Announcing Paint Love’s 2025 Emerging Artist Cohort!
Six talented Atlanta-area artists have been selected for Paint Love’s fourth Artist Cohort. The cohort will collaborate closely with Paint Love to develop a meaningful creative project, which they will bring to diverse groups of Atlanta youth across various ages connecting Atlanta talent to Atlanta youth. Throughout the process, participants will be trained in Paint Love’s trauma-informed model, learn new skills and receive expert guidance from Atlanta professionals on effectively engaging and creating deeper, more meaningful experiences for young people.
Launched in 2022, the Emerging Artist Cohort program provides an 18-month professional development experience in which cohort members learn how to incorporate Paint Love’s trauma-informed model in their roles as creatives, teachers, and leaders in our community. Working directly with Paint Love’s nonprofit partners, cohort members also focus on elevating the “extraordinary” elements of arts education - bringing the magic and wonder of a memorable and meaningful experience that will resonate with students beyond their time in the classroom.
Get to know the artists
AK Bayer
Multidisciplinary artist currently working as a performer and choreographer in the local contemporary dance scene
Originally from Atlanta, they have recently expanded their creative practice to 3D visual art, working with found and repurposed objects to create sculptures and installations. A lifelong mover and maker, AK draws on their personal experiences and identities as a source of inspiration for their work. They create from a place of curiosity and play and believe that art and movement have the power to carry us through and beyond life’s adverse experiences.
Catalina Bellizzi
First-generation American large-scale abstract painter
Catalina grew up in the midwest and is a half-Colombian, half-Argentine first generation American. Using the cultural complexity of her upbringing to bring nuance and a sense of "in-between-ness" to her work, her art practice thrives on seeking liberation and transcendence of the human experience. After several years working in Art Education in Chicago Public schools, Catalina recently moved to Atlanta and works on large-scale paintings, abstract mixed media work, freelance design, and album art direction for various national recording artists.
Vanna Black
Atlanta native, muralist drawing inspiration from African motif patterns, Japanese Illustrations, and floral aesthetics
Vanna grew up in Ormewood/Grant Park neighborhoods. She found her style over time relating back to African motif patterns and Japanese Illustrations of vast landscape and floral aesthetics. Her art displays colorful expressive, motion-filled imagery, titling each art piece with the human essence in mind. Vanna’s mission is to use composition, color, scale and balance to open the viewer's mind for internal reflections about one's own thoughts on the world we live in today and the perspective of others’. She visualizes a world where everyone is nurturing each other while learning about how to be self-maintaining like Nature.
Madison Nunes
Artist, independent curator, and administrator
Madison is based in Atlanta, GA where they serve as the Programs Manager for The Bakery Atlanta, an arts non-profit. They are a graduate of The School of Visual Arts where they received their BFA in photography and video, exhibiting their work in New York and Georgia. Working primarily in photography, Nunes often focuses on cultivated intimacy within alternative family structures and the medium’s ability to be a democratized,anthropological lens.
Sarah Roberts
Loves sharing knowledge of needle, thread, and fabric
Sarah believes learning to embroider assists in developing life skills and challenges us to explore our personal & collective histories. Sarah has been studying and teaching surface hand embroidery for over a decade. While mostly self taught, she was thankful to hone her technical skills with San Francisco School of Needlework & Design’s professional training program in 2023 & 2024. Sarah’s embroidered work has been published online and in print for international and local Atlanta magazines.
Sierra Wynn
Atlanta-based artist with a focus on filmmaking and photography
Before the pandemic in 2020, Sierra was a criminal justice fanatic who hoped for a future in law-enforcement. However, through the pandemic, new passion was found in the art of creating films. Realizing her love for filmmaking, Sierra left her pursuit of law-enforcement behind and began focusing solely on creating art. With an immense appreciation of telling stories that people can relate to, most of Sierra’s art is visually based on real-life accounts and current events in the world.
The Emerging Artist Cohort is possible thanks to generous private donors and family foundations. Additionally, we are thrilled to announce that the National Endowment for the Arts has approved Paint Love for a Challenge America grant in support of this program.
“The NEA is proud to continue our nearly 60 years of supporting the efforts of organizations and artists that help to shape our country’s vibrant arts sector and communities of all types across our nation,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “It is inspiring to see the wide range of creative projects taking place, including Paint Love’s Emerging Artist Cohort program.”