Certain Artists, Curated by Susan Cofer

Creative Loafing, "Artists Line Up at MOCA GA", Deanna Sirlin

AccessAtlanta, "Visual arts Review: New directions highlight museum exhibitions", Cathy Fox

Genevieve Arnold. Genevieve Arnold was born in Covington, Georgia in 1928.  She graduated from The Atlanta College of Art in 1951, with additional academic study at Emory University and Georgia State University. Arnold’s work focused on the struggle of a mid-century painter to reconcile the twin poles of modernism: figuration and abstraction. She was a highly respected leader in the Atlanta art community for more than 50 years. She worked as an exhibiting artist, gallery owner, and independent curator.  Arnold also served on the Board of Directors of the High Museum of Art, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and Art Papers. She exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in numerous museums and galleries including MOCA GA; The Michael C. Carlos Museum of Art at Emory University; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; and Kiang Gallery and Heath Gallery in Atlanta. Arnold passed away in 2005 and was honored with a retrospective exhibition at MOCA GA entitled, Genevieve in 2007. Seven works from this exhibition went directly into the collection of The National Museum of Women in the Arts. Arnold’s personal library of art books and exhibition catalogues are now a part of MOCA GA’s Education/Resource Center library.

Marcia R. Cohen. Marcia R. Cohen, visual artist and educator, was awarded the MOCA GA Multiples Commission for 2007. Her paintings, works on paper, and photographs examine the interdisciplinary dimension of color, visual perception and decoding the illusive nature of color. She has exhibited and lectured on her work nationally and internationally. In 2002 she was awarded the KBFUS Cultural Fellowship for research on color in the Netherlands and Germany. Cohen was educated at Wayne State University in Detroit and at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Marcia Cohen taught at the Atlanta College of Art from 1975-2006 and is presently a Professor at Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta where she teaches color theory and painting. Cohen was a 2008/2009 Working Artist Project winner, and was featured in the corresponding solo exhibition Sight Specific in 2009.

Lucy Currie.  Atlanta artist, Lucy Currie, paints small, seemingly simplistic paintings with stick figures scratched into the paint’s surface. “I am what you would call an ‘instinctive’ painter,” she says.  There is a trusting, child-like quality to her work that calls forth the strong emotions of childhood.  Despite their simple form and subject matter, her paintings possess several levels of content from the historical to the psychological to the experientially visual.  As the holder of an MFA, she also draws upon references from cave paintings to abstract expressionism.  She had a significant dual show with Benjamin Jones at the Swan Coach House Gallery.  Her work is included in MOCA GA’s permanent collection and has been shown in numerous collection exhibitions, including Light Sound Intersections, curated by composer Dick Robinson.

Eula Ginsburg. Eula Ginsburg is an Atlanta based artist and educator.  Her work is represented in collections throughout the world, from Japan to Germany, including the MOCA GA permanent collection.  Many of the students that Ginsburg has taught at the Atlanta College of Art and Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, are now working as professional artists.  Eula hopes her work will stretch the viewers mind from reality to fantasy, and back again. She captures action rather than object. Eula’s work was featured in the 2006 MOCA GA exhibition, Drawn in Georgia: Works on Paper from the MOCA GA Permanent Collection, curated by Lisa Thrower.   

Ruth Laxson. Poet and book artist Ruth Laxson uses language as a key element in her work.  She has been living and working in Atlanta since 1953.  After years of printmaking, drawing, and performing, Laxson began making artist’s books in 1980. She has been a visiting artist at the University of Iowa, Center for the Book; Atlanta College of Art; Agnes Scott College. Laxson has exhibited in solo and groups shows at the Newberger Museum, SUNY; the Rolling Stone Press; Atlanta College of Art; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; San Antonio Art Institute; and the Zeitgenossiche Handpressendrucke, Hamburg. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections both nationally and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fine Arts Academy, New Delhi; Tate Gallery, London; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Yale University Fine Art & Architecture Library; Rhode Island School of Design; and at MOCA GA. Laxson was featured as one of twenty-seven artists in the recent Georgia Council for the Arts publication: “Georgia Masterpieces: Selected Works from Georgia Museums” and the MOCA GA exhibition it inspired, Twenty Georgia Masters.

