NOVA showcases the aesthetic exploration of our 2018-20 resident artists: Jessica Caldas, Andrew Catanese, Adam Forrester, Maria Korol, Sara Satamaria, Zipporah Camille Thompson, Kristan Woolford with new works and selections from their residency with The Creatives Project. We are proud to celebrate these bright stars as they continue to expand their visual vernacular through personal and creative reflection.
GENERAL EXHIBITION
NOV. 12TH - DEC. 16TH
691 West Whitehall St.
GALLERY HOURS:
SUN - THUR | by appointment
FRI & | 11AM- 7PM
SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR LOVELY EXHIBITION HOSTS:
Dayle Bennett
Hope Cohn
John Crane
Caryn Grossman
Sarah Hoke
Atticus LeBlanc
Melissa Roberts
Jim Schroder
Stan Sugarman
AND FABULOUS SPONSORS:
Stryant Construction and Management & Investments
The Goat Farm Arts Center
Colorchrome
SPECIAL EVENTS:
VIP PREVIEW + TCP ANNUAL BENEFIT
SAT. NOV 10TH | 7PM-10PM
We are thrilled to present The Creatives Project (TCP)’s Annual Benefit and VIP Preview of “NOVA”.
Your support of this special event is particularly appreciated as we prepare to expand our residency program via TCP’s “ARTFORCE” housing at the Academy Lofts Adair Park. The first concept of its kind in the city of Atlanta, The Academy endeavors to become a symbol of neighborhood revitalization, historic preservation, and community engagement through the establishment of a live/work atmosphere to support creative and cultural enthusiasts from throughout the region.
ARTIST TALKS
SAT DEC 1 ST 1-2:30PM
Come hear the artists of NOVA talk about their work and inspiration!
MIX & MINGLE
FRI. DEC 14TH 7PM-10PM
Get social with the artists of NOVA over complimentary cocktails
and conversation as we celebrate their work and bring the show to a close!
BLK NOIZE MEDIA POP UP MARKET
SAT. DEC 15TH 4-7PM
This is the last day of NOVA... AND TCP will host resident artist Kristan Woolford and his BLK NOIZE MEDIA team for a holiday pop-up market with some of the creatives, business owners, food makers, and spiritualists. A protion of the proceeds will help fund the infrastructure for a BNM to create a community-based, Atlanta-focused, interactive, social justice archive.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS & WORK:
Jessica Caldas is an Atlanta based artist, advocate, and activist. Her work connects personal and community narratives to larger themes and social issues. She concerns herself with issues rendered mundane through their pervasiveness, especially the lived experience of everyday violences. Caldas was awarded The Center for Civic Innovations 2016 Creative Impact award and named Creative Loafing's Best of ATL Artist for 2016 and 2015. She has shown work nationally, internationally, and throughout the city of Atlanta at various galleries and through several public art programs. Her work has been featured at Burnaway, ArtsAtl, Creative Loafing Atlanta, Atlanta Magazine, Simply Buckhead, and more. In her advocacy work, Caldas spends time lobbying for policy at the local level and spent time with the YWCA Georgia Women's Policy Institute at the 2016 general assembly to assure the passage of the Rape Kit Bill and in 2016 to stop HB 51 in 2017, a bill that would have harmed the safety of sexual assault survivors on college campuses. Caldas is currently pursuing her Masters of Fine Arts degree at Georgia State University and received her BFA in printmaking from the University of Georgia in 2012. She lives in Atlanta, GA.
The issues addressed through my work are those surrounded by stigmas, such as domestic violence, homelessness, sexual assault, mental health, and incarceration. Stigma prevents many from talking openly about these topics, which increases misconceptions and “othering”: the idea that these things exist only for certain kinds of people in certain kinds of ways. Through conversation, experience, and interaction I can reduce stigmas and destroy the idea of the “other” when it comes to our understanding of these issues and who they affect. My practice strives to create spaces for conversation, opportunities for education and awareness, and actions for change around these subjects. I seek to make these hard topics more accessible, while still honest, and without sensationalization. Doing so creates space for action and change.
Andrew Catanese attended the Sam Fox School of Art and Design at Washington University in St. Louis where he obtained his BFA in Studio Art. He grew up near Richmond, Virginia and currently lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia from his studio a the Goat Farm. His figurative, narrative paintings are characterized by a neo-gothic style and horror vacui aesthetic. The dense, tapestry-like images are populated with figures in disguise, caught in moments of violence and intimacy, and surrounded by the thick,heavy native foliage of the South. The work critically addresses the rigid moral dogmas inherent in many of the appropriated narratives lending Catanese’s work qualities similar to Southern Gothic writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers. Simultaneously, the integration of myth with landscape in the paintings explores the way tying stories to places shapes our our collective.
identity and celebrates the way this strengthens our ties to our homes and to our values.It is my belief that knowledge about our space gives us the power to claim our spaces. So often, we must live in places that never quite feel like home but learning, naming, and finding beauty in every corner of our neighborhoods gives us license to change that. Knowing the plants around us, when they flower, how they flower, what will replace them as the seasons change, connects us to our surroundings in such a way that makes them ours, that makes even the most mundane sidewalk a point of pride. Furthermore, learning how to take knowledge and translate it into creative works provides a therapeutic skill that can be utilized over a lifetime.
Adam Forrester is an artist and filmmaker making work about bizarre myths, abiding folktales, and mumbled truths. He received his MFA from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. His work has been screened and exhibited nationally and internationally, most notably at the Historic Center of Kalamata in Greece, Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery in Poland, Weinberg/Newton Gallery in Chicago, Soap Factory in Minneapolis, and The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Forrester’s work has been featured by NPR, ArtsATL, and VICE Magazine, and most recently he was awarded a Research and Development Grant from Idea Capital and a Research and Development Grant from the Southern Documentary Fund for his upcoming project entitled Devil Town. Forrester’s work is held in the collections of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA) in Atlanta, GA.
