May 10 – June 8, 2025
DELUGE: Leah Mulligan Cabinum, Ally Christmas, Lori Brook Johnson, Mary Stuart Walker
Curated by Grace Bishop, Lauren Fancher, and Marcella Vlahos
Artists’ Talk and Reception: Saturday, May 10, 4-6 PM, 2025
ATHICA’s early Summer 2025 exhibition DELUGE presents the work of four artists from across our southeastern region. Lori Brook Johnson’s figurative work depicts the literal and emotional deluge that affected her community in Western North Carolina. Ally Christmas’s imagery suggests emotional storms in its symbolism and coloration. Leah Mulligan Cabinum’s practice is awash with materials and ideas, collage and installation transforming along with her inner dialogue. Mary Stuart Walker brings the angularity of a city-dweller overlooking maps of water and fire. Their wide-ranging materials, figuration and abstraction, palette, and execution are in an interesting conversation. Deluge celebrates them as survivors of not only hurricanes but of the many challenges faced by working artists and by women in general.
Curator Marcella Vlahos notes that in these works “community emerges as a central throughline. Notions of place-making and labor are challenged, and personal insights are extended—like an outstretched hand—as an alternative way of structuring community. Adds co-curator Grace Bishop, “Each artists’ subject matter emphasizes how intertwined the human experience is with the feeling of bombardment. ‘DELUGE’ pulls together this swarm of contrasting elements, producing electric conversations between the pieces and the identities of their makers.
The artists and curators will take part in a conversation about the exhibition followed by a reception starting at 4:00 PM on Saturday, May 10, 2025. All are invited to attend.
The exhibition results from ATHICA’s Annual Call for Entries, which provides opportunities for individual artists and curators to exhibit their work at ATHICA and its satellite location, ATHICA@Ciné.
About the Artists
Leah Mulligan Cabinum | Clover, South Carolina
Leah Mulligan Cabinum is best known for her use of materiality in her sculptural installations, objects and drawings. Her thoughtful use of diverse materials are informative in conceptual and sensorial terms, and commonly sourced by repurposing cast-off goods. Hands-on fabrication enables her meditative and self-reflective process, which centers on the idea of mining personal identity. While initially, she approaches art-making with an anything-goes mindset, further development of work submits to an
imposed parameter of action, or more simply, a verb. Effectively, this boundary provides conceptual focus, informing materiality. She lives and works in South Carolina, is the Gallery Director at the University of South Carolina Upstate and her work is exhibited in private collections, galleries, museums and public spaces.
CV: LMC_resume | website: mulliganarts.com | IG: @leahmulligancabinum
Ally Christmas | Shepherdstown, West Virginia
Ally Christmas is a visual artist whose work revolves around notions of selfhood, healing rituals, and lived experience. Her hybrid practice involves varied mediums including digital video, constructed imagery, quilting and embroidery, palladium printing, and cyanotype on handwoven fabric. Christmas received her BA in Studio Art from the University of Virginia in 2013, and her MFA in Photo/Video from the University of Georgia, after which she spent two years teaching video art and photography at Grinnell College as the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Video and New Media. Since 2020, she has been teaching lens-based media as the coordinator of the BFA Photo Program at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV. She’s exhibited work at a wide variety of venues including bitforms gallery and Soho Photo Gallery in NYC; the Delaplaine Center for the Arts in Frederick, MD; ATHICA in Athens, GA; Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, GA; and the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO.
CV: Christmas_CV (Apr 2025)| website: allychristmas.com | IG: @allychristmas
Lori Brook Johnson | Bakersville, North Carolina
MY NAME IS Lori Brook Johnson.
I am one of many experiences of Appalachia. My youngest years were spent in the holler of West Virginia. I was raised early by a single mother, and I am a coal miner’s daughter. Our family was simultaneously created through and devastated by the coal mining industry; and we continuously soothe and alter the impact while creating our various lives. I come from a family and community who fought for fair labor practices in the Teachers’ Strike of West Virginia and on many Picket Lines at the Mines. Because we hold hands with many truths; we are also musicians, writers, artists, care-takers, roller-skaters, double-dutch jumpers, multi-degree holders, landscapers, barrel racers, animal-lovers, community builders, students, teachers, professors, activists, makers, and rescuers of wounded deer. I draw into and learn from multiple realities. I received my MFA from Clemson University. A 2018 and a 2020 grant from The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation directly led to this achievement. I am a teaching artist in the community at Penland School of Craft, and I create my drawings at Treats Studios in Spruce Pine.
CV: Lori Brook Johnson CV 2025 | website: www.loribrookjohnson.com | IG:@loribrookjohnson
Mary Stuart Walker | Decatur, Georgia
Mary Stuart Walker (b.1982) is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Atlanta, GA. Mary Stuart received an MA in Art Education from the University of Georgia and MFA in Studio Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art, MICA. Her work questions our understanding of landownership and the representation of landscape. A Hambidge Fellow, she has completed residencies at Georgia Tech, Volatile Parts and Chashama. She was the MFAST Artist in Residence at the University of the Arts Bremen, Germany where she exhibited at Gallery Flut. Her book Hear and There was published by Volatile Parts and her work has been published in Brink Literary Journal. She has exhibited at 1708 Gallery’s public art event InLight, Hartsfield-Jackson airport, and has a sculpture on the Atlanta Beltline. Mary Stuart’s practice is driven by a desire to give form to the immaterial so that we can experience encounters that are immeasurable.
website: www.marystuarthall.com | IG: @marystuhall
About the Curators
Grace Bishop | Athens, Georgia
Grace Bishop is a visual artist currently living and working in Athens, Georgia. She has a BFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Georgia and is about to embark on her Master’s degree at Washington University in St. Louis. Grace has been a part of ATHICA for a little under a year now, aiding with fundraising projects and exhibitions. She currently serves as a member of the Exhibitions committee and has already self-curated and self-installed an exhibition in February of 2025. Although her Master’s program will move her to St. Louis in the fall, Grace continues to relish her time aiding those artists within the ATHICA community.
Lauren Fancher | Athens, Georgia
Lauren Fancher is an interdisciplinary artist and writer living in Athens, Georgia. She has a BFA in Drawing and Painting and MEd in Interactive Design and Development from UGA. She currently serves as the Director of ATHICA: The Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, a non-profit artist-run arts center serving Athens for almost 25 years. In her time with ATHICA, she has helped to curate, coordinate, and present dozens of exhibitions for hundreds of artists.
Marcella Vlahos | Athens, Georgia
Marcella Vlahos is a visual artist based in Athens, Georgia, where she is pursuing a BFA in Drawing and Painting at the University of Georgia. She has been involved with ATHICA for over a year and currently serves on its Board of Directors. In this role, she has contributed to sponsorship efforts, served on the Exhibitions Curating Committee, and helped coordinate shows at ATHICA and the ATHICA@Ciné Gallery. A passionate member of the Athens art community, Marcella is committed to help shape the kind of art world she wants to be part of. In addition to her work with ATHICA, she serves as a Lamar Dodd School of Art Ambassador and works as a student leader at the UGA Performing Arts Center Box Office.
DELUGE is sponsored in part by The James E. and Betty J. Huffer Foundation, The Georgia Council for the Arts, and The National Endowment for the Arts.
Press Release: https://mailchi.mp/athica/deluge
Catalog: DELUGE_Catalog_2024_Web_050925