Judges Panel

Amalia K. Amaki is an artist, art historian, curator and writer. Her photo-based, button-based, and digital constructions include photo-quilts, fans, masks, headgears and other objects that relate to African Diaspora, Native American and American culture and history. A retrospective at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, DC and the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is among her twenty-plus solo exhibitions. She has participated in numerous group shows across the US, in Paris, London, Florence, Montreal, and a few African and South American cities.

Amaki has been a National Endowment for the Arts Regional Fellow in Photography, Woman in the Arts in Georgia Award recipient, and won art commissions from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (twice), the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, U.S. General Services Administration, The Coca Cola Company, The Coca Cola Bottling Company, Seagram’s Gin, Absolut Vodka, Miller Brewing Company and the High Museum of Art. Her work is in permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Minnesota Museum of Art, National Museum for Women in the Arts, High Museum of Art, Mead Museum of Art and Georgia Museum of Art among others.

She holds bachelors degrees in Journalism and Psychology from Georgia State University and in Photography from the University of New Mexico; and, master’s and doctorate degrees in American Art History and Culture from Emory University. Amaki has taught at Spelman College, the University of Delaware, the University of Alabama and Student Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence, Italy.

Sara Reisman is Chief Curator at the National Academy of Design in New York City. From 2014 to 2021 she served as Executive and Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, where she led the foundation’s art and social justice grant-making initiative, curated more than a dozen thematic exhibitions, and edited and wrote for publications including Elia Alba: The Supper Club, published by Hirmer Verlag (2019), and Mobilizing Pedagogy: Two Social Practice Projects in the Americas by Pablo Helguera and Suzanne Lacy with Pilar Riaño-Alcalá, published by Amherst College Press (2019). From 2008 to 2014, Reisman was Director of New York City’s Percent for Art program at the Department of Cultural Affairs, where she managed more than 100 permanent public art commissions across New York City's five boroughs, working with artists including Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Jeffrey Gibson, Xu Bing, and Mary Mattingly, among many others. She has curated exhibitions for the Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery, Futura Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague, the Queens Museum of Art, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Cooper Union School of Art, the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, Momenta Art, Smack Mellon, and LaMaMa Galleria, among other venues. Reisman has taught art history and contemporary art issues at the University of Pennsylvania, SUNY Purchase School of Art + Design, and, since 2016, serves on the faculty at the School of Visual Arts’ Curatorial Practice Masters Program. She has been awarded residencies by Art Omi, the Foundation for a Civil Society, Artis, CEC Artslink, Futura, and the Montello Foundation. She received her BA at the University of Chicago and was a 2002-2003 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.

She curated the Renwick Gallery’s 50th anniversary exhibition, This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World (2022) and is author of several books and articles about American art and archives. Her forthcoming projects include an exhibition on state fairs and American craft and a permanent collection reinstallation organized in collaboration with Craft in America’s 2026 initiative called Handwork: Celebrating American Craft. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she wrote a dissertation on fiber art. She is learning to knit.

Alba Triana is a Miami-based sound and intermedia artist. Through immersive installations, sound and light sculptures, and vibrational objects, Alba’s work explores the relationship between the essence of the natural world and our human condition. Delving into vibration, energy, interconnectedness, and nature’s self-organization, Triana’s oeuvre probes how the vitality of everything, the alive and inert, greatly determines who we are and what emerges from ourselves.

Alba has received the ArtFields Grand Prize, CIFO G&C Award, South Arts Fellowship (US), Prix Ars Electronica Award (AT), Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (IT, US), and was the winner of awards in Colombia such as the IDCT National Composition Contest, National Electroacoustic Music Contest, “Otto de Greiff” National Contest, and Alliance Française Best Exhibition 2008. She has obtained commissions, residences, and grants from Pro Helvetia (CH), Kronos Quartet, Oolite Arts (US), GMEB (FR), and the Ministry of Culture (CO).

Her work has been shown at Postcity—Ars Electronica Festival, Lentos Kunstmuseum (AT), Centquatre-Paris, Biennale des Arts Numériques (FR), Orange County Museum of Art (CA, US), Lowe Art Museum (FL, US), ISEA—International Symposium of Electronic Arts, and Museum of Modern Art of Bogota (CO). Her oeuvre belongs to art collections in Europe, Latin America, and the US, including the Solo, Otazu (ES), Junco (US/MX), and Banco de la República de Colombia, Museum of Modern Art of Bogota (CO) collections.

Katie Wilson is Assistant Curator of 21c Museum Hotels, a multi-venue museum located in Louisville, Cincinnati, Bentonville, Durham, Lexington, Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis, and soon-to-be Indianapolis (2028). 21c was founded by Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, collectors and preservationists who are committed to expanding the audience for contemporary art. Wilson works alongside Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites, on exhibitions, site-specific installations, and a range of cultural programming at all 21c Museum Hotels. 21c also collaborates on arts initiatives with artists and other cultural organizations worldwide, including Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, North Carolina Museum of Art, Speed Art Museum, Barnes Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation, Creative Time, Artadia, Southern Foodways Alliance, and others. Recently, Wilson has curated Spotlight: Felipe Rivas San Martín, in conjunction with the 2024 FotoFocus Biennial, and The Little Mercies, a solo exhibition with Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Jon Cherry.

