2024 Juror

The juror for the 2024 SECAC juried Exhibition is Alice Stone-Collins, an Atlanta-based artist and curator, and a faculty member at Georgia Gwinnett College. Her intricate hand-painted collages highlight the tensions between the mundane, the everyday, and the apparent dead. Alice earned her MFA in studio art from the University of Tennessee and has exhibited her work regionally and nationally. She has been a resident artist at Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft and the David and Julia White Artist Colony in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica. Alice has been featured on Studio Break and The Artists Mother Podcast and her work published as the cover art for Aurora, The Allegory Ridge Poetry Anthology. 

With over 300 submissions from many different mediums, Alice selected fifty works to represent this year's exhibition.

In her juror's statement:

Run? Hide? Seek? Work. To make work is to expose a side of yourself that otherwise would remain hidden. To make work is to reveal. To make work is to communicate a part of you that is impossible to express any other way. 

I admire all the artists who submitted to the 2024 SECAC Juried Members Exhibition for allowing me to take in these works. To admire the technical skill, thoughtful compositions, and overall quality and care that went into each of these works.

The jurying process is both exciting and complicated. When looking through the works, almost all context Is removed. Because of this I make decisions based on what I can gather or understand visually or conceptually. Many of the pieces are visually remarkable, instilling a sense of wonder. Others are compelling due to their reflective conceptual depth. It was wonderful to learn about the perspectives of each fellow artist through this process.

It is not easy to make work in any circumstance. But in the current age of academia where to make work we must work more and more at teaching, in committees, navigating the nuance of student mental health concerns and our own, reacting to changing academic structures, to make work requires soul force and a true dedication to your craft. These pieces will fill the gallery with a great energy that reflects the beauty and ugliness of the world we inhabit and work in today.

It has been an honor to be here with these pieces. To really sit and see how they could speak to a viewer based on what the artist might have intended and my own viewpoint. To sit on the opposite side of the artwork is such a poignant and sharp pleasure that inspires ideas for my own work. 

Thank you to Dr. Tracy Stonestreet, Rebecca Parker and SECAC organization for the opportunity to be a part of this process and to have my own horizon on what work can be opened again. 

Alice Stone-Collins

Exhibition Space

Our exhibition space this year is hosted at the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Galleries at Georgia State University.

Established in 1970, the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Galleries at Georgia State University are among the most dynamic visual arts spaces in downtown Atlanta. Comprised of two galleries embedded at the heart of the GSU campus, the galleries host exhibitions featuring works by national and international artists, local and regional artists, and Georgia State students, faculty and alumni artists.

To get to the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Galleries at Georgia State University from the conference hotel, take the MARTS Gold line to the Five Points station. Transfer to the Green or Blue line, go one stop to the Georgia State Station located on the Green or Blue Line.

The galleries are a short 4 block walk from the Georgia State Station, 170 Piedmont Ave, SE, Atlanta, GA 30303 to Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Galleries, 10 Peachtree Center Ave SE, Atlanta, GA 30303. For more information, you can visit the MARTA website here.