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Theresa Davis ArtsXchange Literary Program Director Studio Artist theresa@artsxchange.org https://www.artisttheresadavis.com Theresa Davis is an educator, storyteller, poet, author, poetry slam champion and the host of the award winning open mic Java Speaks. She has performed on stages across the nation as a poet and keynote speaker. She was a classroom teacher for over 25 years, specializing in cross curricular education. As a slam poet, Theresa has competed individually and on teams for over a decade and in 2011 won the Women of the World Poetry Slam. In May 2013, her first full collection of poems entitled “After This We Go Dark” was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. “After This We Go Dark” became an American Library Association Honoree, and the book can now be checked out in local and college libraries around the world. Her latest poetry collection “Drowned: A Mermaid’s Manifesto”, released with Sibling Rivalry Press, in fall of 2016 received the award“Ten Books All Georgians Should Read”. In addition to being a teaching artist and outreach poetry coordinator for Georgia Tech for 6 years, Theresa hosts and participates in many of the lit events around Atlanta. Her one-woman show “Then They’ll Tell You it’s all in Your Head” Made its debut as a part of 7 Stages Home Brew series in fall of 2017. Artist Statement The nature of my work and my aesthetic philosophy I have been called a poet, slam poet, and performance artist. All three are appropriate and underscore that the voice, the word, the story are my primary artistic tools. My work has evolved over the years from the intimately personal to work that resounds with social and cultural truths that transcend my ethnicity and sexual identity. The ability to create and share my work is very dear to me. My art is my second skin. It allows me to connect with others in a personal way even though in most cases we have just met. Poetry is the portal to initiate dialogue. OUR STAFF STUDIO ARTIST EBON DOOLEY HONOREES

Victor Love Studio Artist act@evolvatlanta.com https://evolvatlanta.com/ Victor Love was born in Camp LeJeune, North Carolina.He grew up in Los Angeles California. He fell in love with acting at an early age. He is no stranger to the entertainment industry, having spent 30+ years as an Actor prior to starting EVOLV ATLANTA. Love received his AA at the prestigious Los Angeles Theater Academy and MFA at the Professional Actor’s Training Program in Milwaukee, now located in Delaware. He completed the Meisner Technique with Bill Esper in New York and the Chubbuck Technique with Ivana Chubbuck in Los Angeles. He also trained with Tadashi Suzuki in Japan. Victor had speech training with the legendary Edith Skinner and Timothy Monich. His classical training included stints with Shakespeare and Company. Victor Love achieved international attention for his debut role as Bigger Thomas in the 1987 film adaptation of Richard Wright’s novel NATIVE SON. His co-stars included Oprah Winfrey, Geraldine Page, Matt Dillon and Elizabeth McGovern. He was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor in his first film, Native Son. He continued his career with several TV and film roles: It’s My Party, Gang Related, Velocity Trap, The Hank Gathers Story, Jaded, Mr. Payback, Heaven is a Playground, Miami Vice, A Different World, LA Law, Babylon 5, West Wing, and many others. Victor had a recurring role on “RED BAND SOCIETY”. Recently he guest starred on FOX TV’s “THE RESIDENT” as well as a series regular in a pilot on “ADULT SWIM”. He is an active member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA. Most recently he has completed filming “RED ALL OVER” and is preparing to film THE OLIVE BRANCH (with Louis Gossett Jr.). He is the Managing Director and Master Instructor of the EVOLV ATLANTA ACTING studio in Atlanta, Georgia USA, where he teaches acting and scene study for stage and film. Mr. Love has previously coached actors in the academy award winning film “MOONLIGHT” and “HIDDEN FIGURES”. He is excited to be working on “BAD BOYS FOR LIFE 3” as an acting coach. Mr. Love knows what a working actor needs to make it in this competitive world and he is uniquely qualified to give his knowledge and expertise to his actors. EVOLV ATLANTA ACTING We create an environment where actors become conscious and comfortable with the changes necessary to achieving freedom from anything that inhibits their brilliance. We are an gym for the actor where failing forward is our philosophy. We work acting technique, excercises and on scenes from television and film. On camera class work is an integral part of our training program. We expose the student to several different methods as well as teaching the Chubbuck technique. The Chubbuck technique is the cutting-edge technique that has launched some of the most successful careers in Hollywood. (Brad Pitt, Halle Berry, Terrance Howard, Eriq La Salle, Charlize Theron, James Franco, Taraji P. Henson) The classes are small and the work we do is designed around each students needs. We accept all levels of students. OUR STAFF STUDIO ARTIST EBON DOOLEY HONOREES