Prior to joining 21c in 2015, Wilson worked with various arts organizations including the Kentucky Arts Council, International Museum of the Horse at the Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington Art League, and Dayton Art Institute, among others; she graduated from the University of Kentucky, and holds an M.A. from Savannah College of Art and Design. Wilson lives in Louisville, KY with her daughter, Quinn.

Courtney Chapman is the Gallery Director at Marshall University’s School of Art & Design, where she oversees three galleries within the Visual Arts Center, curating and coordinating exhibitions and events.

In 2016, she earned her BFA from Marshall University and has since maintained an independent art practice while curating a large range of exhibitions. Among her curatorial highlights are Appalachian Dirt, which debuted at the Visual Arts Center in 2016 and expanded in 2018 for the 52nd National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Annual Conference (NCECA), and Machina | Minutiae shown at Yellow House RVA for the 58th NCECA in 2024.

Courtney’s art practice has led to exhibitions at various galleries and museums including Apartment Earth Gallery, Lamp Light Gallery, the Juliet Art Museum and the Huntington Museum of Art. She has also exhibited at NCECA and in the 2016 ArtFields. Working within clay, textiles, and recycled materials, her practice is guided by unconventional mark-making to explore themes of modern motherhood and domestic spaces.

Courtney Dodd was a Core Fellow at Penland School of Crafts from 2006-2008. She then worked for Devin Burgess, a former resident at Penland. Dodd holds a MFA from VCU with an emphasis in glass and a BFA from Missouri State University with a dual emphasis in graphic design and illustration.

In 2012, she completed a residency in photography at Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland. In the fall of 2015, Dodd was the glass residence at STARworks in Star, North Carolina. She has studied and worked at Penland School of Crafts, Corning Museum of Glass, Urban Glass, Denmark Design School in Bornholm, and Pilchuck Glass School. Courtney was also nominated in 2015 and 2016 for the Irvin Borowsky Prize in Glass Arts. She has demonstrated at STARworks and the Chrysler Mu- seum of Glass and been a visiting artist at the University of Louisville and RIT, NY. She had the pleasure of assisting Pablo Soto at Desoto Glass Design in Penland, North Carolina from 2013 to 2015. In the fall of 2017, she was an Emerging Artist in Residence at Pilchuck. Dodd has taught classes at Corning Museum of Glass, Urban Glass, Sawtooth, Haystack, and Penland School.

Currently, Courtney works as the Programs Manager at Penland School of Craft. She continues to make work and live in the mountains of Bakersville, North Carolina.

Austin Sheppard’s mixed media sculptures and drawings are self-reflective and phenomenological in the sense that he begins from his personal experiences as an individual. But through the vehicle of the human figure, he also explores the shared human condition by expressing emotional experiences like anxiety, anguish, endurance and resilience. Austin earned his BA in Studio Art from University of North Carolina, Pembroke in 2007 and his MFA in Sculpture from East Carolina University in 2010. Previously, he's been an Artist-in-Residence at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Franconia Sculpture Park, Salem Art Works, and has participated in International Sculpture Symposia in the UK, Germany, Finland, Costa Rica and Latvia.

As an educator, tinkerer, and artistic investigator across a wide variety of media, Austin is keen to provide platforms for a diverse array of under-represented voices and stylistic approaches. In 2023 he worked in conjunction with Coker University, where he currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Art and Director of the Cecelia Coker Bell Gallery, to pilot a program that brought artist Michaela Pilar Brown to campus for a month-long residency. Austin is currently producing new work for a solo exhibition at WilsonArts in the Fall of 2026.

Lauren Jackson Harris is an independent curator and consultant from Atlanta, GA. She earned her BFA in Graphic Design and Art History from Howard University and her MA in Creative Leadership from SCAD. In 2019, she co-founded Black Women in Visual Art, an organization that connects, cultivates, and serves Black women arts professionals. With BWVA, Harris builds partnerships and develops programs that create further visibility and opportunity for Black women in art.

As an independent arts worker with over 15 years of professional experience, Harris has managed special projects, curated exhibitions, and produced art experiences with organizations and art spaces such as the High Museum of Atlanta, Atlanta Art Fair, For Freedoms, Facebook, The Gathering Spot, Stay Home Gallery, Living Walls, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Frieze Los Angeles, SoHo House and more. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Dashboard and is the Beltline Public Art Advisory Council's Co-Chair.

Harris is the Program Director for The Black Embodiments Studio and an active art advocate consulting with artists on their practice and career-based opportunities.