Anne Herbert is a painter and educator living in Birmingham, Alabama. Anne received her BFA in Painting from the University of Montevallo in 2007, and her MFA from the University of Alabama in 2013. Anne teaches in the Visual Art Department at the Alabama School of Fine Arts where she also serves as director for the Vulcan Materials Gallery. Anne exhibits regularly throughout the southeast, her recent activities include Homily for a Pink Moon, a two-person exhibition at the Gadsden Museum of Art, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, a group exhibition at Nature Of Things in Dallas, TX; Ways of the Circle, a solo exhibition, at Room 412, in Birmingham, AL in 2024; inclusion in the MEPAINTSME 2023 Open Call on their website; Nocturne, at Brackett Creek Editions, NYC curated by Fuel and Lumber in 2022; and Whistle A Map, a solo exhibition at Ground Floor Contemporary in Birmingham, AL in 2022.

anneherbertpaintings.com

Emily Rice (b. 1993, Birmingham, AL) is a multidisciplinary artist based in the Southern US. Growing up and living in the South, its landscapes and histories consistently enter their practice with motifs and materiality. Rice explores material agency, sustainable relationships, hybridized language, and hopeful dreaming through a queer lens. With drawing, painting, digital media, sculpture, and installation, they elevate materials into new realms depending on perceived connections between sites and objects. Investigating and reshaping materials is their method for transfiguration and a way to gather time together. Their works are manifestations of a believed and beloved reality, examining the fascia between relationships. Rice earned their MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. They received a BFA in Art and Spanish from Birmingham-Southern College and studied Advanced Liberal Arts at the Universitat de Barcelona. Recent exhibitions and research include Capricornus with Jules Jackson at the St. Andrews Center (2025), IMPETUS curated by Maritza Bautista at Laredo College (2025), Riddles of the Ground with Sandra Amoabeng at Texas A&M International University (2025), Gleaning the Spirit at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture (2023), Givens at the Candoro Marble Building (2022), and installation work as a Fulbright Creative Research Scholar to learn more about their Honduran heritage (2023-2024). Emily currently lives between Tennessee and Texas where they make art and teach Painting and Drawing at Texas A&M International University.

emilyriceart.com

tldr: Verena Raban is a Series-LXXXVII Replicant from the storm-swarmed planet Saturn09. She writes & draws poems & punks & flowers. 

Verena Raban (b. 1987, Los Angeles) is a writer and mixed-media artist currently based in Birmingham, AL. Most often beginning with a word or phrase, then moving on to more concrete articulations, she uses poetry, with its inherently capacious quality—the embodiment of sound, rhythm, image, and language—as the foundation for her visual practice. Emanating from the Void of isolation and despair created by the seemingly inescapable experience of existential finitude, she wonders about the possibility of connection and intimacy between consciousnesses, from the simplest of greetings or quiet admissions, to the mysteries of automatism, to what Other might be discovered in a state of enstranged alienation, if any. Her work moves between that which attempts to convey the ineffable aspects of affinity, those moments that exist in the symbolic realms of spirit and emotion, and the representational beings experiencing those states, her Characters of Ennui.

debrisfromthevoid.com

William A. Lawler is a visual artist and professor, who is currently based in Northport, Alabama. His practice is concerned with experimentation, the alchemy of paint, and the passing of time. Through a unique process, his paintings are brought to life over lengthy periods of time in the studio. Rich surfaces are built up using traditional and nontraditional methods, tools, and materials. A process of creation and destruction allows him the opportunity to explore the unknown tensions and boundaries within the context of art history. This manner of working creates a visually engaging painting touching on the familiar and the unfamiliar.

Lawler received his BFA from Athens State University his, Post-Baccalaureate from Brandeis University, and his MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Ground Floor Gallery,(Brooklyn NY), Blue Mark Gallery, (Atlanta, GA), Lorimoto Gallery, (Queens, NY), 500X Gallery, (Dallas TX), and Larry Becker Contemporary Art, (Philadelphia, PA). He is associated with Larry Becker Contemporary Art.

instagram.com/williamalawler

Mary Anne Arntzen (b. Riverside, CA) is a painter based in Birmingham, AL. Her work explores the narrative potential of abstraction through layered compositions that reference architecture, textiles, and cartoons. Arntzen holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in Painting from Boston University. She has exhibited widely, with recent solo exhibitions including Overshot at Bradley University (IL) and Funny HAHA at Gettysburg College (PA). Group exhibitions include Soft Power at Pazo Fine Art (DC) and Incongruent Animation at Mono Practice (MD), as well as shows at the Walters Art Museum (MD), The Painting Center (NYC), St. Charles Project (MD), and Resort Gallery (MD).