Common Denominator COMMON DENOMINATOR 3rd Annual Exhibition by the Artist of the ArtsXchange Nov. 20, 2021 - Dec. 18, 2021 CURATORS Richard Washington Lisa Tuttle ARTISTS Ugo Agoruah | Jim Alexander | N’Dieye Gray Danavall | Theresa Davis | Tafawa | Rayfield Lewis | Alice Lovelace | Damon Mescudi | Lisa Tuttle | Laura Vela | Ric Washington | Kenneth Zakee All Exhibits

The Haunts of Black Kirby The Haunts of Black Kirby An exhibition of works from the dawn of Afrofuturism Sept 2, 2023 - Oct 28, 2023 CURATORS Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library ARTIST Black Kirby The Haunts of Black Kirby Presented in partnership with the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library Black Kirby—the pseudonym assumed by the acclaimed visual artists and professors, John Jennings and Stacey Robinson—are Alchemists. They take raw materials from black history, hip hop, and comic book mythology and remix them to create new universes, never-before seen technologies, and biting satires about the world we live in today. Each of the Black Kirby images serves as a funky, rare artifact from an alternate universe, fully formed, and autonomous from its earthly origins. The works in this exhibition are on loan from the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W. Woodruff Library. The Haunts of Black Kirby is derived from “The Alchemist’s Notebook: The Satire, Remixes, and Haunts of Black Kirby”, an exhibition organized by the AUC Woodruff Library in 2019. It featured more than fifty digital artworks by Black Kirby and artifacts from the AUC Woodruff Library’s Archives Research Center exploring the topics of Black history, hip-hop, and comic book mythology. Join us for the opening reception and come back for the many surrounding classes and events! EXHIBIT EVENTS: The Haunts of Black Kirby - Opening Reception September 2, 2023, 7:00 – 10:00 PM| ArtsXchange Register Now Community Class: Learn Procreate Software (The Haunts of Black Kirby) September 13, 2023 at 6:00 PM| East Point Register Now Intro to Comic Book Illustration - FREE Community Class September 16, 2023 at 1:00 PM| East Point Register Now Ekphrastic Poetry in the Gallery - FREE Wednesday Writers Workshop September 27, 2023, 7:00 – 8:30 PM| ArtsXchange Register Now Community Discussion: Afrofuturism, Its Relevance in Today's Environment & the P... September 30, 2023 at 4:00 PM| East Point Register Now Afro-Surrealism, the Negritude Movement & the Archival Roots of Afrofuturism - F... October 4, 2023, 5:00 – 7:00 PM| Atlanta University Ctr Woodruff Library Register Now Intermediate Illustration for Adults - FREE Community Class October 7, 2023 at 1:00 PM| East Point Register Now The Process of Creating Afrofuturistic Work - FREE Community Sketching Class October 11, 2023 at 6:00 PM| East Point Register Now Creative Feedback & Career Lab for Projects in Progress - FREE October 14, 2023 at 4:00 PM| East Point Register Now Ekphrastic Poetry in the Gallery - FREE Wednesday Writers Workshop October 25, 2023, 7:00 – 8:30 PM| ArtsXchange Register Now Suspend your disbelief with me for a moment. Imagine the alchemists at work in their lair. Watch as they use a set of rusty tools to handle raw, crude materials and melt them down to more malleable forms. As they carefully mix the isolated substances together, listen as they whisper a forgotten tongue from a dusty leather-bound notebook. When the ritual is over and the notebook has been cast aside into the shadows, you witness the substance start to stir. As it twists and turns in the immense heat, you smell the stench of a hot fusion that breathes life into a new creation, indeed a new element, that has never existed before. This new element is the art of Black Kirby, and this exhibition provides a peek into their notebook of esoteric spells. - Clint Fluker, Ph.D. All Exhibits

