2024
Demond Melancon
Winner
Melancon pioneered an emerging contemporary art practice using the same beading techniques he’s been refining over the past 30 years in the Black Masking Culture.
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Ato Ribeiro
Finalist
Ribeiro's patchworked wooden mosaics become a call and response echoing through time, rooted in fabric and wood.
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Carlie Trosclair
Finalist
Approached through a lens of reordering and discovery, Trosclair’s work explores the liminal space between development and deconstruction.
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2023
Sherrill Roland
Winner
Roland has an interdisciplinary practice that deals with concepts of innocence, identity, and community, reimagining their social and political implications.
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Carlie Trosclair
Finalist
Approached through a lens of reordering and discovery, Trosclair's work explores the liminal space between development and deconstruction.
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Hiromi Moneyhun
Finalist
With no formal art training, Hiromi Moneyhun has evolved a unique, homegrown artistic voice that combines traditional and modern Japanese art forms.
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2022
Raheleh Filsoofi
Winner
Raheleh Filsoofi is a collector of soil and sound, an itinerant artist, feminist curator, and community service advocate.
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Sherrill Roland
Finalist
Roland has an interdisciplinary practice that deals with concepts of innocence, identity, and community, reimagining their social and political implications.
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T.J. Dedeaux-Norris
Finalist
Dedeaux-Norris is a mixed-media artist who employs painting, fiber, performance, video, and music to explore the somatic impacts of racial, gender, and class.
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2021
Stephanie J. Woods
Winner
Stephanie J. Woods’ body of work examines performative behavior and the cognitive effects of forced cultural assimilation through multimedia works.
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Adebunmi Gbadebo
Finalist
Adebunmi Gbadebo creates sculptures, prints and paper using Black hair sourced from the diaspora, along with historical and cultural imbued materials.
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Edison Peñafiel
Finalist
Edison Peñafiel's singular style integrates video and multimedia installation to create surreal echoes of our world, environments that translate experience.
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2020
Stephen L. Hayes, Jr.
Winner
A North Carolina-based artist, Hayes makes works - woodcuts, sculptures, and installations from found materials that draw on social and economic themes.
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Jennifer Shaw
Finalist
Louisiana-based artist Jennifer Shaw's work is based on both a world observed, and a world constructed, often focusing on the sphere of her immediate surroundings.
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Namwon Choi
Finalist
Georgia-based artist Namwon Choi's drawings and paintings capture the spatial and temporal condition of in-betweenness.
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2019
Donté K. Hayes
Winner
Georgia-based ceramicist, Donté K. Hayes explores themes in Afrofuturism, an imagined future which critiques historical and cultural events.
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Damian Stamer
Finalist
North Carolina-based painter, Damian Stamer captures the impermanence of structures that stand as remnants of American industries.
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Herb Parker
Finalist
South Carolina-based artist Herb Parker creates nature-based installations which enhance the viewer's perception of the environment.
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Martha Clippenger
Finalist
North Carolina-based artist, Martha Clippenger work blurs the lines between painting and sculpture, fine art and folk, craft and design.
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Michi Meko
Finalist
Michi Meko's paintings and sculptures focus on the African American experience of navigating public spaces while remaining buoyant within them.
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Stephanie Patton
Finalist
Louisiana-based artist Stephanie Patton employs humor in her multi-media works, often using it as a device to bring attention to critical issues.
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2018
Leo Twiggs
Winner
A native of St. Stephen, South Carolina, Leo Twiggs works in batik, exploring family history, cultural heritage, and how the past is manifest in contemporary life.
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Birney Imes
Finalist
For more than 30 years, photographer Birney Imes has captured the people, places, and culture of his native Mississippi.
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María Magdalena Campos-Pons
Finalist
A native of Cuba, María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s artistic practice combines diverse media including photography, performance, painting, sculpture, film, and video.
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Stephen L. Hayes, Jr.
Finalist
Stephen Hayes explores the history of race relations in America through a variety of media, including sculpture, fiber, video, blacksmithing, and installation work.
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Susan Worsham
Finalist
Photographer Susan Worsham was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her recent work focuses on her family.
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2017
Bo Bartlett
Winner
Born in Columbus, Georgia, Bartlett is acclaimed for his large-scale paintings that explore American life and cultural heritage.
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Beverly McIver
Finalist
North Carolina painter, Beverly McIver uses bold color and gesture to create portraits that examine racial, gender, social, and occupational identity.
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Ebony G. Patterson
Finalist
Ebony G. Patterson investigates identity in contemporary society, particularly ideas concerning visibility and invisibility of those who are deemed disenfranchised.
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Paul Stephen Benjamin
Finalist
Paul Stephen Benjamin is a multidisciplinary artist who creates multi-layered works that incorporate history, text, and popular culture.
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Suzanne Jackson
Finalist
Suzanne Jackson combines painting, collage, and sculpture techniques to create large-scale abstract work exploring the spirit of the American cultural legacies.
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2016
Alicia Henry
Winner
Alicia Henry explores social relationships through depictions of the human figure shown in isolation and also figures interacting with one another.
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Jiha Moon
Finalist
Jiha Moon's work combines diverse cultural influences, including Asian landscape painting, calligraphy, and imagery from Western popular culture.
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José Bedia
Finalist
José Bedia creates paintings, sculpture, and mixed-media installations.
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Michelle Erickson
Finalist
Michelle Erickson’s work draws compelling comparisons between the past and present-day social issues.
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Stacey Kirby
Finalist
Stacey Kirby creates performances set within site-specific installations activated by viewer participation.
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Toyin Ojih Odutola
Finalist
Toyin Ojih Odutola’s portraits explore skin as a topography revealing time, place, memory, and an ever-changing identity.