She is a recipient of the Bethesda Painting Prize and the Maryland State Arts Council’s Individual Artist Award in Painting and was nominated for the Joan Mitchell Painting and Sculpture Prize. Her work has been reviewed in The Baltimore City Paper and featured in Inertia Studio Visits. Arntzen has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and the Wassaic Project. From 2013 to 2020, she served on the advisory committee for ICA Baltimore, curating three exhibitions. In addition to teaching painting and drawing at the Maryland Institute College of Art, George Washington University, and the Community College of Baltimore County, she worked as a conservation technician for textiles at the Baltimore Museum of Art from 2019 to 2023.

https://www.maryannearntzen.com/

Shori Sims is a multidisciplinary artist whose work navigates the blurred thresholds between subject, object, history, and the body. Through installation and time-based performance, they explore themes of containment, surveillance, and the meaning of selfhood in the 21st century. Grounded in their lived experience, Shori’s practice makes use of the ephemeral and domestic to trouble the line between public display and private ritual. Receiving their MFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2024, they have exhibited work across galleries, academic, and community spaces, including in Brooklyn, London, and Toronto. Shori is also a dedicated educator, bringing a critically engaged, care-centered approach to their teaching practice.

shorisims.net

Elizabeth Russell is an American artist living between Prague, Czech Republic and Birmingham, Alabama. She received her BFA from the University of Montevallo in 1983 and was later awarded a 3-year fellowship to the University of Illinois in Champaign, where she received her MFA in 1990.

Russell’s exhibitions in the U.S. and Prague have included video installations, photography, painting, collage, and stop-motion animation. Her work has been shown in private galleries, film festivals, and public museums. It is included in many private collections as well as the Krannert Museum permanent collection in Champaign, Illinois.


Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she brings a Southern sense of brooding and sometimes romantic surrealism, influenced by writers such as Flannery O'Connor and Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez. Her work is a study of humanity and its strewn landscape of misery and exultation through the ages. Nature is our silent observer in her many forms. Russell’s paintings and small sculptures address the delicate balance between survival and extinction, capturing the fragility of endangered species threatened by human encroachment, and the vulnerability of women confronted by systemic oppression. It is a deep dive into the chaos that churns our souls and mystifies our reasoning.

https://elizabethrussellart.com/

Matthew Barton is a sculptor and ceramicist whose works consists primarily of found object sculptures and coil-built vessels. Using irregular pattern and mark-making, his work explores concepts of meditation, religion, labor, and forgiveness. Barton was born and raised in north central Alabama and received his BFA in 2015 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and his MFA in 2018 from Louisiana State University. Since then, Barton has taught at Tulane University and Southeastern Louisiana University and has been a fellow at the National Gallery of Art and an artist in residence at Haystack Mountain School of Craft. He currently lives in Birmingham, AL

instagram.com/barton_works

Sarah Bell is an artist, farmer, and educator based in Birmingham, Alabama. Descended from Chinese and American ancestry, she grew up using art and creativity as a way to find a sense of connection to her experiences of grief, familial emigration, and home.

She has presented work throughout Alabama, including Shelby County Arts Council, Kentuck Museum Gallery, Ground Floor Contemporary, and regularly teaches workshops at Alabama Folk School, MAKEbhm, and at other spaces.

I am a visual artist based in Birmingham, Alabama. As a full-time farmer, I am in constant collaboration with land, place, and the natural world. The daily repetition, intuitive experimentation, and familiar challenges of stewarding land extends and iterates into fabric collages, vine sculptures, basket weaving, and knotwork. As I farm and as I make art, I become both an expression of my ancestors and a purveyor of alternate realities.

https://www.sarahemilybell.com/

Annieo Klaas grew up in Dakar, Senegal and is based in Birmingham, Alabama. She holds a PharmD from Auburn University, a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington, and works as a Nuclear Pharmacist.

Klaas’s work has been exhibited at the Mobile Museum of Art (AL), the LaGrange Art Museum (GA), the Alabama Contemporary Art Center (AL), Field Projects Gallery (NY), Warnes Contemporary (NY), Sophiella Gallery (AL), K Space Contemporary (TX), and the Intersect Arts Center (St Louis, MO). Her work has been featured in several publications, including New American Paintings (South Issue 178) and Booooooom’s Tomorrow’s Talent.

