Nigerian-American artist Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola works in painting and sculpture, often incorporating found objects associated with African American culture. By working with familiar, everyday materials, Akinbola creates access points for observers outside the traditional fine art world to connect with the work on their own terms.

Rags to Riches is the latest addition to Akinbola’s Camouflage series. He’s sewn together durags of varying materials, textures, and colors to reference Nigeria’s textile traditions and the canon of contemporary painting. A ubiquitous cultural artifact across Black America and Atlanta, Akinbola transforms durags from everyday, functional goods into a chromatic language that paradoxically connotes the celebration and depersonalization of Black Identity.

Order of Play pays homage to the geometry of boardgames, sports fields, and ball courts and the play that occurs in these structured sites. The combination of right angles and curves, and the considered placement of colors within shapes, creates a sense of rhythm, movement, and buoyancy in this brightly hued mural, suggesting themes of teamwork, collaboration, and a general sense of coming together. Clippinger, a Georgia-born artist, finds her work continually influenced by textiles and quilting. Her artistic exploration the relationship of parts to whole that can be seen in her art are also representative of a key concept in quiltmaking—a rich, cultural tradition of the American South—even the smallest scrap plays an integral part in the design and utility of the object.

MARTHA CLIPPINGER, Order of Play, digital design printed on Photo Tek. Site-specific design.

Local artist Ato Ribeiro’s work reflects the intersection of his West African heritage and his African American identity. His wooden assemblages draw inspiration from both Ghanaian strip-woven Kente cloth and Black quilting traditions of the American South, which served as a symbolic language guiding enslaved people to freedom along the Underground Railroad.

ATO RIBEIRO, Perry’s Drum, 2022, repurposed wood and wood glue.

Meghann Riepenhoff creates unique cyanotype prints in freezing landscapes for her Ice series. By working in direct collaboration with nature, she allows water, ice, and shoreline elements to physically interact with the photographic materials. Each print captures subtle variations in temperature, water composition, and crystalline ice formations, preserving the fleeting transformations of the natural world.

In her Ecotone series, Riepenhoff engages dynamic photographic materials in collaboration with natural elements such as rain, snow, ice, and fog. These forces chemically activate the treated paper, while residual sunlight exposes the images—even in the heaviest storms—capturing the ever-changing interaction between the environment and photographic materials.

MEGHANN RIEPENHOFF, Ice #260, Great Salt Lake, 2021-2022, dynamic cyanotype. Acquired though Jackson Fine Art.