Erin is a Birmingham, AL native. She is an artist and art educator. Her work features collages of different materials such as fabrics, papers, paints, and other objects like hair barrettes. Her pieces have a beautiful layered, textured, and narrative style that has you looking deeper and deeper to find more than you might see at first glance.

Wiley is an American portrait painter. He is best known for his presidential portrait of Barack Obama. His work features highly naturalistic paintings of African Americans. He tends to reference the work of Old Master paintings. He will insert black protagonists into these paintings.

Sherald is an American painter best known for her presidential portrait of Michelle Obama. She is 49 years young, and a very active artist. She paints portraits depicting everyday life for African Americans.

Marshall is 68 year old American artist from Birmingham, Alabama. He is best known for his paintings of dark figures that confront general racial stereotypes. Marshall received the MacArthur “Genius Grant” for exceptional merit and creative works. In 2017, he was included in the annual Time 100 list of most influential people in the world.

Nick Cave is an American fabric sculptor, dancer, and performance artist. He is currently 64 years old and still an active artist. He is famous for his Soundsuits that blend fashion, assemblage, sculpture, and sound.

Basquiat had a short but prolific career. He was known for his street art, social commentary, and expressionist style. In 2017 a painting of Basquiat’s sold for $110.5 million, making it one of the most expensive paintings ever purchased.

Walker is a 51 year old American contemporary painter, silhouettist, printmaker, installation artists, and film maker. She is best known for her room-sized installations of black cut paper silhouettes. Her artwork explores themes of race, identity, gender, and history.

Kaphar is an American artist whose work reconfigures and regenerates art history to include the African-American subject. His art makes you stop and think. Take a second glance. What are those iconic images we remember from history and how can we change them or include more? Do better? Kaphar’s work inspires me to not only push myself as an artist, but as a human being.

Hunter is a self-taught folk artist from Louisiana. She started working as a farm laborer at a young age. She never learned to read or write. Clementine didn’t start painting until she was a grandmother. She painted at night after working full days in the plantation house. She worked from memory and used her paintings to record memories of daily life.

Shonibare is a British-Nigerian artist living in the United Kingdom. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. He is known for his sculptural work that features of brightly colored fabrics and mannequins in thought provoking poses. Yinka has a physical disability that paralyses one side of his body, so he uses assistants to make works under his direction. His story is remarkable, and shows that nothing can stop you from making the art you want to make!

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Bryan is an artist, writer, storyteller, and humanitarian. In 1962 he was the first African American to publish a children’s book as an author and illustrator. Bryan makes puppets, paper mâché creatures, collages, and stained glass windows. My favorite book of Ashley Bryan’s is “Beautiful Blackbird” where his illustrations are created with collage. He uses bright colors and brilliantly makes use of the positive and negative space. His stories are uplifting and beautiful. I recommend watching a video of him reading the books, because he has a spark and passion that is undeniable.

Thomas was an artist and teacher from Columbus, GA. She was best known for her colorful abstract paintings. Alma’s legacy has only grown since her death in 1978. Her work hangs in many notable museums and collections. In 2019, her painting “A Fantastic Sunset” sold for $2.6 million.

Douglas was an American painter, illustrator, and educator. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. His artwork addressed social issues around race and segregation in the United States. His artwork has beautiful colors and bold imagery.

Savage was an American sculptor and teacher. Her main mediums were clay and metal. Her studio was also important to the careers of younger artists who learned from her and later became known nationally. Part of Savage’s legacy is her work towards equal rights of African Americans in the arts.

Waring was an American artist and educator. She was best known for her paintings of prominent African Americans that she made during the Harlem Renaissance. She currently has portraits in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. She also taught art for more than 30 years at Cheyney University in Pennsylvania.

Evita is an American collage artist. Her work is bold, colorful, and has influences of cubism. She is inspired by images she sees in her sleep as well as children’s stories. She uses handmade papers, found objects, paint, and other materials. Tezeno’s artwork always brings me joy. I am so inspired by her characters and sense of narrative within each piece she creates.