Klaas’s paintings operate within the quiet pulse of magical realism, where the ordinary becomes enchanted. Her most recent motif of a sunlit window softened by gauzy curtains grounds the viewer in a familiar domestic setting, yet the scenes shimmer with an otherworldly quality. Radiant colors bleed across surfaces, and the layering of light, shadow, and foliage suggests a reality subtly heightened, vibrating just beyond the logical. Like the literary tradition of magical realism, Klaas doesn’t abandon the real; instead, she infuses it with wonder, illuminating the poetic strangeness that lives in plain sight. Her treatment of light is less about optics than emotion, rendered with a dreamlike clarity that feels both tender and uncanny. More than just windows, they are thresholds, inviting the viewer to dwell in the thin space between presence and imagination.

www.annieoklaas.com

Serena Perrone (b. 1979, St. Louis, MO) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Atlanta since 2019. She received her M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and is an Associate Professor of Drawing, Painting and Printmaking at Georgia State University, where she also serves as the Head of Printmaking. Her work is included in numerous permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has received grants from South Arts, Idea Capital, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and was nominated for a Pew Fellowship in Philadelphia in 2017. Solo exhibitions of note include the Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking (Austin), Spring/Break Art Fair (New York), Cade Tompkins Projects (Providence), the Print Center (Philadelphia), and the Contemporary Art Museum (St. Louis). Serena serves as the Director of Officina Stamperia del Notaio, an international multidisciplinary artists' residency program and printmaking studio in Sicily, which she founded in 2015. Her work is represented by Cade Tompkins Projects in Providence, RI and she looks forward to forging new relationships and reaching new audiences as a member of Ground Floor Contemporary.

As a dual-citizen who splits her time between the the United States and Italy, a large part of her practice aims at reconciling a tacit and circumspect desire to filter stories and landscapes through a reflexively nostalgic and mythic lens. Her multidisciplinary practice uses landscape and natural phenomena as metaphor to uncover hidden stories, preserve fleeting moments, and explore symptoms of dislocation, relying heavily on printmaking and the decorative arts.

www.serenaperrone.com

Misty Bennett is a Professor of Art who teaches painting at the University of Montevallo. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Drawing and Painting from the University of Georgia. She teaches all levels and media of painting classes and directs the concentration in painting as well as serving as Chair of the Department of Art. Her work has been exhibited across the southeast, most recently in the Alabama State Council for the Arts Gallery in Montgomery, the Red Clay Survey at the Huntsville Museum of Art, Lowe Mill in Huntsville, and the Tennessee Valley Art Museum. It is also featured in collections including the Carmichael Library, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the College of Osteopathic Medicine in Dothan, Alabama, and the President’s Collection at the University of Georgia. Her abstract paintings are inspired by the expressive power of color and texture and explore the concept of food as a metaphor for American culture. In her paintings she celebrates the textures, shapes, and surfaces of everyday foods while exploring the dark side of consumerist culture. She lives in Vestavia Hills, Alabama with her husband and two children.

www.mistybennett.com

Bethany Moody (she/they, b. 1989) is an educator and artist whose practice combines fiber, painting and sculptural techniques to interrogate ideas of community, domesticity, sustainability and the built environment. Trained as a printmaker, Moody’s process-oriented practice centers repetition, accumulation and maintenance.  Currently based in Alabama, Moody holds a BFA and MFA from the University of Montevallo and the University at Buffalo, SUNY, respectively.

Universities, art spaces, galleries, community spaces and DIY venues across North America have held solo and group exhibitions of Moody’s work, including COOP gallery (Nashville, TN), the Waiting Room (Minneapolis, MN), Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY), Collar Works (Troy, NY), The Overlook Place (Chicago, IL), and Little Berlin (Philadelphia, PA). Cornelia, Sculpture Magazine and Architectural Digest are among the publications that have featured Moody’s work. Moody has received numerous grants and awards for their work; most recently, Moody was honored with the Best in Fine Art Crafts award as part of Shelby County Arts Council’s Robin Nance Metz juried exhibition (2024). In addition to prior residencies, Moody is currently Artist-in-Residence at Studio By The Tracks (SBTT).

In 2020, Moody co-founded Studio Support Group, a virtual network for artists resisting art world competition and scarcity. Locally, Moody has led workshops at SBTT, Space One Eleven and Ground Floor Contemporary, in addition to doing arts outreach as the 2023 Visiting Craft Educator for Jefferson County High Schools. Currently, Moody is an Instructor of Foundations at the University of Alabama.

www.cargocollective.com/annmoody

Renee Hanan Plata, an Alabama native, received her BFA from Atlanta College of Art, MFA from Tyler School of Art, and MSEd from Bankstreet College. Renee maintained a painting studio in New York for twenty years and joined a group of abstract painters represented in the exhibition Painting Up Front at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, curated by Thomas Leavitt. Plata’s work draws vigorously on the genre of geometric abstraction and her methodology often employs a minimalist approach. Her paintings are grounded by and play with the fundamental elements of art – color, form, line, and texture.

