These 10 Atlanta Artists are Set to Transform a 175-Year-Old Canvas at illumine
Now in its 19th year, Historic Oakland Foundation presents illumine, the annual immersive art event that lights up the Cemetery after dark for two consecutive weekends in April - Thursday, April 16 to Sunday, April 19, and Thursday, April 23 to Sunday, April 26 from 7:30PM to 11:00PM. As the sun sets, the night will reveal light-centered interactive and immersive art in a “gallery space” unlike any in Atlanta.
For the second year, Oakland is partnering with Atlanta-based gallery Cat Eye Creative to co-curate illumine with new artists and a new path through the cemetery, bringing light and art installations to the shadows of mausoleums and sections of the cemetery never explored by the public during illumine.
“Cat Eye Creative is thrilled to return for another year curating illumine with Oakland Cemetery,” said Adam Crawford, founder of Cat Eye Creative gallery and studio. “Each year, illumine gives us the opportunity to grow—we’re especially excited to showcase artists whose distinctive voices and creative practices reflect the same depth, diversity, and individuality found throughout Oakland Cemetery.”
In partnership with the High Museum of Art, late photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard will have work featured at illumine, making him the first illumine artist with work featured posthumously.
In addition to exploring parts of the Cemetery after the sun sets, illumine attendees will also enjoy live entertainment, multiple bars, and an Oakland pop-up shop. This year, we are excited to offer art-centered workshops and new ways to experience illumine, including Premium Tickets, Artist Spotlight Tours, and Pick Your Price Nights.
Learn more about the diverse and varied local and internationally acclaimed artists:
Fabian Williams
is an Atlanta-based visual and performance artist with a future-focused approach to his work, exploring themes of Black liberation, innovation, and joy. Born in Fayetteville, NC, he pulls from a wide range of influences—commercial illustration, classic portraiture, hip-hop, and civil rights iconography—to address issues of race and the persistent exploitation of Black culture. His work seeks to normalize Blackness in ways that are both celebratory and thought-provoking, often inspired by the realism of Caravaggio and Norman Rockwell, but with a lens shaped by today’s racial, political, and social landscape. His art has been featured in The Guardian, BBC, L.A. Times, New York Times, Playboy, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, SB Nation, Bloomberg, The Root, and more. You can find his murals across Atlanta and beyond, making bold statements in public spaces.
His work extends beyond the canvas; he co-created the #Kaeperbowl mural campaign during Super Bowl 53, using art as activism, and contributed to the Big Facts Small Acts campaign to help engage Black and brown communities in staying healthy during the pandemic. He recently created the original poster and key art for Former President Jimmy Carter’s 100th Birthday Celebration at The Carter Center and The Fox Theater, and recently completed a commemorative mural in tribute to the late Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter in the Delta Concourse at the Atlanta International Airport.
Eddie Farr
is an artist focused on physical and digital technology living in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from Georgia Southern University with a B.A. in Music and an M.M. in Music Technology. As a musician and composer, he has performed works internationally and throughout the U.S. As a visual artist, he has shown works at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, ArtFields, Blue Heron Nature Preserve, The Atlanta Beltline, Echo Contemporary, Shedspace at Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta Art Fair, and was the installation artist at the 2023 Hambidge Art Auction. He is a Hambidge Fellow and was part of the initial cohort for the Fulton County Futures Lab residency. In 2024, he received a grant from Smart Growth America’s Healing Our Highways program, which focused on reimagining pedestrian safety in some of the nation’s most dangerous cities. He currently has a residency at the Hapeville Depot museum, exploring hobo monikers and symbols in collaboration with graffiti historian Antar Fierce.
Christina Kwan
is an Atlanta-based artist known for her abstract works on canvas, paper, and large scale murals. Originally from South Florida, Kwan moved to Atlanta in 2010 after graduating from University of Florida with a BFA in Drawing. Christina's work is an ongoing exploration of her Asian-American identity and the internal struggle of feeling incomplete or existing in-between.
She began painting murals in 2018 and her studio work has been shown in a variety of commercial galleries and academic institutions. Kwan's murals are featured in a diverse range of spaces and span across the country with states including California, Washington, New Jersey, and Texas. Her compositions feature bold and calligraphic brush strokes inspired by her heritage, acting as a yearning for permanence and a search for wholeness.