Charmaine Minniefield 2021 Ebon Dooley Honoree Economic Justice Champion Alumni Studio Artist Contact@PraiseHouseProject.org https://charmaineminniefield.com/ The work of Artist-Activist Charmaine Minniefield preserves Black narratives as a radical act of social justice. Firmly rooted in womanist social theory and ancestral veneration, her work draws from indigenous traditions as seen throughout Africa and the Diaspora, to explore African and African-American history, memory, and ritual as an intentional push back against erasure. Her creative practice is community-based as her research and resulting bodies of work often draw from the physical archives as she excavates the stories of African-American, women-led resistance and spirituality and power. Minniefield’s recent public works, which include projection mapping and site-specific installation, insight dialogue around race, class, and power. Recent projects include the Remembrance as Resistance: Preserving Black Narratives in Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery which honored the over 800 unmarked graves recently discovered within the African-American Burial Grounds through the multimedia installation of a Praise House. Her Praise House Project went on to receive a prestigious Our Town Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Charmaine’s work is featured in several public and private collections, and as a muralist, her walls can be seen throughout the City of Atlanta and beyond. She was honored by Mercedes Benz as a part of their Greatness Lives Here campaign. She is featured in the 2020 US Census commercial with her recent mural in Brooklyn depicting women who shaped the future. Minniefield recently served as the Stuart A. Rose Library Artist-in-Residence at Emory University through a collaboration with Flux Projects and as the Curator of Elevate for the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. Charmaine has a long history of including other artists in her projects, to share funding opportunities, and to advocate on behalf of artists. Her determination to help artists, especially Black women artists, to become economically visible by sharing resources and opportunities that will help create change is powerful. Charmaine’s brilliance as an artist is unquestionable, but what has earned her this award is her attention to sharing economic opportunities and funding among other artists. This is such a cooperative and collaborative example that deserves special recognition since under capitalism, being an artist is often a solitary and self-promoting life. As a visual artist my work seeks to preserve Black narratives as a radical act of social justice. As an artist-activist, I intentionally push back against erasure, displacement, misrepresentation, and marginalization by reclaiming cultural histories in communities affected by gentrification. My work invokes the power of the ancestors. By creating visual roadmaps from the past to the present, paved by the history and stories, love and heartache, success and failures of the ancestors, it celebrates and calls to the present the wisdom of those who have come before to inspire a new freedom movement today. My work reclaims the stories of the ancestors as social iconography of my generation by creating shrine paintings, which present the ancestors as sacred symbols of freedom. I believe that by reclaiming the stories of our ancestors and by praising and committing to their memory, we will better understand our collective potential and ourselves as a society. OUR STAFF STUDIO ARTIST EBON DOOLEY HONOREES

Interference Interwoven Interference: Interwoven A sculptural look at human interference with nature through weaving by Sally C. Garner (Georgia State University MFA student show) April 4, 2023 - April 14, 2023 CURATOR / ARTIST Sally C. Garner Gerogia State University student Sally C. Garner presents her solo MFA show, Interference: Interwoven. ABOUT THE ARTIST Sally C. Garner is a native of the Southeast, growing up in North Carolina and currently living in Georgia. She has been creating soft sculpture installation works ever since first learning that her love of fiber could inform her sculptural work at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. From a series of art that was first conceived in school, Sally crocheted art installations using non-traditional fibers to create works that incorporate both the nostalgia associated with traditional crocheting and the contemporary appeal for artwork that abstracts metaphors and enchants the senses. After graduating with an BFA in Studio Art, Sculpture in 2013, she continued to live, work, and create art in the mountains of North Carolina until 2020, when she decided to begin graduate school. Sally is currently seeking her MFA in Studio Art, Textiles at Georgia State University, in Atlanta, GA, where she is experimenting in fiber and textile techniques that were previously unavailable to her — weaving, wet-felting, knitting via machine, fabric dying and sewing. Her work is now trying to seek a connection between humanity and the environment, taking a critical eye to the changes we have tried to make so far. Weaving has become the primary tool that she wants to explore this concept with because of its metaphorical connection to knowledge. Interference: Interwoven April 4, 2023 at 10:00 AM| ArtsXchange Register Now All Exhibits

SisterSong 2023 Ebon Dooley Honoree Social Justice Champion info@sistersong.net https://www.sistersong.net SisterSong is a Southern based, national membership organization; our purpose is to build an effective network of individuals and organizations to improve institutional policies and systems that impact the reproductive lives of marginalized communities. SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective was formed in 1997 by 16 organizations of women of color from four mini-communities (Native American, African American, Latina, and Asian American) who recognized that we have the right and responsibility to represent ourselves and our communities, and the equally compelling need to advance the perspectives and needs of women of color. OUR STAFF STUDIO ARTIST EBON DOOLEY HONOREES

