Cinqué Hicks is an art critic based in Atlanta, Georgia. He has served as senior contributing editor of the International Review of African American Art, and during 2012 was the interim editor-in-chief of Art Papers. A graduate of Harvard University’s compartative literature program, Hicks also holds a master’s degree from Georgia Tech, where he studied digital media art. In 2011, he was the founding creative director of Atlanta Art Now and co-author of its landmark volume, Noplaceness: Art in a Post-Urban Landscape. From 2008 to 2012, Hicks was an art critic, arts writer, and columnist for Creative Loafing and has written for a variety of national and international publications including Public Art Review, Art in America, Artforum.com, and Artvoices.

Felicia Feaster is a curator and writer who received her BA in film and Eastern European studies from the University of Florida and her MA in film studies from Emory University. Her master's thesis on exploitation film became a book, Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Film co-authored with her husband, filmmaker Bret Wood. Her writing has appeared in Atlanta magazine where she is a contributing writer, Elle, New York Press, Paper magazine, Sculpture, Art in America, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Design Bureau, Charleston City Paper, Turner Classic Movies, Santa Fe Reporter, Artnews, Playboy, Creative Loafing and Art Papers. She has a regular film column featured on Burnaway.org. She has curated exhibitions for the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and TEW Galleries in Atlanta and Fe Gallery in Pittsburgh. She has received multiple Green Eyeshade Awards for criticism and feature reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists and this year was named one of "Atlanta's 50 Most Creative People" by CommonCreativ magazine. She is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the Women Film Critics Circle and ArtTable.

Jamie Steele currently lives and works in Atlanta, GA. She is a gallery person at Take it Easy and previously ran the exhibition space, Camayuhs. She obtained her BA in Fine Art from the University of the South in 2007 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012 upon which she received the John Quincy Adams fellowship awarded by Jessica Stockholder. Recent curatorial projects include a solo exhibition of Adrienne Elise Tarver’s work titled Underfoot at Atlanta Contemporary, 2021. Feels Warm Like Things Burning, LUMP, Raliegh, NC, 2019, Dodd Bod, a student exhibition at the University of Georgia, 2019, Satellite Fair, Miami, FL, 2018, and Very Far Away From Anywhere Else, AA Projects, Vienna, Austria, 2017. She was recently a juror for Stove Works’ 2022 - 2023 Guest Curators Program.

Jess Bernhart

Jody Fausett studied photography in Atlanta, Georgia at the Art Institute of Atlanta and later moved to New York where he found work in fashion and portrait photography.  In 2004, he returned to Georgia to focus on his personal art.  Fausett's photographs have been in various group shows in New York, New Orleans, Oregon and Washington, and he mounted his first solo show at the University of Southern Illinois, Department of Motion Picture and Film in Chicago.  His work has appeared in numerous publications and his first book, Second Place, was released in 2007 through GHava Press.  In early 2011, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia recognized Jody Fausett as an up-and-coming talent and his work was shown in the corresponding Movers & Shakers: MOCA GA Salutes the Rising Stars of the Georgia Arts Scene at MOCA GA.  Possibly Futures also selected Fausett's work for Atlanta Art Now's first book, NoPlaceness: Art in a Post-Urban Landscape and Oxford American has picked him for one of the top "New Superstars of Southern Art."  In 2014 he was shortlisted for the Artadia Prize.  His solo exhibition "Crush Velvet" was shown at the Morean Art Center in St. Petersburg, Florida last spring.  Jody is represented by Jackson Fine Art.

Louise E. Shaw has been a cultural worker in Atlanta for over 40 years, working in the intersection of arts, humanities, and community building. From 1983 to 1998, she served as Executive Director of Nexus Contemporary Art Center (now Atlanta Contemporary Art Center). Prior to that, she was Assistant Curator at the Atlanta Historical Society (now Atlanta History Center) and Director of the Georgia State University Art Gallery. She has worked internationally on projects in Mexico, France, Norway, Ghana, Macedonia, and Albania, among other countries. Since 2002, she has served as curator of the David J. Sencer CDC Museum (formerly the Global Health Odyssey Museum) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she has curated exhibitions such as VD: Values, Rights, Public Health; Health Is a Human Right: Race and Place in America; and EBOLA: People + Public Health + Political Will.

Mary Stanley is the creative energy behind a broad array of cutting edge contemporary art initiatives. As an independent curator, private art consultant, arts advocate, and artist representative, she maintains relationships with museums, galleries, nonprofit organizations and a select group of talented, established and emerging artists, international in scope. Her Young Collectors Club, started in 2006, provides an educational and social networking opportunity for over 200 young professionals interested in learning about and collecting contemporary art. Art has been a personal passion for many years, and became her second career in 1997. She started her own art business, Mary Stanley Studio in 2004. Mary serves on the Board of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Board of Visitors at Lamar Dodd School of Art at University of Georgia, the Board of Atlanta Celebrates Photography, and several other nonprofit initiatives.

Megan Schaeffer is a creative consultant, arts administrator, and graphic designer. After receiving a BA in Arts Management from the College of Charleston, Schaeffer completed the Sotheby's Institute of Fine Art intensive program on Gallery Management and Curatorial Studies. She was a founding team-member of the Charleston, SC chapter of Creative Mornings, a monthly breakfast lecture series focusing on leaders in the creative community. Her time as Outreach Coordinator for Artist & Craftsman Supply, an employee owned art supply company, led to a love of art supplies (ask her about types of oil paint, she'll keep you a while) and, more importantly, arts education. Upon moving to Atlanta in 2015, she worked at Soho Myriad as the Artist Liaison + Art Resource Coordinator, then served as the Art Farm Director at Serenbe, a luxury wellness community south of Atlanta. She has been the driving force behind creative digital strategy and implementation for a wide range of clients that include fine artists, small businesses, and entrepreneurs under her consulting firm Hamilton Schaeffer Studio, and currently serves as the Creative Director at ArtCloud.

Grace Gardner is a curator and arts administrator from southeast Michigan. Deeply passionate about utilizing art to disrupt conventional schools of thought, excavating meaning, and cultivate community, she has worked as a Curator at TILA Studios, and develops art programs for All Together Now. Grace enjoys art criticism as a written genre and completed Burnaway's Art Writers Mentorship Program in 2018. Grace is a 2017 graduate of Emory University where she studied African American Studies and Sociology.

Oronike Odeleye is an experienced project manager dedicated to expanding public appreciation of the arts of the African Diaspora. A graduate of Syracuse University (where she received her B.A. in Film Studies) she has since worked with communities in the U.S., Panama, and Senegal to create and execute arts and culture programming. Oronike is a published fiction writer with articles and short fiction published in CodeZ Online Magazine and the Callaloo Journal of Arts. 

Sam Romo has over 20 years of success leading global teams with Fortune 500 companies including Turner Broadcasting, SAP, and Coca-Cola.  Sam parlayed his passion for the visual arts by launching his contemporary art gallery –the romo gallery in Castleberry Hills, from 2004 to 2008.  The gallery collaborated with national and regional based artists delivering cutting edge visual presentations from film, installation, to street performance works. Today, sam enjoys advocating for the continued sustainability of a strong local arts community in Atlanta.   Sam earned a degree in Economics from The University of Texas at Austin and holds advanced professional designations in project management and business process improvement.