Hall is an American painter and sculptor. His artworks are based upon research about racism and how certain images and items have shaped America’s history in regards to racism. He works to re-contextualize these images and objects.

I am a huge fan of Hall’s sculpture work in particular. I love the assemblage aspect of them as well as the use of recognizable objects in tandem with each other.

Wiley is an American portrait painter. He is best known for his presidential portrait of Barack Obama. His work features highly naturalistic paintings of African Americans. He tends to reference the work of Old Master paintings. He will insert black protagonists into these paintings.

Campbell is a 65 year old American painter. He has had no formal training. His art speaks of the contributions to humanity through the African American perspective. His artwork is a beautiful tie to the past with a modern twist. I love the bright colors, exaggerated proportions, and collage twist.

Lawrence was an African-American painter, educator, and storyteller. Best remembered for his portrayal of African-American life, he is regarded as one of the most popular African-American painters of the 20th century. He also served as the professor of art at the prestigious University of Washington from 1971 until his retirement in 1986.

Butler is an American fiber artist who has created a new genre of quilting that has transformed the medium. Although quilting has long been considered a craft, her interdisciplinary methods—which create quilts that look like paintings—have catapulted quilting into the field of fine art. She is known for her vibrant, quilted portraits celebrating Black life, portraying both everyday people and notable historical figures.

Catlett was a graphic artist and sculptor. Her work is a mixture of abstract and figurative art. Her subjects usually dealt with the female African American experience in the 20th century. Catlett has received numerous awards and recognition. Her work sells for tens of thousands of dollars.

Saar is a legend in the world of contemporary art. She is 97 years old. She is a visual storyteller best known for her assemblage sculptures. Her work deals with myths and stereotypes about race and femininity. Saar is one of my favorite artists.

Fabiola was born in Haiti in 1978. She moved to Brooklyn, NY at a young age. She began doing photography in 2013. She is best known for her series titled Rewriting History: A Black Ancestral Narrative that is about defying expectations by introducing the black female into conversations where they had previously been absent.

Ojih Odutola creates multimedia drawings on various surfaces. The themes of her work include: the malleability of identity, meaning, and power through portraiture and story-telling. She received her BA from UA Huntsville. Her work is held at MOMA, The Met, National Portrait Gallery, Whitney Museum, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.

Beasley is known for his sculptures that incorporates found materials especially clothing and casting materials like resin and foam. While these materials cure or set into their final state, Beasley works them with his body, a process that points to his interest in sculpture that traces of the artist's body while retaining a bodily, fleshy quality of its own. Many of his sculptures also contain audio equipment or are used in sound-based installations or performances. Beasley was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial in 2014 and MoMA PS1's Greater New York exhibition in 2015.

Combining representation and abstraction, Nina Chanel Abney’s paintings capture the frenetic pace of contemporary culture. Broaching subjects as diverse as race, celebrity, religion, politics, and art history, her works eschew linear storytelling in lieu of disjointed narratives. The effect is information overload, balanced with a kind of spontaneous order, where time and space are compressed and identity is interchangeable. Her distinctively bold style harnesses the flux and simultaneity that has come to define life in the 21st century.

Davis is an American visual artist, and a founder of the Underground Museum in Los Angeles. She is known as a sculptor and an installation artist touching on issues of race and identity in America through representations of the human body. Her artistic practice is influenced by dance, theater, and moving image.

Ajene lives in Birmingham and works at Sloss Furnaces as an artist in residence. I met Ajene when I began casting metal in college. He is easily one of the most talented people and hardest workers that I have ever met. His sculptures combine casting, fabrication, blacksmithing, and more. His work speaks for itself- but in my opinion it is incredible, magical, imaginative, and transformative. He recently installed a sculpture at Birmingham’s city walk and another at Aldridge Gardens.