanta, GA. Jerushia Graham is the Museum Coordinator for the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking and a working artist. The Atlanta-based artist exhibits both nationally and internationally. In addition to her curatorial efforts at the Paper Museum, she is the VP of Exhibitions/Curatorial for the North American Hand Papermakers. Graham has also been a guest curator for the Zora Neale Hurston Museum in Eatonville, FL and The Hudgens Center for Art and Learning in Duluth, GA. She was previously the Education Director for Atlanta Printmakers Studio as well as a book arts/papermaking/print professor for Kennesaw State University, as well as a foundations professor for the University of West Georgia and the Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur. Prior to her work in Georgia she served as the Museum Director and Education Coordinator for Spiral Q, an arts and social justice non-profit. In 2019, she was nominated in the category of Artistic Excellence for the inaugural Hammonds House Honors. Graham was one of five artists selected by the GA Committee for the National Museum of Women in the Arts exhibit at MOCA GA, Paper Routes: Women To Watch 2020. Several of her papercuts recently traveled the state of Georgia in an exhibition sponsored by the Georgia Museum of Art and Lyndon House Museum, Highlighting Contemporary Art in Georgia: Cut and Paste. She earned an MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, and BFA degrees in Fabric Design and Printmaking from the University of Georgia in Athens. Graham is interested in creating spaces for socially-minded introspection and empathy through her artwork, workshops, and curatorial projects.
2021 State Fellowships Juror Panel
Jackie Clay | Coleman Center for the Arts - York, AL. Jackie Clay is the executive director at the Coleman Center for the Arts, a contemporary arts organization that produces socially engaged public art projects in the Alabama Black Belt region. In addition to her work in Sumter County, she has organized exhibitions at the ICA LA, et al gallery (San Francisco), and the Alabama Contemporary Art Center (Mobile). She has contributed to catalogs including Prospect 4, black is a color, and the Greenwood Art Project. She hosts Monograph, a documentary series produced by Alabama Public Television that focuses on creative practice both inside and outside the traditional arts framework.
Patsy Cox | California State University Northridge - Northridge, CA. Patsy Cox is Professor of Visual Art and Chair of Ceramics at California State University Northridge. She is an artist, educator and arts advocate. She is a former president of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and a Fellow of the Council. She is currently serving on the board of the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in Pomona, California. She has participated in the Annenberg Alchemy and Alchemy+ programs for nonprofit excellence, was a Getty Scholar for the Linking Service Learning and the Visual Arts Program and has coordinated courses for the CSU Summer Arts Program. She was the curator for the 74th Scripps Annual, Stories Without Borders: Personal Narratives in Clay. Cox is an installation-based artist who has exhibited and lectured nationally and internationally, most recently as a resident artist with Dunhuang Creative Center in Lanzhou, China culminating with the permanent collection installation piece, Huang He. She holds an MFA from the University of Delaware and BFA from Missouri University and lives and maintains a productive studio near downtown Los Angeles.
Sarah Higgins | Art Papers - Atlanta, GA. Sarah Higgins is Editor + Artistic Director of Art Papers. Previously, she was curator at the Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University (2015-2018) where she produced exhibitions and publications including Tomashi Jackson: Interstate Love Song, Gut Feelings, and A View Beyond the Trees. She has curated over 40 exhibitions for institutions such as the Hessel Museum of Art, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and Atlantic Center for the Arts.
Carlton Turner | Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture) - Utica, MS. Carlton Turner is an artist, agriculturalist, arts advocate, policy shaper, lecturer, consultant, and facilitator. Carlton is the founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture). Sipp Culture uses arts and agriculture to support rural community, cultural, and economic development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi where he lives with his wife Brandi and three children.
2021 Southern Prize Juror Panel
Marcela Guerrero | Whitney Museum of American Art - New York, NY. Marcela Guerrero is Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recently, she was part of the curatorial team that organized Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945. In summer 2018, Guerrero curated the exhibition Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art.
From 2014 to 2017 she worked as curatorial fellow at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Prior to joining the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she served as research coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. Guerrero’s writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and in art journals such as ArtNexus, Caribbean Intransit, Gulf Coast, Interventions, and Diálogo.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Guerrero holds a PhD in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Karen Patterson | The Fabric Workshop and Museum - Philadelphia, PA. Karen Patterson joined the Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) as their inaugural curator in July 2019. Current projects include Jonathan Lyndon Chase: Big Wash; Elisabeth Kley: Minutes of Sand; His History of Art: Jayson Musson. Prior to this appointment she was the Senior Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC), Patterson has curated over fifty exhibitions, including major exhibitions such as Ray Yoshida’s Museum of Extraordinary Values, Ebony G.Patterson: Dead Treez, several critically-reviewed site specific installations such as Joy Feasley and Paul Swenbeck: Out, Out, Phosphene Candle, Things are What We Encounter: Dr.Charles Smith + Heather Hart. Patterson completed her BA in folklore studies at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, and her Masters of Art Administration at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Publications include: Samara Golden: Upstairs At Steve's; Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe (2019), Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: Mythologies (2017), Lee Godie: Self-Portraits (2015), Ray Yoshida’s Museum of Extraordinary Values (2013).
Seph Rodney | Hyperallergic - New York, NY. Seph Rodney, PhD was born in Jamaica, and came of age in the Bronx, New York. He is the opinions editor and managing editor for the Sunday edition for Hyperallergic, and writes on visual art and related issues. He has also written for The New York Times, CNN Op-ed pages, American Craft Magazine and NBC Universal, and penned catalog essays for Joyce J. Scott, Teresita Fernandez, and Meleko Mokgosi. He can be heard weekly on the podcast “The American Age”. His book, The Personalization of the Museum Visit, was published by Routledge in May of 2019. In 2020 he won the Rabkin Arts Journalism Prize.