The CCHP Artist-in-Studio provides visual artists with free long term studio spaces, exhibition opportunities, and professional development. In exchange, each of the selected artists completes youth outreach through TCP's Community Arts Program (CAP). The studios are located at Guardian Studios (2023), The Goat Farm Arts Center (2024) and M Street Lofts in Atlanta, Georgia. Two alternates receive promotional and career support while more accommodations are procured during each residency term.

Alex Mari

My interdisciplinary performance work is an extension of my life. The unraveled concepts are both personal and political. I explore ideas that impact my experience as a black-asian, AFAB, genderqueer humxn. What drives me is the fundamental understanding that although my identity intersections are diverse, I am a part of a wider underbelly of people with similar frustrations, joys, fears, and aspirations. It is for these communities that I continue to create.

I choose a future that is new, flexible, and yet to come. My current work borrows similar concepts from nihilism, black futurism, butoh, and my own ancestral research as wild womxn. I force voids, attempt ruptures, and address the landscape of the body as an everflowing extension of our mother. These concepts serve as an entrypoint to destroy the white heteronormative status quo through a liminal process of fantastical narrative, duration, sound, becoming-trickster, instruction and ritual, objects and tasks, video, installation and digital ephemera.

Alex Mari is an interdisciplinary performance artist from Atlanta. They received their MFA from SCAD-Atlanta and have shown work across Atlanta including MINT Gallery, whitespec, The Bakery, ACA Sculpture Gallery and Mason Murer Fine Art. They have performed in the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival in 2013 and in Yellow Fish Durational Performance Art Festival in 2018 (Seattle) and 2020-21 (NYC). They have also performed and shown work internationally in Berlin, London, Monrovia, Fez, Beijing and completed a residency in Puri, India. They are a 2020 Foundation of Contemporary Arts Grant awardee and recently finished a Fellowship with Emory University’s Arts and Social Justice Fellows Program in 2022. Mari continues her conceptual practice as a 2023-2025 Artist-in-Studio resident with The Creative’s Project in Atlanta.

Aysha Pennerman

Impacting lives through my creative practice is my mission. As a graphic designer, painter, and muralist, I combine my skills to create inspirational messages and imagery to empower communities and show them in a colorful and beautiful light.

Influenced by silhouette art of a couple of my favorite artists, Aaron Douglas & Kara Walker. My current focus has been on painting single- and multi-toned silhouette figures using lines and colors. With a black contemporary semi-abstract twist, it’s an ongoing exploration of how textures, lines, and color can draw the viewer in.

​​Aysha Pennerman’s art is a light in the world, turning what’s ordinary or overlooked into a colorful and culturally relevant source of pride. The Atlanta-based artist has been exploring the arts since childhood: sketching cartoon characters while her mom did her hair, drawing flowers with her grandmother, and watching her aunt make black dolls. 

In college, Aysha served as the design editor for Georgia State University’s newspaper, designed books and other graphics for the APEX Museum, and assisted Chloe x Halle with design projects for their competition in Radio Disney’s Next Big Thing (which they won).

After graduating with a B.A. in Fine Arts and working in the corporate world, she realized her calling to impact through her art. Aysha took a leap of faith and transitioned to full-time freelancing as an artist.

Combining more than 10 years as a graphic design artist with her paintings on murals and canvases, Aysha’s current work uses lines, textures, silhouette figures and portraitures to inspire. From back when she rebranded The Signal into a first-place, award-winning college newspaper to her present-day public and commissioned artwork, Aysha has a long history of making people proud of who they are and where they’re from through art.

Charity Hamidullah

Growing up in a multicultural home with an array of beliefs, I was honored to learn young the power of love and diversity. Since a youth, my family always strived to instill the values of growing community and finding similarities amongst our differences. My creative practice acts as a reflection to the impact my childhood upbringing has had upon my art and the intentions which live within my visual stories. With the utilization of youthful pallets, intuitive lines, abstract strokes and familiar figures; a variety of narratives of growth, connection and empowerment are told with undertones of love to inspire and uplift viewers.

Charity Hamidullah is a multi-disciplinary artist from Rochester, New York currently creating in Atlanta, Georgia. Through the exploration of daily life as well as environments; Hamidullah utilizes the power of art to dive deeper into her purpose and connect with others. 

By way of creativity, Charity embraces her vibrant cultural differences and upbringing to create visual narratives that many can relate to. Her colorful pallets are full of emotion, and life; symbolic of the diversity which co-exist in her story. From powerful abstract lines to impactful imagery, Charity unveils chapters of growth, self-discovery and empowerment. 

