The Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Georgine Clarke Alabama Artists Gallery is currently showcasing the work of eight Fellowship artists.

The 2022 Fellowship cohort and exhibiting artists are Stacey Holloway (visual arts), Tara Stallworth Lee (media/photography), Charlie “Tin Man” Lucas (visual arts), Kelsey Harrison Ianuzzi (media/photography), Leanna Leithauser-Lesley (craft), Bryce Lafferty (visual arts), Celestia Morgan (media/photography), and Melissa Yes (media/photography).

Stacey Holloway, Visual Arts Fellow, uses animal imagery and storytelling to promote societal connectivity and instill morals, similar to Aesop's Fables. Holloway received her MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2009, her BFA from Herron School of Art and Design/IUPUI in 2006, and has been living and working in Birmingham, Alabama, since 2013. She currently serves as the Associate Professor of Sculpture at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Tara Stallworth Lee, Media & Photography Fellow, has worked with Alabama musicians, including this series on Daniel "Jose" Carr, to document happenings around our state. Lee is originally from Beatrice, Alabama. In 1992, Tara received her bachelor's degree in Psychology and minor in Art from Birmingham-Southern College. Since2015, she has been a resident artist at 21st Street Studios and Ground Floor Contemporary. For nearly twenty years, Tara has enjoyed traveling to Washington, DC, to teach specialty art classes to youth for The Smithsonian Associates summer camp program.

Charlie "Tin Man" Lucas, Visual Arts Fellow, often sculpts with found metal and creates work to help him communicate what words cannot. Lucas creates his sculptures as friends or "toys" who he mentors and who Lucas has interact with each other and their environment. He is a descendant of six generations of craftspeople. His mother and grandmother were skilled quilters and ceramicists, while his maternal grandfather and great-grandfather were blacksmiths. In fact, his great-grandfather, King Lucas, made sculptures of his own from discarded metal. Lucas studied blacksmithing and metal works, in general, with his grandfather.

Kelsey Harrison Ianuzzi, Media & Photography Fellow, works across media to explore themes of memory, process, transformation as certainty, the joy and conflict of human experience, natural interconnectedness, and the ordinary made marvelous. Ianuzzi has over a decade of commercial and editorial visual storytelling experience. She is currently a producer for monograph, an ongoing documentary series for Alabama Public Television dedicated to covering creative forces throughout the state.

Leanna Leithauser-Lesley, Craft Fellow, is an avid needle pointer motivated by the power of jazz music, the perseverance of the Civil Rights movement, and an intention to elevate the perception of needlepoint as an art form through the complexity of stitching portraits. She creates each portrait freehand, working from bottom-left to top-right of each likeness she recreates. Leithauser-Lesley has exhibited her distinct portraits in museums, galleries, and cultural art centers throughout the United States.

Bryce Lafferty, Visual Arts Fellow, is enamored by the abundant variety of living things and geologic features to be discovered in the Southeast, and his work explores topography and geology. He is an Associate Professor at Jacksonville State University, where he teaches drawing and painting. Although originally from the Northeast and having received his MFA from the University of North Texas, Bryce currently lives in Alabama with his four children.

Celestia Morgan, Media & Photography Fellow, incorporates sculpture, map-making, and community engagement into her photography and video work to explore systemic racism through racial zoning practices and environmental injustice. Morgan is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Alabama in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and featured in the New York Times, Lenscratch, Bitter Southerner, and Burnaway, among others.

Melissa Yes, Media & Photography Fellow, tackles ambitious multimedia projects that form the gravitational center of her practice, which also sustains an orbit of smaller experiments in video, painting, and sculpture. She currently works as the program coordinator at the UAB Department of Art + Art History and is the co-founder and co-director of a contemporary art nonprofit, Vinegar.

Free and open to the public Monday – Friday from 8 am – 5 pm. Visit us on the first floor of the RSA Tower, located in downtown Montgomery at 201 Monroe Street, Suite 110.

For more information, please contact Gallery Manager Amy Jenkins at 334-242-5150 or amy.jenkins@arts.alabama.gov.