Hearts
Emmy Carter
Emmy Carter is a nonprofit professional, musician, and regenerative agriculture advocate. She has been responsible for fundraising, communications, and programming at leading arts institutions including The Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Cunningham Dance Foundation in New York City, and Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). At the start of the pandemic as performing arts halls were shuttered, she leaned into the growing sense of urgency to support food access and local ag initiatives through volunteer work, which ultimately led her to return home to the South in 2022 to join the fundraising and strategic impact team at Georgia Organics, an organization that invests in organic farmers for the health of our communities and the land.
Marlos E'van
Marlos E'van Nashville-based artist, E'van interweaves different mediums such as painting, performance, and filmmaking to create worlds in which their art recollects black histories: joy, pain, celebration, sorrow, and complex emotions from reenacted scenes of American histories. A subtle vernacular in expression has caught recognition from such publications such as Hyperallergic and Native Magazine. In addition to their work as an artist, E'van co-founded/co-designs M-SPAR, McGruder Social Practice Artist Residency out of the McGruder Center in North Nashville. Marlos E'van's work is included in Southern collections, has been shown in VA, TN, GA, and NY. They have been awarded the Mellon Foundation Collaboration and Metro Arts Thrive Grant through M-SPAR. Marlos received their B.F.A from Watkins College of Art in Nashville, TN.
Courtney Adair Johnson
Courtney Adair Johnson is an artist and curator based in Nashville, TN. She is formally the Gallery Director of the Department of Art and Design at Tennessee State University (2016-2025) and Co-Builder of McGruder Social Practice Artist Residency (M-SPAR) (2015-2024). Johnson is a self-proclaimed reuse artist whose passion is creating conversations on consumption and waste habits. With her public and academic work, she finds importance in information sharing and working on topics of social justice, history, and cultural and neighborhood preservation. Johnson has led reuse projects with Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Tennessee Craft, and Springboard for the Arts (Fergus Falls).