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2015
Deborah Luster
Winner
Deborah Luster's photographs are powerful and haunting. Her recent body of work captures desolate landscapes in New Orleans where murders have occurred.
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Aldwyth
Finalist
Aldwyth creates intricate collages and assemblages, often monumental in scale, from found objects, appropriated images, text, and other elements.
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Andrea Keys Connell
Finalist
Sculptor Andrea Keys Connell creates figurative works that challenge conventional notions of monuments, statuary, and figurines.
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Ebony G. Patterson
Finalist
Ebony G. Patterson investigates the complex relationships between gender, politics, beauty, race, and ritual in contemporary Jamaican culture.
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George Jenne
Finalist
George Jenne is a video artist who combines moving images with the spoken word to create uniquely narrative films.
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Kevin Jerome Everson
Finalist
Kevin Jerome Everson’s films utilize both scripted and documentary footage to examine the everyday lives of working class African Americans.
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2014
Sonya Clark
Winner
Sonya Clark uses objects such as cloth, hair, and combs to give voice to the complexity of American identity and history.
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André Leon Gray
Finalist
André Leon Gray works in a variety of media to examine the impact of history and memory on present day power structures and social hierarchies.
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Damian Stamer
Finalist
Painter Damian Stamer depicts barns, abandoned buildings, and other vernacular structures of the rural south.
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Jackson Martin
Finalist
Jackson Martin’s artistic practice entails an interdisciplinary approach to sculpture, installation, and photography.
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Jason Mitcham
Finalist
Artist Jason Mitcham combines painting and stop-motion animation to investigate suburbia, modern ruins, and temporality within the landscape.
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Jim Arendt
Finalist
Jim Arendt creates narrative paintings, sculpture, and installations that investigate how individual lives are affected by transitions in economic structures.
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Stacy Lynn Waddell
Finalist
Stacy Lynn Waddell creates work that explores American history, culture, and the ways individual consciousness is formed through generations.
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2012
John Westmark
Winner
John Westmark is a painter whose large-scale works incorporate store-bought paper sewing patterns collaged directly on the surface.
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Aldwyth
Finalist
Aldwyth creates intricate collages and assemblages, often monumental in scale, from found objects, appropriated images, text, and other elements.
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Bob Trotman
Finalist
Often posed in unexpected ways, Trotman’s figures convey the humor, anxiety, and even absurdity of life as an office professional.
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Brian Dettmer
Finalist
Brian Dettmer is known for his detailed and innovative sculptures created from books and other forms of antiquated media.
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Young Kim
Finalist
Young Kim creates site-specific installations from salt and earth that are inherently fragile and temporal, symbolic of our own existence on earth.
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2011
Patrick Dougherty
Winner
Patrick Dougherty is a sculptor who works with twigs and branches to create site-specific installations.
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Bo Bartlett
Finalist
Bo Bartlett is acclaimed for his large-scale paintings that explore American life and cultural heritage.
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Deborah Luster
Finalist
Deborah Luster's photographs are powerful and haunting. Her recent body of work captures desolate landscapes in New Orleans where murders have occurred.
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Elliott Hundley
Finalist
Elliott Hundley creates paintings, sculptures, and assemblages with richly-layered surfaces.
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Jiha Moon
Finalist
Jiha Moon's work combines diverse cultural influences, including Asian landscape painting, calligraphy, and imagery from Western popular culture.
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Pinky Bass
Finalist
Pinky Bass works with pinhole photography, embracing the imperfections and unusual perspective of the medium.
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2010
Radcliffe Bailey
Winner
Radcliffe Bailey is best known for his mixed media works and site-specific installations that explore his personal background and the history of African Americans.
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Aldwyth
Finalist
Aldwyth creates intricate collages and assemblages, often monumental in scale, from found objects, appropriated images, text, and other elements.
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Joyce Scott
Finalist
Joyce Scott addresses issues of gender, race, and class struggles through a variety of techniques including weaving, quilting, beadwork, and glasswork.
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Sally Mann
Finalist
Sally Mann is best known for her intimate photographs of her family and her unique portrayal of the southern landscape.
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William Christenberry
Finalist
William Christenberry has used his drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography as a means to document his home state of Alabama.
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Willie Birch
Finalist
Willie Birch is a painter, sculptor, and draftsman whose work draws upon African American culture and tradition in his native New Orleans.
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2009
Stephen Marc
Winner
Stephen Marc is a photographer who creates digitally-manipulated montages that explore his Southern roots and interpret American history.
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Edward Rice
Finalist
Edward Rice is a painter best known for his stark depictions of architectural details.
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Kathryn Refi
Finalist
Kathryn Refi is a conceptual artist who collects data from daily life as a means to study the world in an objective manner.
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Lonnie Holley
Finalist
Lonnie Holley creates found object assemblages and acrylic paintings with intensely personal meanings.
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Mike Smith
Finalist
For nearly thirty years, Mike Smith has photographed the rural landscape of East Tennessee.
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Ross McElwee
Finalist
A filmmaker from Charlotte, North Carolina, Ross McElwee has made seven feature-length documentaries and several shorter films.
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2008
Jeff Whetstone
Winner
Jeff Whetstone was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and has been photographing and writing about the relationship between humans and their environment since 1990.
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Henri Schindler
Finalist
Henri Schindler is an acknowledged authority on Mardi Gras history.
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Jose Alvarez
Finalist
Jose Alvarez incorporates unique media into his work including feathers, porcupine quills, and crystals.
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Radcliffe Bailey
Finalist
Radcliffe Bailey is best known for his mixed media works and site-specific installations that explore his personal background and the history of African Americans.
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William Christenberry
Finalist
William Christenberry has used his drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography as a means to document his home state of Alabama.
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