Elizabeth Lide. Elizabeth Lide holds a BFA in graphic design from the University of Georgia and an MFA in printmaking from Georgia State University. Her solo shows have included The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Sandler Hudson Gallery, La Mama in New York City, and SECCA in Winston-Salem, NC; and group shows at MOCA GA, the Carlos Museum, and Eyedrum Art Gallery. Her artists’ books have been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the University of Damascus, the University of North Carolina, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. She has been awarded residences at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hambidge Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland and, with the University of Georgia Department of Art, in Cortona, Italy. She has been a graphic designer for the industrial designer Raymond Loewy in New York City, the design director for Art Papers magazine. Lide has taught art at The Paideia School since 2004.

Susan Loftin. Exhibiting her artwork both nationally and internationally, Susan Loftin has had over 20 solo exhibitions. Her work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the High Museum, MOCA GA, the Mint Museum in North Carolina, the Speed Museum in Kentucky, and many others, as well as significant corporate and private collections. Her work has been featured in The American Craft Magazine, American Ceramics, Art Papers and Art Forum. Loftin employs a variety of media in her work, including glass, clay, wood, wire, paper, brick, and tape. Her love of materials and the act of building is ever present in her work.

Katherine Mitchell.  Katherine Mitchell was featured in a 2007 Atlanta City Gallery East Masters’ Series retrospective exhibition covering 32 years. In 2006 she had her first museum solo exhibition at Factory/Kunsthalle/Krems in Austria. In 2005, she had a major solo exhibition at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Her work has been collected by numerous museums, including the High Museum, MOCA GA, Carlos Museum, the Speed Museum in Louisville, KY, and the Arkansas Art Center. She has exhibited widely, including the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, and the American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters in New York. Mitchell is retired Senior Lecturer in Drawing & Painting at Emory University, where she taught for more than 20 years. Katherine Mitchell was featured as one of twenty-seven artists in the recent Georgia Council for the Arts publication: “Georgia Masterpieces: Selected Works from Georgia Museums” and the MOCA GA exhibition it inspired, Twenty Georgia Masters.

Rocío Rodríguez. Rocío Rodríguez received both a BFA and a MFA from the University of Georgia. Rodríguez has been the recipient of several fellowships among them the Southern Arts Federation/ National Endowment for the Arts Regional Fellowship both in painting and drawing, the Southern Regional Artist Fellowship Award at the American Academy in Rome, and the Cintas Foundation. Rodríguez has exhibited her work at numerous museums and galleries including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; the Birmingham Art Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, in Atlanta, the Fay Gold Gallery in Atlanta, the Carl Solway Gallery in Cincinatti, OH; and Hemphill Fine Arts in Washington, DC. Her work is represented in museum collections including the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and MOCA GA. Corporate collections include King & Spalding, LLP;  Alston & Bird, LLP; Troutman and Sanders; the Hyatt Hotel International in Paris, France; and Chase Manhattan Bank in Dayton, OH. A drawing installation by Rodríguez is also on display on MOCA GA’s Education/Resource Center Project Ramp wall.

Leslie Snipes. Leslie Snipes was born in Lancaster, South Carolina. She received a BFA from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC and a MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Georgia. Selected solo exhibitions include Untitled Landscapes: New Drawings at Artworks Gallery in Hartford, CT; Wake: New Works on Paper at Kiang Gallery in Atlanta, GA; Terra Inverta at the Fugitive Art Center in Nashville, TN; and Small Scale Investigations at the Lamar Dodd School of Art in Athens, GA. Snipes’ work included in numerous collection including MOCA GA, Atlanta Federal Reserve, Appalachian Cultural Museum, and Charlotte Halpert Memorial Collection, in Boone, NC. She has been featured twice in New American Paintings: July 2001 (Southeast edition) and January 2004 (Northeast edition). Snipes currently serves as assistant professor of art at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.