www.reneehananplata.com

Meg Howton is a mixed-media artist with a background in ceramics. Her work challenges conventional notions of beauty through unconventional means, employing both found and crafted materials to create sculptures that evoke comfort and explore visually tactile experiences. The interplay of color and texture in Howton’s sculptures achieves a harmonious visual coherence that draws viewers into a compelling sensory experience. Howton holds a BFA in Ceramics and Photography from the University of Alabama and completed a post-baccalaureate program at the University of Florida before earning her MFA in Ceramics from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Currently based in Tuscaloosa, Howton serves as an Instructor of Ceramics at The University of Alabama.

www.meghowton.com

Catherine Nelson is a visual artist originally from Louisiana, but has lived across the West, South, and East of the US as well as Rome, IT. Her work integrates both found and made fragments into wall-based installations, rethinking the power dynamic between artist and materials, and more generally between humans and our environment, though always with a healthy dose of visual pleasure in mind. She has exhibited internationally in venues including Redline Contemporary Art Center (Denver), Antenna Gallery (New Orleans), and Philobiblon Gallery (Rome). Her work is part of the collection of the Print and Picture Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia, and residencies include the Vermont Studio Center and Women’s Studio Workshop. Nelson is currently pursuing an MFA in Installation and Performance at the University of Connecticut and co-produces the digital artist residency Southern Heat Exchange.

www.catherinetnelson.com

Elisabeth Pellathy works in a variety of mediums, responding to locations, history, and social context. She sees physical and digital manipulation of material as parallel processes. An open dialogue between these realms provides a generative space for her exploration of materiality and process. Tactile and digital act as metaphors for the complexity of the space in-between, the slippage of the moment.

Her work has been exhibited at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello, Venice, IT (2019), Booth Museum, Royal Pavilion and Museums, UK (2018), Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, USA (2018), Alfred Ceramics Art Museum, USA (2017), Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture, USA (2017), Currents New Media, USA (2016), Unicorn Center for Art, China (2016) and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, USA (2011).

https://vimeo.com/elisabethpellathy

Sarah West is an artist whose work examines our persistent desire to be transported by visual means and explores ways the spiritual realm has been represented in the past and today. Her recent body of work aligns Early Renaissance painting compositions and digital spaces in their shared role as dream space/site of spiritual quests. The resulting paintings evoke a divine encounter, reflecting on both the religious subject matter referenced in Renaissance sources and the mystical aura surrounding new technologies. West was featured in the South 2016 edition of the juried art publication New American Paintings. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art from Wake Forest University and an MFA from Clemson University. She has taught painting and drawing courses at Clemson University and Columbus State University and currently lives and works in Birmingham, AL.

www.thesarahwest.com

Rebecca Tully Fulmer is a mixed-media artist using a combination of various techniques in collage, assemblage, printmaking, photography, and fiber. Her work explores themes of spatiality, movement, and memory. She has an undergraduate degree in Interior Design from the Auburn University School of Architecture and studied classical ballet for many years, both of which still influence her work. Her primary source, though, comes from her time spent on Mobile Bay, where the natural beauty is a constant source of inspiration. Rebecca lives and works between Point Clear and Birmingham, Alabama.

www.rebeccatullyfulmer.art

Sara Garden Armstrong is a visual artist whose creative practice spans
a wide range of mediums and techniques, from large site-specific sculpture
to artist’s books. Her work addresses organic change and transformation
while exploring properties of materials, resulting in nature-based biomorphic abstraction. Layered two-dimensional work is at the root of her practice. The sculptural installations often incorporate video projection and sound, and focus on life processes such as breathing and support systems of the body. Recurrent themes are water, time, and shifts of reality, with their elements of chance and change.

Armstrong received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and a Master of Art Education from UAB. A past recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation CALL (Creating a Living Legacy), Armstrong’s national and international exhibition record extends over a period of more than 40 years. Her artist’s books can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others. Former atrium commissions have focused on scientific phenomena and their interactions with the human condition.

A monograph—SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers—was published in 2020, revealing the influences and concepts that run through her diverse body of work. Its publication coincided with a three-state traveling exhibition of the same name, incorporating site-specific work.