From viewing pieces, it is undeniable that Hamidullah truly travels through her art as she examines different techniques, canvases and mediums. But, no matter the style or approach; it is always made with love and the intention to inspire. 

Gabi Madrid

When I was young, I thought that one day that I would find the one medium that would be my own, but as the Wheel of Fortune turns, I have found that I am an artist with the desire to explore many mediums. I let the concept determine the medium which can range from new media installation, found objects, earthworks, papermache, collage and reclaimed materials such as wood and metal.

     An introspective search into my own life growing up and an exploration of the trauma I experienced led to different creative ideas. The emergence of the series “This House, This Home”, came to me after many uneasy months and years of consistently moving my home and studio. The work allowed me to explore the idea about what does the word “home” mean as well as inviting the audience to evaluate their own relationship to the word and meaning of “home”.

    My interest in healing trauma, not only in my life, but in other people’s lives has been the center of their work in recent years. The work “Memento Vivere” meaning remember to live, came after my first encounter with the death and my experience with sexual assault. The book sculptures were a way for me to channel my grief, frustration, and anger. The book sculptures served to process the events that happened and to find solace in the experiences. 

     When the pandemic hit, it disrupted my entire life, I had to leave my job, move out of my house and studio. I moved back home to be with my family and the feeling like I had lost everything I had worked for lingered for months. I found peace in the art of meditative wrapping, as a self-soothing way to ground myself to the earth as well as all the flora and fauna in the environment. I began wrapping trees with rope as a visual representation of the connection between all living beings.

    With all the political unrest in the recent years, the new media installation “Euphony” was an interactive exploration of how does one find peace in chaos? With more than 100 speakers and special software to generate drum sounds and patterns based on movement within the space, it invited viewers to find how they impact the world around them.

     I’m constantly observing the world around me and learning more about what it means to be a spiritual being having a human experience. When I’m taking a break from introspective work or artwork, I might be practicing divination, learning to read palms, or listening to the Earth.

Gabi Madrid is a multi-disciplinary artist, intuitive, and creative fabricator in the city of Atlanta, GA, with a background in metal fabrication, woodworking, and installation. The artist has always been guided by their intuition, thus, their approach to art has always been based around the medium or concept that “calls” to them. Madrid began collecting artifacts and found objects at an early age which started their assemblage work. The mediums they work with range from new media installation, found objects, earthworks, papermache, collage and reclaimed materials such as wood and metal. 

     With Muscogee Creek heritage but being raised outside of the tribe and in the deep South created a diaspora which has led to a constant searching for connection to tradition and spirituality. An exploration of sexuality and queer identity in school was coupled with severe depression and suicidal ideation in early adolescence. However, those experiences guided the artist on an existential journey to explore healing of generational patterning, societal roles, and the collective unconscious. An introspective search into their own past and trauma led to the emergence of various series.

Madrid graduated in 2019 from The Savannah College of Art & Design after studying at both the Atlanta and Savannah campus. Working with local artists, like William Massey and Corrina Sephora, granted them experience in writing grants/proposals, woodworking, metal fabrication, and public art installation.  Their work was included in a group show at the Zuckerman Museum of Art – Fine Arts Gallery and exhibited at the Palazzo Ca’ Zanardi in Venice, Italy.  As part of Elevate Atlanta their sculpture was publicly displayed on Freedom Park Trail.

Gavin Bernard

Gavin Bernard is a designer and larger-scale installation artist. British by birth, he has called Atlanta home for 25 years, where he has worked in many different creative industries. He is interested in the power of subtlety. His multi-layered geometric installations are rooted in repetition, magnifying singular, small details to create expansive sculptures. Bernard's work is interested in an unfolding of meaning over time. Beauty is the primary, accessible entry point into the work, while encouraging deeper discovery through repeated interfacing. As the work is altered by natural elements, so too does the viewer's perception of space, time, and self evolve.

Gavin Bernard is a British artist, educator, designer and performer living in Atlanta, GA. He has made Atlanta his home and creative headquarters since 1998. His work focuses on site-specific installations for both commercial design clients and in his art practice.

He is the co-founder of interior design firm Grafite, creating spaces for numerous, beloved Atlanta businesses, including Octane Coffee/ Little Tart, Le Petit Marche, Aviary Salon, Sparrowhawk Studio, Henry and June, Spiller Park Coffee and Elevator Factory.

Current projects include interior design and community arts facilitation for Pittsburgh Yards, a 31-acre co-working development in Atlanta’s Historic Pittsburgh Neighborhood.

