Winners of the 2021-2022 Working Artist Project are: Kevin Cole, Zipporah Camille Thompson, and Jeremy Bolen
Kevin Cole
Kevin Cole received his B.S. from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, an M.A. in art education from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and an M.F.A. from Northern Illinois University. Within the last 32 years, he has received 27 grants and fellowships, 66 awards in art, 51 teaching awards. and over 45 public art commissions. In April Mr. Cole received the ArtSpiration Award by the National Society Incorporation for his dedication to students’ achievements. Earlier in December Mr. Cole received the 2020 Governor’s Award for the Arts and Humanities in the State of Georgia Earlier in February he received the 2020 Brenda and Larry Thompson from the Georgia Museum in Athens, GA, The 2020 Trail Blazer Award from Salem Bible Church, in Atlanta, GA and the 2019 Nexus Award from the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta.
Zipporah Camille Thompson
Zipporah Camille Thompson (she.her.hers) is an installation artist, sculptor, and activist based in Atlanta, Georgia. Thompson explores alchemical transformations through clay + textiles, examining marginalized bodies and eliciting social change through her work. Sculpted shapeshifters and hybrid landscapes investigate otherness. She received her MFA from the University of Georgia and her BFA from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Her work has been featured in numerous publications. She has shown at the Atlanta Contemporary, Trestle Gallery in Brooklyn, Rogue Space in Chelsea, Gallery 400 in Chicago, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art amongst others. Zipporah Camille Thompson is a 2020 Artadia Atlanta Awardee, a Watershed Zenobia Scholarship Award grantee, an NCECA Multicultural Fellow, and an Idea Capital Travel Grant recipient. Thompson is represented by Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, GA. A self-professed foodie, she is an avid hiker, roller-skater, history addict, and lover of the
moon, unicorns, zombies, and tarot.
Jeremy Bolen
Jeremy Bolen is an artist researcher, organizer and educator interested in site specific, experimental modes of documentation and presentation. Much of Bolen’s work involves rethinking systems of recording –– in an attempt to observe invisible presences that remain from various scientific experiments and human interactions with the earth’s surface. Bolen is a recent recipient of the Banff Research in Culture Residency in Alberta, Canada; POOL Center for Art and Criticism Residency, Johannesburg; PACT Zollverein Residency in Essen, Germany; Oxbow Faculty Artist Residency in Saugatuck, MI; and Center for Land Use Interpretation Residency in Wendover, Utah. His work has been exhibited at numerous locations including Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; La Box, Bourges; PACT Zollverein, Essen; EXGIRLFRIEND, Berlin; POOL, Johannesburg; University at Buffalo, Buffalo; IDEA Space, Colorado Springs; The Mission, Houston; Galerie Zürcher, Paris; Andrew Rafacz, Chicago; Soccer Club Club, Chicago; Salon Zürcher, New York; and The Drake, Toronto. Bolen lives and works in Atlanta, serves as Assistant Professor of Photography at Georgia State University, is a co-founder and co-organizer of the Deep Time Chicago collective, and is represented by Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago.
Guest Curator, Jordan Carter
Jordan Carter on the experience as the 2021-2022 WAP Guest Curator:
"It was a sincere pleasure and deep honor to participate in the selection process for the Working Artist Project (WAP) fellowships at MOCA GA. Surveying the initial applications, I was thoroughly impressed by the diversity, range, and talent conveyed by the submissions—providing a virtual lens into the dynamism of Georgia’s contemporary art scene. After reviewing the submissions, I had the opportunity to critically engage each of the semi-finalists in a studio visit, during which they provided generous and insightful context surrounding individual work, their process, and how they see their projects developing with support from the WAP fellowship. After much deliberation and careful consideration, I am proud to announce Jeremy Bolen, Kevin Cole, and Zipporah Camille Thompson as the 2021/2022 WAP fellows. Each of these three artists powerfully presented the depth of their conceptual, social, and political concerns, and demonstrated the rigor of their material engagements. Together they represent diverse media and disciplines, both spanning and integrating painting and sculpture; ceramics and textile; installation and performance; as well as art, science, and environmental and social justice.
Jeremy Bolen is a highly interdisciplinary artist, working at the intersection of the visual arts and scientific research and inquiry. His objects simultaneously index our current ecological crises and speculate on the future of what our earth might look like and how we might engage with it. Kevin Cole mobilizes his unique language of vivid abstraction through folded wood and metal sculptures and assemblages whose compositions manifest histories of lynching and anti-Black violence, as well as map the coordinates of gerrymandering and institutional inequity. Zipporah Camille Thompson is an alchemist, expanding the possibilities of ceramics and textiles in elaborate multimedia installations that conjure and construct queer Black spaces, drawing upon and re-imagining transhistorical and global traditions, rituals, mythologies and mysticisms.
I offer my heartfelt congratulations to the fellows and look forward to seeing what they will do with this exceptional opportunity."
These three 2021-2022 winners bring a total of forty-two artists supported by the Working Artist Project.
About the Working Artist Project
MOCA GA’s Working Artist Project (WAP) was developed in support of established artists in the Metropolitan Atlanta area. Each year the program is funded by the Charles Loridans Foundation, the Antinori Foundation, the AEC Trust, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Including the three Fellows announced today, there are a total of 42 Fellows over the past 14 years. As a museum that is dedicated first and foremost to supporting Georgia’s contemporary artists, it is MOCA GA’s goal to encourage these artists to remain in our city to establish Atlanta as one of the best cities for launching a viable career in the arts.
“This legacy initiative provides an unparalleled level of support for individual artists, expands the Museum’s mission, and promotes Atlanta as a city where artists can live, work, and thrive. MOCA GA supports artists by granting a major stipend to create new work; by presenting a solo exhibition of the new work; by producing an accompanying exhibition catalog; and by providing paid studio apprentices over the course of one year,” —Annette Cone-Skelton, Director of MOCA GA
The Working Artist Project is supported by the Charles Loridans Foundation, the Antinori Foundation, the AEC Trust, and the National Endowment for the Arts.