Regional nonprofit South Arts announced its annual class of artist fellows, recognizing the highest quality artistic work in the region on May 13. The reward marks the first group of State Fellows for Literary Arts since the program began in 2017.
The 2024 State Fellows for Literary Arts and State Fellows for Visual Arts each comprised nine artists from the region: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Both Georgia fellows, weaver and sculptor Zipporah Camille Thompson and experimental writer Constance Collier-Mercado, are based in Atlanta.
“South Arts is being really intentional about ensuring that southern artists are at the forefront of our work, more so than ever before,” Vice President of Programs Joy Young, Ph. D. said. “Artists are the creators and producers of the work that tells the story of who we are.”
The 18 artists received $5,000 unrestricted after applying to the fellowship and being chosen by a panel of judges. They are also given the chance to compete for the Southern Prize Award of $25,000, with finalists getting $10,000. The nonprofit created the program in “acknowledgement of a discrepancy in regional funding for artists across all disciplines.”
Currently, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies ranks Georgia in dead last for per capita arts funding – only $0.14 a person.
Vice President of Programs Joy Young, Ph. D., pointed out that certain art forms like the literary arts are an “underfunded resource area.’ That’s why after several years focusing on visual arts the organization expanded the fellowship to include a group of fiction writers.
“2024 represents a major step forward as South Arts continues recognizing the incredible works of the region’s visual artists, but begins the journey of celebrating writers who live and create in the American South,” Emmitt Stevenson, South Arts Director of Artist Engagement, said.
Young said the South’s literary and storytelling tradition “deserved to be rewarded and commended,” calling back to a history of southern literary giants like Zora Neale Hurston and Flannery O’Connor.
“Our literary arts fellows speak to who we are in the 21st century with a diversity of voices and a diversity of stories that speak to diasporic life, that speak to time and place, that look back and look forward,” Young said.
That is how the judges landed on artists like Atlanta-based Zipporah Camille Thompson, a weaver and sculptor who “explores alchemical transformations through clay and woven textiles.” Through her award-winning art, Thompson explores ancestral narratives, myths, magic and reconstructed power. Constance Collier-Mercado, also an Atlanta artist, is an experimental writer and womanist cultural worker who focuses on Black language and collective memory.
However, a one-time payment is only part of the fellowship. President and CEO Susie Surkamer said the South Arts mission is “advancing southern vitality through the arts.” Vice President Young said that support takes many forms.
“We recognize that it’s one thing to honor the artists; it’s another to ensure their work is seen by the public,” Young said.
After granting the $5,000 to each creative, the literary artists will participate in a panel discussion at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson, MS. The visual artists will display their works in a touring exhibition that kicks off in Hollywood, Fla., in October. The winner of the Southern Prize will have a residency at an artist retreat space.
Young said the opportunities also work as resume boosters and community creators.
“We recognize that the only way southern vitality can be advanced through the arts is by investing in those who produce it,” Young said.
According to the vice president, South Arts focuses on Southern vitality because in the South, stories are “so buried,” and while artists have produced amazing work, they are often not recognized on a broader scale. She also finds the region to be a place of “many contradictions” and many different stories and hopes the 2024 artist class reflects that.
“Among this cohort, we also have artists who have chosen this out and in the staging, and in the choosing, therein lies a beautiful story that tells us about who we are becoming,” Young said. “We are a region of immigrants, migrants homegrown who go away and sometimes stay away and then migrate back once they realize that home has a story and a story that needs to be told.”
Constance Collier-Mercado‘s vulgar writing is an embarrassment to her family and our culture.