Utilizing photography, video, performance, and installation, I aim to examine the interdependence of history and mythos as they both pertain to place. Within many of the artistic projects I pursue, I borrow from narrative cinematic language as I perform and construct my own reality for the camera. By inserting myself into the landscape, I aim to reconfigure my complex relationship with the American South. The actions I choose to undertake within many of these performances are often rooted in failure, futility, and chance. By embracing a notion such as failure, I aim to illuminate a more playful and optimistic perspective of the challenges and futility found in our current era.
María Korol was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1980 and moved to the United States in 2004. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Indiana University, Bloomington. She has shown her paintings and drawings nationally and internationally in places as far afield as Bogotá, New York, Berlin, and Atlanta. Her work is included in the collections of the University of California-Irvine, Agnes Scott College and numerous private collections. She has been the recipient of scholarships to the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 2016 and the Women’s Art Institute in 2015. She ihas been selected as a Hughley Fellow for 2018-19. She is based in Atlanta, Georgia and represented by {Poem88} gallery.
Uprooting and ceaseless change have been constants in my life. I find impetus for my artwork in the metropolis, especially in Latin America, and the yearning to know cities I don’t live in. I try to imbue my drawings with a sense of search and discovery, and the enthusiasm I feel when moving around Latin America. I want an injection of sensorial vitality in my work like that present in the art of Rufino Tamayo, Tarsila doAmaral, Lucio Fontana, and Lygia Pape—to name a few. I see loose, poetic connections between my abstract images and the landscape, architecture, and cacophony pervading Latin America. Each piece grows as an improvisation, as if I am walking lost in a city, appreciating unexpected swerves and unknown spots. My medium, paper, resonates in its immediacy and perceived fragility. I prime it with gesso to be able to work in layers, add and subtract, scrape, and sand as needed. I use mixed media to create a variety of surfaces distinct but cohesive. Repetitive marks create visual paths to reflect the kinesis of my process and its conceptual underpinning.
Originally from Madrid, Spain, Santamaria came to Atlanta in 2014 by way of Canada, France, and England, and her most recent work explores the dislocation and adaptation of people who decide to uproot themselves and cross borders. For many people today who are displaced because of various social, political, or personal reasons, the concept of home is probably best recognized as a sense of being between places, instead of being rooted in one particular place and one unique identity.
Santamaria’s background is a fusion of minors in languages and literature, theater, and fiber arts, and she is coursing studies at GSU in a 3D studio art program. She is a 2015-16 Hughley Artist Fellowship recipient and currently a selected artist for the Creative Program, with studio residency at The Goat Farm. Santamaria is the co-founder of Brutal Studio, an all-lady run design and build studio in Atlanta, specializing in experiential events and installations. Santamaria’s work has been featured at MOCA GA, MINT Gallery, WonderRoot, Swan Coach House Gallery, Deer Bear Wolf, ArtsAtl, and Commoncreativeatlanta.
As an immigrant that has dived in different cultures, my artwork relates to the essence of who we are, where we have come from, and where we are journeying. This approach is a powerful facilitator of culture, identity, and growth. It will help bringing people together across boundaries, increasing understandings across disparate and historically unequal groups, and supporting the underrepresented communities to create, maintain and share their own stories.
Zipporah Camille Thompson is a visual artist and sculptor based in Atlanta, Georgia. Thompson explores ritual and alchemical transformations via the unknown and through universals. Metamorphosed, shapeshifters and hybrid landscapes reflect various archaeological, psychological, and ecological affinities, as well as a personal investigation of self and otherness. She received her MFA from the University of Georgia and her BFA from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Her work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine and Art Papers, amongst others. She has shown at the Zuckerman Museum of Art, TrestleGallery in Brooklyn, Rogue Space in Chelsea, Gallery 400 in Chicago, IL, and Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, GA, as well as a host of other venues and spaces. Her work is included in numerous private collections. Zipporah Camille Thompson is a 2016 Artadia (Atlanta) Finalist, a recipient of the Zenobia Scholarship Award for residency at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, a 2018 NCECA Multicultural Fellow, and a 2018 Idea Capital grant recipient. Thompson is represented by Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, GA.
It is my goal to touch as many people as I can through my work, and to give underrepresented, marginalized people of color, a voice and a vision of hope, advancement, and transcendence. My priorities are to create meaningful work that inspires and uplifts, as well as to create powerful work which serves a visual catalyst for change. I hope to provide a moment of refuge and peace, enlightenment and philosophical reflections upon nature, coexistence, life, and humanity.
Kristan currently works as the Creative Director of Black Noize Media Group, which is a web based digital media distribution platform that utilizes entertainment and media to serve as a nexus for hip hop culture, community engagement, and activism among youth and young adults. Kristan also has experience with teaching and providing training for video through Re:imagineATL, People TV, Migrant Youth Voice, and serving as Technical Advisor for Georgia State University’s GSTV. He is proud to be working full-time at Maynard Jackson High School as an Audio Video Technology and; Film teacher, where is working to revamp their program and help launch a volunteer based student run TV station.
The one undeniable truth that I base my work in is that we all have souls, and we are all connected on a spiritual level. I strive to interrogate, explore, and encourage sense-making about the process of creating more equitable circumstances for all. What I ultimately aim to create are the conversations surrounding social justice and Black experiences in America that begin to percolate among individuals after they have experienced my work.
HEARTFELT THANKS TO OUR EXHIBITION HOSTS & SPONSORS:
The Creatives Project is supported in part by Mailchimp, the Mayor's office of Cultural Affairs and the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.