After living in New York City for 36 years, in 2017 she returned to Birmingham, Alabama where she currently lives and works.

www.saragardenarmstrong.net

Annie Kammerer Butrus is a Birmingham-based artist who received her MFA from the University of Notre Dame in Painting and Printmaking and her undergraduate degree in Studio Art from Wellesley College. Butrus has exhibited her work nationally in galleries and museums and has been awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Alabama State Council of the Arts. Butrus is interested in the intersection of place, landscape, and memory and is currently involved in a study of the earth’s surface by portraying star wounds as well as creating garden biographies. She is deeply moved by the stories that shadows tell by capturing time and place, functioning as a contemporary memento-mori.

www.akbutrus.com

Jennifer Marshall is a visual artist and curator who works primarily within the boundaries of film and camera conceptual projects, and her overt focus is often the materiality and temporality of film. Born in Ojai, California, and raised in Bakersfield and Los Angeles, she received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is pursuing an MLIS in Archival Studies at The University of Alabama. Currently, Marshall is the Gallery Director at Ground Floor Contemporary, produces the visual arts exhibitions program at the Hoover Public Library, and lives and works in Birmingham, AL.

www.jenniferlgmarshall.com

Miriam Omura’s practice includes textiles, ceramics, and alternative photographic methods. Her material processes are guided by a research practice of delving into newspaper archives, genealogy, and other resources about her subjects. Exploring themes of personal and community loss, Omura navigates the known and unknown details surrounding missing and unidentified individuals. Her art invites an exploration of the intersections of materiality, history, and emotion. Omura holds a BFA in Fiber and Material Studies and a MA in History and Art History.

www.miriamomura.com

Patty B. Driscoll is a visual artist that utilizes traditional genres and processes such as the still life, water gilding, metalwork, and textiles – layering her work with subtle narratives and subject matter that investigate the context of the feminine/feminist identity. Her work is a dialogue with historical pathways, iconography, and the symbolism of women, challenging implicit societal representations and inculcated cultural values. Driscoll received her MFA from the California College of Arts after completing her undergraduate work in Studio Art and Art History at Skidmore College. She lives and works in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama.

www.pattybdriscoll.com

Anita Gómez-Ronderos is a multimedia artist that works within a wide range of media and genres, including abstract and representational painting, collage, and hand-made paper. She was born in Colombia and moved to Birmingham in 1962. She studied Art and Art History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. After moving to Birmingham, she became active in the arts community and was one of the original members of the 21st Street Studios.

Chiharu Roach is from Nagoya, Japan where she earned a degree with an emphasis on child psychology. After moving to Birmingham in 2001 and getting her BFA from the University of Alabama in Birmingham, she began painting with acrylic paint and her tangled hair series, in which she explores the spiritual connection between humans and their range of behaviors and emotions. Chi often portrays cultural differences and stereotypes between Japan and America based on her experiences from living in both countries. At Ground Floor Contemporary, Chi is challenging herself to use 2D, 3D art, and mixed media to express themes of memories, spirituality, loss, and humanity.

instagram.com/chiroach

Elaine Farley Kinnaird is a Birmingham native who graduated from the Alabama School of Fine Arts, receiving the Senior Artist Award, and graduated from Birmingham Southern College, majoring in Art History with a minor in Art and receiving a Senior Art Award. She then received her MFA in Fiber Art in 2014 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. In 2015, she participated in the Cultural Reservation Podere Conte Ràcani–Sculptor Residency Program in Umbria, Italy, and in 2018, she received a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

efkinnaird.com

Tara Stallworth Lee makes photographs, paper, books, and collages. Expansion of human dignity and the significance of the natural world are important themes throughout all of her work. Tara received her BS in Psychology and Minor in Art from Birmingham-Southern College. She taught specialty art classes to youth for The Smithsonian Associates summer camp program for nearly twenty years. Tara is an artist-collaborator at Studio By The Tracks in Birmingham, a studio and gallery for adult artists with autism, and an instructor for the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project. She is the 2021/22 recipient of the Alabama State Council on the Arts Gay Burke Fellowship in Photographic Arts. Lee lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama where she is an art educator and a resident artist at Ground Floor Contemporary.

www.tarastallworthlee.com

Leah Karol is a portrait photographer and digital artist from Birmingham, Alabama. She has honed her craft using various film processes with vintage manual cameras and transitioned into the digital age to incorporate contemporary photographic technologies. Her latest work is entirely digital, using color, texture, drawings, and found images to deconstruct and explore the emotional impact of our recent political and social climate in abstract forms. She holds a BFA from Auburn University.

Catharine Friend is an artist and painter who lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama. Friend works within a wide range of styles and genres, such as figurative, landscape, and abstraction. She received a BA from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, where she studied French and Art History and began painting full-time in 2001 after retiring from non-profit work. Friend paints and studies art extensively while working in her Crestline studio, taking workshops, and collaborating with fellow artists.