ARTiculate ATLanta 2024 Ebon Dooley Honoree - Economic Justice Champion Contact - ARTiculate ATLanta https://www.articulateatl.org For more than a decade, ARTiculate ATLanta has provided local, emerging artists with a professional environment to show and sell their artwork. Founded by Courtney Ware Lett, Brandon Ball, and Esohe and George Galbreath, the mission of ARTiculate ATLanta is to promote and market the various forms of traditional and modern artistic expression inherent in Black culture with events that connect artists and art collectors, creating a network that will expand and strengthen the art community. OUR STAFF STUDIO ARTIST EBON DOOLEY HONOREES

1a16f8d0-d5d0-47b5-bd97-7339911ae009 PRESS ArtsXchange celebrates 40 years of cultivating community March 10, 2024 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ARTSXCHANGE 40TH ANNIVERSARY artsxchange.org CONTACT: Angela Oliver, media@artsxchange.org , 404-624-4211 ArtsXchange celebrates 40 years of cultivating community Year of events to reflect organization’s historical influence, impact on Atlanta arts scene EAST POINT, Ga. — The ArtsXchange has amplified a quiet corner of East Point since 2017. But its roots in Atlanta go back to 1984 and its reach now spans 40 years of cultivating community, whether as a lobbying arm for public arts funding, a launching pad for now celebrated artists, or a creative home for legends to learners. “The ArtsXchange is a living example of the power of artists to create their own destiny,” said co-founder and Executive Director Alice Lovelace. The 40th anniversary theme, based on its facade mural, Cultivating Community by Charity Hamidullah, honors the ArtsXchange’s commitment to grassroots community building and celebrates its fruitful history that is often overlooked. That history will be commemorated in various ways, including A Room of Her Own, an exhibition of women artists with current or past studios here, May 5-June 22; homecoming weekend June 7-9; the annual fundraiser Sept. 21; and the 7th Annual Ebon Dooley Arts & Social Justice Awards Dec. 7. “There are so many artists who helped to make the last 40 years possible,” Lovelace said. “We could not see 40 years into the future, so this year is a monument to those people who did what was needed every day, one day at a time.” The ArtsXchange is home to many firsts in Atlanta’s rich cultural story. Many artists grew to prominence in their former studios, including Kevin Cole, Rocio Rodriquez, and Charmaine Minniefield. Master artists like Jim Alexander and Lisa Tuttle still create from their studios here every day. The vision of late activist, scholar, poet and organizer Ebon Dooley, the ArtsXchange changed the dynamic of the Atlanta arts scene when the original Arts Exchange opened in Grant Park in 1984. Dooley, alongside Lovelace, answered the need for a multiethnic, multidisciplinary and socially engaged arts Center. “This place allowed me to define my own world and influenced my thinking about community, culture, and the power of art,” said cultural worker and Board President Cheryl Johnson, who took dance classes and performed there as a teen. “Even when the roof was leaking and the wood floors needed work, it still felt safe. It was always a place to be uniquely ourselves, whatever that meant to each of us.” For 40 years, the ArtsXchange has been a point of creative exchange for artists, activists, and long- silenced community voices. With a range of free and low-cost offerings, it keeps the arts inclusive and accessible in an industry that can be exclusive. Through its performance spaces and exhibits, it remains an uplifter of emerging and marginalized creatives. And with its sprawling community garden, meaningful partnerships, and active role in its new East Point neighborhood, the ArtsXchange remains a leader in applying the arts to solutions for social issues from food security and health equity, to economic opportunities and cultural preservation. “We are an institution built by, for, and with working artists and the community we serve,” said Lovelace.“We are still the place where aspiring artists can find a home and other artists to support them. That gives me hope that another 40 years is possible.” DOWNLOAD THE PDF Press Contact Angela Oliver media@artsXchange.org She/Her

Roselyn Lewis 2022 Ebon Dooley Honoree Bridge Builder https://www.urbanharp.org/bio Roselyn Lewis’ decades as a music educator has built bridges for Black children in Atlanta Public Schools by introducing them to the harp, opera, handbells, and other musical fields in which they are traditionally underrepresented. As co-founder and executive director of the Urban Youth Harp Ensemble , which was founded in 2000 during her years as a choral music teacher at Brown Middle School, her encouragement has inspired career paths for now-professional musicians, such as Mason Morton, one of her first harp students, who is now on tour as a member of “America’s Got Talent” runners-up Sons of Serendip . Lewis retired as choral music teacher in APS after a stellar career spanning 40 years. OUR STAFF STUDIO ARTIST EBON DOOLEY HONOREES