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Jeff Schmuki is an artist whose ceramic practice encompasses installations, hydroponic community garden systems, and interdisciplinary projects integrating robotics, sound, and biological research. Shaped in part by his displacement during Hurricane Katrina, his work explores environmental vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience.

Among his long-term projects is PlantBot Genetics, an ongoing collaborative initiative developed with biologists and local communities that addresses environmental stewardship, pollinator decline, and the effects of industrial agriculture. The project was featured in the Marfa Dialogues at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, received funding from the NEA through an Artworks Grant, and was further developed during a residency at the American Academy in Rome.

Schmuki's work is represented in major public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution, Incheon World Ceramic Center, Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza, Shepparton Art Museum, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Arizona State University Ceramic Research Center, and Missoula Art Museum. Support for his work includes awards and grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, the U.S. General Services Administration Art in Architecture Commission, and the Marfa Dialogues St. Louis Program Grant. He has exhibited, participated in residencies, and developed collaborative projects throughout Canada, South Korea, Italy, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Australia, and New Zealand.

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Kerry Phillips is an installation artist whose artwork borders on performance and social practice. Phillips’ work with found objects is intuitive, often site-specific, and steeped in remembrance and storytelling. She uses common objects in unexpected ways, working collaboratively with viewer-participants to reveal an exchange of value, the importance and limitations of memory, and the vitality of play.

Phillips has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Orlando Museum of Art, Locust Projects, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Boca Raton Museum of Art, and Bridge Red Projects. Recent solo projects include: Coincidence of Sound (2025), LnS Gallery; The patience of ordinary things (2024), Locust Projects; Between the mundane & the miraculous (2023), Bass Museum; and the opening of “The Things Lab” a socially-engaged art installation and creative reuse center co-created with artist Susan Caraballo.

She has exhibited and completed residencies in Massachusetts, Ohio, Vermont, New York, North Carolina, and internationally in Berlin, Krakow, Mexico, and France. Her work is held in the collections of the Orlando Museum of Art, The Girls’ Club, and Mosquera Collections. Originally from Texas, Phillips works in Miami and, contrary to her family’s wishes, doesn’t paint pretty pictures. Represented by LnS Gallery in Miami.

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Sergio Suárez (b.1995, Mexico City, Mexico) is a Mexican-born, Atlanta-based visual artist and printmaker. His work explores how materiality and semiotics influence notions of the body, metaphysics, and various cosmologies. He graduated from the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design in 2021 with a BFA in Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking. His work has been exhibited across the United States and internationally, in spaces like Patel Brown (Toronto & Montreal, Canada), Sargent’s Daughters (New York City, New York), Fundación Casa Wabi Sabino (Mexico City, Mexico), Pale Fire

Projects (Vancouver, Canada), KDR Gallery (Miami, FL), Johnson Lowe Gallery (Atlanta, GA), Whitespace Gallery (Atlanta, GA), the Consulate General of Mexico (Atlanta, GA), the Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta, GA), Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair (London, UK), the Haugesund International Relief Festival (Haugesund, Norway), OPED Space (Tokyo, Japan) and the Ionian Arts Center (Kefallinia, Greece); where he was an artist in residency in 2017 and 2018.

Suárez has also been an artist-in-residence at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (Madison, ME), Bemis Center Residency (Omaha, NE), MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), Penland Residency (Penland, NC), Bed-Stuy Art Residency (Brooklyn, NY), amongst others. His work has been reviewed by the Financial Times, Artillery, Burnaway, ART PAPERS, and has been featured in the #166 Issue of New American Paintings. His work is included in collections such as the Perez Family Collection (El espacio 23) (Miami, FL), the Zuckerman Museum (Kennesaw, GA), and the MoCA GA (Atlanta, GA). He lives and works in Atlanta, GA.

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Dianna Settles (b. 1989) is a Vietnamese-American artist from Blue Ridge, Georgia, living and working in Lexington, KY. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2014. 

Recent exhibitions include the three-person show The Body Is A Drum, The Voice A Song, The Soul A Fire with Tabitha Arnold and Louis Hine at the Knoxville Museum of Art (Knoxville, TN), and the solo show Enemy of the Century at MARCH (New York, NY), both in 2025. Previous solo exhibitions include A Thousand Paths Bloom at Galerie Marguo (Paris, France), A Life Worth Living Would be a Life Worth Living at MARCH, and Olly Olly Oxen Free at Institute 193 (Lexington, KY). Her work is held in the permanent collection of the ICA Miami (Miami, FL), X Museum (Beijing, China), Le Consortium (Dijon, France), and the Longlati Foundation (Hong Kong, China), and is a recent recipient of grant support from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Great Meadows Foundation.

In addition to her own art practice, Dianna founded and administered Hi-Lo Press, a collective print studio and art gallery founded in Atlanta in 2016 until 2024. She currently facilitates community drawing classes and other programming at Institute 193 in Lexington.

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Caitlin Ezell Waugh is a sculptor, preserver, and historical restoration artist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She explores decay, vulnerability, growth and time through the treatment of glass, found objects, light, and plant

material. Relationships between plants and people, especially in the context of stewardship, ceremony and the body, are central to her studio practice, research, and civic engagement. Her sculptural journalism responds at the intersection of environmental and social justice, in conversation with the Gulf-South-specific discomforts of historical, societal and environmental transmutation. Community-engaged research informs much of her work; many of her sculptures are translations of published research, a collaborative effort to expand accessibility to critical data. Waugh received her BA from Hampshire College and her MFA from Tulane University. 