As an artist and educator, his work has been presented by WonderRoot, Wanted Design, Dance Chance, Dashboard, Atlanta Beltline, Modern Atlanta, SXSW EDU, and Blue Heron Nature Preserve.

George Galbreath

I was destined to become an art educator, primarily because of the amazing art teachers throughout my high school and post-secondary experience. These were educators who planted, cultivated, and nourished the seeds of art appreciation and creativity. I have followed their lead in my career and taught high school art since 2003. Teaching has offered me a sense of purpose and pride. As an art educator, I am shaping the future and impacting the lives of our next generation of artists.

My mentor (renowned artist) Kevin Cole, who I taught with for a decade at Westlake High School in Atlanta, showed me that a full-time art educator could also be a full-time artist and that one of the greatest lessons and gifts I could give my students is a front-row view of the creative process. With discipline and support from my school I’ve been able to participate as an artist in group shows, national competitions, and two solo exhibitions. My students traveled to my solo exhibit in Baton Rouge. We frequently attend art museums, galleries, and artists’ talks (both in and out of the classroom setting.)

It is my mission to provide young artists with the same information, tutelage, and experiences that I received from Mr. Cole and so many other art educators in my life and to connect them with multiple facets of the arts ecosystem. As an art educator who is also a practicing artist, I have come to realize that both creating art and teaching students how to create art is an equally gratifying experience.

George Galbreath graduated from Hickman High School in Columbia, Mo in 1997 and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Howard University in 2000. He completed his M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2002. Throughout his nineteen years of classroom teaching, including sixteen years with the Fulton County School District in Atlanta, Georgia, he has maintained a career as a working artist. He currently serves as Art Department Chair at Westlake High School. His most recent body of work was showcased in his 2021 solo exhibition at P2 Gallery in Castleberry Hill Art District.

George was also awarded the Roanne H. Victor Merit Award; Juried Plein Air Exhibit at Rice Gallery (Kansas City, MO) and the African American Art Exhibition at the Actors Theatre (Louisville, KY); and several exhibits throughout the city of Atlanta. He was awarded Best in Show in 2015, and Honorable Mention in 2016, at the Georgia Art Educators Association (GAEA) exhibit. George was also a 2016 and 2018 Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series semi-finalist. He is the co-founder of non-profit UAE Youth Artist Program, co-founder/co-curator of ARTiculate ATL, and co-author of the “The Galbreath Collection: A Decade of Collecting Atlanta”.

Jordan Putt

Having recently relocated to Atlanta from Arizona in July of 2022, my work up to this point has primarily focused on the shifting social landscape and those who are typically left out of the mythologized southwestern narrative in my hometown of Tucson Arizona.  I was interested in the way that early photographic expeditions recorded a place and, in doing so, shaped historic conceptions of the United States. Responding to this photographic trope in the sprawling topography of the southwest, I began making my own photographic survey. Since 2016, I have collaborated with close friends, family, and strangers who inhabit the same landscape that raised me. Alongside these portraits, I include images of the arid landscape and the markings of those who continue to utilize and shape the land around them. Growing up working as a Land Surveyor for most of my life in this landscape, the title of this work comes from the name of the small book that we would bring to each survey to record our movement through the land. Field Book reimagines the traditional field book as a photographic survey of my own traverse through one county in the southwest.

Jordan Putt is a photographer whose work responds to issues of place, identity, and community. He earned a BA in Psychology from Northern Arizona University in 2014, and an MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2020. His work has been exhibited in the Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson; Filter Space, Chicago;  House of Lucie, Los Angeles; and Hyde Park Arts Center, Chicago;  among others. He was a 2022 recipient of the Research and Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and a 2020 finalist for Duke University’s Dorothea Lange - Paul Taylor Award. Jordan Putt is currently based in Atlanta, Georgia, where he is an instructor of photography at Georgia State University.

Kara Jenelle Wade 

My perspective as a creative is to share stories through movement while preserving cultural and traditional practices through choreography. I tend to highlight the work of African American women as a way to pay homage to my lineage and legacy. Whether it is afrobeats, contemporary, dancehall, step or jazz; it is my priority to share phrases and movement vocabulary that can be challenging and motivation to stretch my students' technique and confidence. I truly believe that dance is a universal language and I’ve been honored to have conversations around the globe as a teaching artist through workshops, intensives and masterclass series. 

Along with academic components of my practice, I also develop unique concept videos as a visual representation of my craft. As a creative director, I assemble teams of BIPOC and local creatives to execute short films. With my background in the film and television industry, I am excited to showcase work through dance projects while highlighting diverse and talented fellow artists. I look forward to continuing to build my repertoire as a choreographer and establish opportunities for like minded creatives.