Jordan Graves
is an Atlanta-based artist, designer, and educator who works with code across sculpture, textiles, printmaking, and interactive installations. She has a BFA in Motion Media Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design and an MS in Digital Media from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where her research included the relationship between craft and computer science education, building computational design tools, and designing experiences that connect people and spaces through online interaction.
Her work has been exhibited nationally at including Atlanta Contemporary, Westobou Gallery, and Gallery 85. Beyond her studio practice, she has designed interactive, projection-based exhibitions for institutions including the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, the Children’s Creativity Museum, and the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. As an educator, she works across disciplines, integrating creative coding into computer science curricula and developing projects at the intersection of art and science.
Marcia R Cohen
is a visual artist and educator based in Atlanta. Her artwork and scholarly research is broadly based in topics as diverse as color phenomena, Jewish history and the confluence of nature and culture. Cohen works across multiple disciplines, including painting, drawing, photography, enamel arts, installations and puppetry. She has been awarded numerous fellowships including the MOCA Ga Working Artist Project, Fulbright Hays Fellowship (Morocco and Tunisia), American Academy in Rome Affiliated Fellowship and a Duke University Department of Jewish Studies Research Fellowship. Cohen has been an artist in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and international residencies in Iceland, the Azores Archipelago and Santa Fe. Marcia R. Cohen is a professor emerita from the Atlanta College of Art and SCAD Atlanta.
Marcia R Cohen's work was supported in part by the Atlanta Contemporary Nexus Fund and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Art.
Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925-1972)
was a pioneering and inventive artist who created some of the most original images of the mid-twentieth century. His work defies easy categorization as he experimented across various genres and subjects, and throughout his career, he maintained the ethos of an amateur, approaching photography with a sense of affection, discovery, and surprise.
He is best known for his staged scenes that suggest an absurd fantasy set in the dilapidated houses and banal suburban environs near his home in Lexington, Kentucky. These scenes, often featuring his family as actors and using props such as masks and dolls, reveal Meatyard’s search for inner truths amid the ordinary. Presented in partnership with the High Museum of Art.
VAYNE
is an infamous graffiti artist from Atlanta, Georgia. Self-taught and multi-faceted, VAYNE has mastered not only the art of graffiti but also the art of utilizing any space to maximize impact.
VAYNE is internationally known, having blessed hundreds of cities with his style, spanning 4 continents and counting. VAYNE has interior and exterior murals in cities around the world and shows work in galleries across the US.
Vanna Black
is an illustrator, painter, and muralist with expertise in digital communication. She obtained her BFA from Georgia State University in graphic arts as a hybrid designer. Having studied fine arts as an undergraduate, 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.
Vanna is a proud native of Atlanta and grew up in Ormewood/Grant Park neighborhoods. She has a Bachelors of Fine Arts with a concentration in Graphic Design from Georgia State University. Vanna had the pleasure of creating custom fine art for Hermès, LivingWalls Atlanta, City of Atlanta, Sustainable Forestry Industry, and Canada Goose and Foundry Commercial. She is currently a volunteer member of the social media team for CreativeMornings ATL Chapter and is apart of the newly announced 2025 Cohort of the Paint Love nonprofit organization.
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Daniel Phelps on Atlanta Downtown’s MAP Rover
Daniel Phelps creates experimental narrative systems that explore how technology shapes perception, embodiment, and interaction.
Atlanta Downtown’s MAP Rover is a public art projection program on wheels that illuminates city buildings and unexpected places with digital artwork, film, and photography. Atlanta Downtown is a long-standing partnership between Central Atlanta Progress and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, two nonprofit organizations dedicated to the overall vitality of the city center. The organization’s Art & Activation program works to enhance the cultural identity, vibrancy, and inclusivity by enlivening Downtown spaces and fostering a sustainable creative ecosystem.
For this year’s theme, artists will present work in response to the theme of “foundations,” inviting illumine artists to consider foundations of their own - their own roots and how they’ll make their mark among Oakland’s headstones. As an homage to the beginnings of the Cemetery, this year’s event route will include the Original Six Acres, as well as many of the Jewish sections and fan-favorite and recent burial, Kenny Rogers.
“Each artist’s vision offers a powerful interpretation of this year’s Foundations theme,” said Richard Harker, president and CEO of Historic Oakland Foundation. “Every year, illumine transforms Oakland into an immersive experience where sculpture, installation, and light are woven into the Cemetery landscape, allowing artists to share personal and distinctive narratives through their art.”
Learn more and purchase your illumine tickets to see these artists transform Oakland after dark!