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Brejenn Allen is a Mississippi-based visual artist whose practice centers the African American experience in the South as a home for joy, familiarity, and quiet rebellion. Her

work captures moments of everyday life in her town, the body, humor, and overlooked objects. Through layered paint, texture, and found materials, she builds surfaces that echo the complexities of the lives she paints. Allen holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her practice continues to grow through exhibitions, teaching, and community-centered work, drawing collectors who value work founded in place, story, and lived experience.

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Zaire Miles-Moultrie is a Black artist based in Greensboro, North Carolina, whose creative journey is a

testament to the profound impact of identity and culture on artistic expression. With a diverse array of mediums at his disposal, including drawing, collaging, and printmaking, he intricately weaves together elements of history, spirituality, and personal experience to explore the complex and surreal nature of blackness and life. Zaire’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and galleries throughout the region and country, captivating audiences with its emotive power and thought-provoking themes. He graduated with his BFA in studio art concentrating in printmaking and drawing from University of North Carolina Greensboro. Recently he was in residence at Artspace Raleigh as a 2025 emerging artist residence and is expected to have his concluding show in 2027.

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Jay Owens (b. 1978) lives and works in Upstate South Carolina. He attended the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts, Winthrop University and earned a BFA in Ceramics from Utah State University. While at Utah State, he received an Undergraduate Research and Creative Opportunities grant to develop clay slips and glazes for paper-clay porcelain sculpture.

In 2001, Owens traveled to Boubon, Niger, a traditional pottery village along the Niger River in West Africa. Working alongside local potters, he gained firsthand experience with traditional ceramic practices and their relationship to community, design, and daily life. This experience broadened his understanding of form, surface, color, and the potential for traditional techniques to engage contemporary issues.

Owens has participated in workshops at Peters Valley School of Craft, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, and Penland School of Craft, where he served as a teaching assistant. He presented workshops for the South Carolina Art Education Association annual conference. He served as an Artist-in-Residence with the South Carolina Arts Commission and taught through the Metropolitan Arts Council’s SmartARTS arts integration program.

His work and writing have been featured in Studio Potter and Ceramics Monthly. Owens has also been included in numerous publications, including 500 Pitchers, Ceramics for Beginners: Wheel Throwing, and At This Moment: Portraits of South Carolina Artists by Jerry Siegel. In 2007, his work was featured in Studio Visits at the Greenville County Museum of Art, and in 2025 he was included in the South Carolina Biennial at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art.

Owens has presented solo exhibitions at IF ART Gallery and the Metropolitan Arts Council. He has exhibited nationally at venues including Lillstreet Art Center, Ariana Gallery, Baltimore Clayworks, Lux Center for the Arts, Armory Art Center, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Furman University, The Bascom: A Center for the Visual Arts, and ArtFields. His work has been exhibited internationally with the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies program in Bern, Switzerland.

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Johana Moscoso is a Colombian-American visual artist based in Memphis, TN, whose work celebrates culture and migration. Drawing on her lived experience as an immigrant, Moscoso navigates a "hybrid identity" through a multidisciplinary practice that encompasses video and performance, with a primary focus on fiber art.

Moscoso’s solo exhibitions include the SCAD Museum of Art, the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith (supported by the Windgate Foundation), and a 2024 retrospective with the Tennessee Arts Commission. Her work is held in numerous collections, including the Memphis International Airport and the Latin American collection of Solita Cohen.

A recipient of grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Tri-Star Arts, and the Tennessee Arts Commission, Moscoso has participated in high-profile residencies including the Windgate Artist-in-Residence program at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith, the SCAD Alumni Atelier in Atlanta, and the Arts/Industry Residency at the Kohler Company.

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Established in 2017, the Southern Prize and State Fellowships for Visual Arts initiative supports regional artists in advancing their creative practices across a range of visual art disciplines. Each year, the program awards nine visual artists $5,000 State Fellowships, with fellows also competing for the Southern Prize, which includes a prestigious residency and an additional $25,000 cash award for the winner, and $10,000 for the finalist.

From this cohort, a national jury will select the Southern Prize Winner and Finalist in recognition of their artistic excellence, with the winner receiving an additional $25,000 cash prize and the finalist receiving an additional $10,000 cash prize. The Southern Prize Winner will also receive a residency at the Hambidge Center. Both awardees will be honored during an awards ceremony on October 8 at the Ģ������Ƶ Fine Art Museum in Cullowhee, NC.

The Southern Prize and State Fellowships for Visual Arts program is supported by the Windgate Foundation, the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, Southern First Bank, and other generous individual donors. For more information about the Southern Prize and State Fellowship programs, application eligibility, and additional opportunities from South Arts, please visit southarts.org.

South Arts advances Southern vitality through the arts. The nonprofit regional arts organization was founded in 1976 to build on the South’s unique heritage and enhance the public value of the arts. South Arts’ work responds to the arts environment and cultural trends with a regional perspective. South Arts offers an annual portfolio of activities designed to support the success of artists and arts providers in the South, address the needs of Southern communities through impactful arts-based programs, and celebrate the excellence, innovation, value, and power of the arts of the South. For more information, visit www.southarts.org.