I, Kara Jenelle Wade, am an arts educator, movement practitioner, activist and international choreographer. I received my baccalaureate degree in dance and african american studies from the UNC Greensboro, completed a study abroad program at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), and most recently graduated from UCLA’s World Arts and Culture/ Dance program with a Master of Fine Arts focusing on Choreographic Inquiry. Throughout my professional career, I have traveled the world as a teaching artist primarily focusing on dance genres rooted in african diaspora. The goal of my pedagogy is to create a cultural exchange sharing traditional and street dances, history and music; along with equipping my students with a comprehensive knowledge base. Along with my work as a performing artist in the field of dance, I also align my practices with research on oral histories through storytelling, spoken word and poetry. 

Kate Burke

As a multidisciplinary artist, my main goal has always been to construct progress into physical form. Tactile environments inspire me to explore the modalities of material, and how structures & spaces can serve as domains of communications. Working and exploring through sculptural representation of landscapes experienced within my past and current realities. Growing up around construction sites and euphoric deserts inspire my mediums, Stucco, Glass, Steel, and Leather. Exploring limitless opportunity to to push-boundaries and serve a specific purpose, one that derives from individual expression and can harness the power of shared ideas & beliefs. 

Kate Burke (b. 1994) is an Atlanta-based sculptor. After receiving her BFA in Fabric Design in 2016 with honors from the University of Georgia, she moved to Atlanta in 2017 and shortly thereafter immersed herself within the Atlanta art community. Her solo career has developed steadily since moving to Atlanta, with solo and group showings in Southeast spaces such as Lyndon House Art Center, the Dalton Gallery at Agnes Scott, Tiger Strikes Asteroid Greenville, Free Market Gallery, ATHICA, Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, whitespec, Art Fields, Fresh Eye Gallery, Waiting Room Art, and Mint Atlanta. Receiving distinguished awards such as the ArtFields Category Award for textiles in 2019, and with a growing list of fellowships including being chosen as a two-time Hambidge Center fellow and as one of 2021’s Leap Year artists, Kate recently debuted her solo show “Never let me go” in April 2022. She looks forward to participating as a 2023-2025 fellow of The Creatives Project in Atlanta, GA.  

Roshani Thakore

Roshani Thakore (she/her) is a socially-engaged artist using art to broaden an understanding of place, uncover histories, elevate voices, and expand a sense of belonging, with the hope of reconstructing power. She uses her positionality and power to complicate, leverage, and advocate with people who have been marginalized to transform systems of oppression through political and community education and acts of resistance. Organizing strategies, research, and conversations are a few methodologies she deploys in her practice.

Roshani Thakore (she/her) is a socially-engaged artist from Decatur. She is a 2023 recipient of the Idea Capital artist grant for her project, the Museum of Socially Engaged Art, a socially engaged project that elevates conversations around art, activism, community engagement, and education located in a house in Tucker – a racially, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse community in Metro Atlanta. She is also part of the 2023 Atlanta Regional Commission’s Culture and Community Design cohort working with community organizations to develop arts and culture-focused community design projects. 

In 2023 she is completing her 5-year Artist Residency at the  Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon,(APANO) a statewide grassroots organization that unites Asians and Pacific Islanders to build power, develop leaders, and advance equity through organizing, advocacy, community development, and cultural work. She is a recipient of the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize and the Precipice Fund in Portland, OR. Her work has been exhibited at numerous locations in New York and Portland including the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the Portland Museum of Art. She received her MFA in Art + Social Practice from Portland State University in Portland, OR and her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She relocated to her hometown of Atlanta in spring of 2022 and is excited to be back after being gone for 23 years.

Timothy Short

I use painting and drawing to venerate the everyday people close to me by centering them and  the spaces they inhabit in my work. I detail and embellish their experiences within these spaces, employing methods of dramatically grandiose color, lighting, and metaphysical imagery to  produce vividly epic narratives. The visual iconography created from producing work this way  informs an idea of a mystified Blackness for me. This Blackness presents itself as a palpable,  tangible energy source, shaping itself when the subjects gather and commune with it through  ritual and meditative self-reflection. By challenging myself to think imaginatively about  Blackness, visual is granted to alternative possibilities of how we can relate to each other as  Black folks and see ourselves with our own eyes.

