ANGELA DAVIS JOHNSON

Informed by the wisdom of the matriarchs in her family, Angela Davis Johnson creates paintings, sculptures, installations, and ritual performances to examine and archive the technologies of black folks. Merging art into a contemplative practice she embodies Live Dreaming – a process of deep listening, imagining, constructing, and recording personal + community ancestry. She generates experiential spaces to bring personal and communal healing around poverty, displacement, and state sanctioned violence. Co -creator of the Hollerin Space, an ongoing experimental healing installation, Davis Johnson has performed in several states in the regional south. Her works can be seen in galleries, museums, and private collections throughout the United States. She has been nominated twice for Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship and Painters/Sculpture grant and a 2018 LeapYear Fellow. Davis Johnson, mother of two, is based in Atlanta, GA.

OKORIE “OKCELLO” JOHNSON

Cellist and composer Okorie Johnson has performed and/or recorded with independent and major label artists such as De La Soul, India.Arie, Big Boi, Anthony David, Doria Roberts, Callaghan, Brenda Nicole Moorer and Victoria Canal. In 2015 Okorie launched Epi.phony, a multi-city, 12-show, concert series, integrating cello, live-sound-looping, improvisation and audience interaction. The series produced the track list for his first album, Liminal, released in 2016 and established him as a pioneer of electronic and experimental string music in the United States. He is a winner of the Alliance Theatre’s 2018 Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab grant and a recipient of the the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences fellowship and residency. Recently, Atlanta Magazine named him one of seven individuals helping to “shape the creative landscape for which our city is known.”

CARLOS ANDRÉS GÓMEZ

Carlos Andres Gomez is a Colombian American poet, speaker, actor, and author of Hijito, winner of the Broken River Prize, and the memoir Man Up: Reimagining Modern Manhood, released by Penguin Random House. A star of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, TV One’s Verses and Flow, and Spike Lee’s #1 box office movie Inside Man with Denzel Washington, you may recognize him from his viral poems, “Where are you really from?” and “What Latino Looks Like,” which have garnered millions of views online. Winner of the Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, Fischer National Poetry Prize, Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry, Carlos partnered with John Legend on Senior Orientation, a program to counteract bullying and champion inclusive masculinity among high school students. He’s a proud Latino and father.