Timothy Short was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia. He moved to Atlanta in order to  attend Georgia State and pursue art in 2011. Predominantly as an oil painter, Timothy constructs  imaginative narrative spaces always centering the Black figure. These stories are meant to  venerate the everyday people close to him, often chosen as models for his work, using  cosmological and celestial imagery. By detailing the subjects of the works in darker palettes,  associations of lighter colors and spaces with inherent goodness or divinity are subverted and a  metaphysical iconography is granted to the Blackness of these universes. Timothy’s inspirations  are Kerry James Marshall, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Jordan Casteel amongst many other painters,  a host of manga and comics, and great Black music.

Tracy Murrell

My work is a celebration of the beauty and grace that I see in the female form. My intent is for the viewer to slow down, take their time, and find their connection to the portraits before them. In many of my works, it is the reflective surfaces of the work that invite the viewer to see themselves in the silhouettes.

As a woman of color, I am drawn to images of women that look like me and their silhouette is of particular interest.  I see and feel the poise and energy we exhibit in the world, which is so often commodified in popular media. In response to this, I offer counter symbols of women as figures personifying grace and strength.  

In my work, I explore the use of silhouettes by recontextualizing images to use as entry points for deeper conversations on gender, race, and the perception of beauty. In my current body of work, I am focusing on the themes of identity, migration, and displacement in the human narrative by collaging hand-cut patterns, specialty papers, with the silhouette or creating the silhouettes out of encaustic designed rice paper then finishing each piece with resin.

Tracy Murrell is a visual artist based in Atlanta, GA.  Murrell has exhibited in numerous group, solo, and juried exhibitions and her work has been featured in art publications including Create! Magazine, ArtVoices, Studio Visit, New American Paintings, and Atlanta Magazine's Home.  She is the Gold category winner in Painting: Traditional/Contemporary for the book ArtFolio 2022.

Her painting “Walk Alone | We Will Follow” was selected for the cover of "Witnessing Girlhood Toward an Intersectional Tradition of Life Writing" by Fordham University Press. In 2020, Georgia Tech University unveiled two paintings by Murrell commissioned by the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority for the Dorothy M. Crosland Tower library. In 2021, Microsoft acquired 6 works from the Sumaya series for its new office in Atlanta, GA; and FrameBridge selected 2 works from the Torchy series for The Black Artists Print Shop.  In 2022, The Coca-Cola Company added a work from The Haiti Series to their permanent collection.

Murrell has been awarded artist's residencies at The Hambidge Center for the Arts in Rabun Gap, Georgia; Atlanta Printmakers Studio in Atlanta, Georgia; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center's Nexus Fund; and Green Olive Arts in Tetouan, Morocco.  In 2022, she was awarded a Brown University's Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (CSREA) Practitioner Fellowship.  For 2023-2025, Murrell has been selected for The Creative Project’s Artist-in-Studio residency program.

Her solo exhibition, Wayna: Her Dreams of Ethiopia opened in September 2022 at the Albany Museum of Art. For the exhibition, Murrell combined her love for creating papercut Ethiopian crosses with childhood stories from her cousin Wayna, a Grammy-nominated singer, actress, and writer who was born in Ethiopia and raised in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. Murrell used the significance of crosses as a unifying force, not only in Ethiopia, but worldwide to frame the works she created.

Her solo exhibition, "Dans l'espoir d'un Avenir Meilleur (In Hope for a Better Future) ... Exploring Haitian Migration" opened in October of 2022 at Hammonds House Museum.  With funding from the National Performance Network, Murrell was commissioned to explore contemporary Haitian migration and produce new artistic works with the intention of offering a counter-narrative to the immigration story and bring to light the universality of migration as a shared experience through the female lens.

Deborah Aodo Hughes

Debõrah Hughes If life in art could be defined, it would be embodied within Debõrah. She was born in Orangeburg and grew up in Greenwood,  South Carolina to an artistic family that creatively influenced her love for the arts. Atlanta, Ga raised her and the world is evolving her.  She was exposed to everything from dance, fashion, music and drama. From those experiences growing up she knew this was something she wanted to do all her life. That is when she coined the phrase ARTrepreneur meaning pursuing the business of Art. She has danced for various artists and companies from around the world, allowing her to travel with her craft and see the world through a beautiful perspective.

Not only is she amazing in her profession, she believes in community work. She has worked with Hands On Atlanta by developing art curriculums in low-income areas of the city. She likes to think of herself as an independent philanthropist that builds people through her Art. Teaching them to obtain and maintain the confidence they’ll need to art through life. She is very detailed in her observation and assessment of items and people. Debõrah says, “I love to interact with people from all different facets of life. I enjoy trying different things and the exploration of art in all forms. I’m always looking to expand my love in ART.