The Museum of Arts and Sciences presents its 11th annual Emerging National exhibition, showcasing rising stars from across the United States. Four contemporary professional artists, representing some of the nation’s finest undergraduate and graduate art programs, will display works ranging from large-scale abstract paintings and mixed media installations to ceramic sculpture.

This year's featured artists are:

Namwon Choi (Georgia)

https://www.choinamwon.com/bio.html

Namwon Choi is an artist based in Savannah, GA. Choi acquired her BFA and MFA in Traditional Korean Painting from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea in 2002, and her MFA in Drawing and Painting at Georgia State University in Atlanta in 2014.  Her work has been exhibited at the New York City Korean Culture Center, the Los Angeles Korean Culture Center, Aqua Art Miami, at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia in Atlanta and, B20 Wiregrass Biennial at the Wiregrass Museum in Dothan, Alabama.  Her work in the “New Connections” exhibition at the Korean Cultural Center in Washington D.C. was reviewed in the Washington Post. In 2020, she was one of three finalists selected for the most recent 1858 Prize Contemporary Southern Art Award at the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. She is currently a professor of Foundation Studies at Savannah College of Art and Design.

Esteban Patino

https://www.esteban-patino.com/

For the past 20 years I have dedicated my work to exploring the multitudes of language creation and perception. Spanning sculpture, collage, painting and murals, transmission, reception, communication vs. miscommunication, and semiotics permeate my work. In order to consider these questions I created a system of symbols that are based on 6 characters, each of which rotate on their own axis 4 times to make a total of 24 characters. With these shapes—which are an alphabet that creates the illusion of language—I play with word structures by creating palindromes, speech bubbles, heaps of language, and metaphors to represent how we understand written and spoken language.

Aesthetically, each iteration of my language study is distinct: my sculptures are sinuous sentinels, seeking symbolic approximation to atemporality and the possibility of universal shapes; my collages are humanoid bricolages, amorphous inquisitive monsters that portray the complexities of time and human existence; my paintings are deeply intuitive forms that awaken on the canvas, often drawing on the colors and landscapes of my native Colombia. However distinct, these styles are deeply in concert with one another—forming my praxis and pushing to me (re)consider the multifarious nature of words as symbols with infinite idiosyncratic interpretations.

Sandra Trujillo

https://www.sandratrujilloart.com/

Sandra Trujillo was born in Vallejo, California. She received her BA in religious studies from the University of California at Berkeley and received her MFA in ceramics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Trujillo has had exhibitions in venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta, the Grimmerhus Museum in Denmark, the Ann Linneman Gallery in Copenhagen, and the Palacio de Dom Manuel in Evora, Portugal – a UNESCO Heritage site. She often exhibits ceramics in universities and art galleries. Trujillo has been a resident artist at national and international art centers such as the Archie Bray Foundation for the ceramic arts in Montana, where she was the recipient of the Lillian Fellowship; the OBRAS Center in Holland, the OBRAS Center in Portugal, the International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark, Quarry Tile Factory in Washington, The Mendocino Art Center in California, and the Ceramic Center-Berlin in Berlin, Germany. Her art and scholarship are included in journals such as Gastronomica, Ceramic Arts and Perception, Drawing, and ArtWeek. She has also written and published art reviews in journals. I have lectured at public and private institutions and organizations such as the University of South Bohemia České Budějovice and many regional universities in the south.

Trujillo is currently a professor in the Department of Art at Georgia College and State University located in central Georgia. She is involved in summer teaching abroad with the European Council. She shares a studio for drawing and ceramic arts with Curtis Stewardson in Milledgeville, Georgia.

Keaton Wynn

Keaton Wynn is a Professor of Art teaching both Art History and Ceramics at Georgia Southwestern State University. He earned his BFA in Ceramics at Missouri State University, his MFA in Ceramics from Kent State University, and an MA in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University. Keaton works as a practicing artist exhibiting widely in regional, national, and international exhibitions. While teaching at GSW, he received the President's award for Excellence in Service in 2010 and the Faculty Excellence in Scholarship award in 2016. In recent years he has directed study abroad programs in China, Africa, and Nepal. Keaton has given workshops and presentations nationally and internationally and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Xi, an Academy of Fine Art in Xian China, The Dunhuang School of Art, Northwest Normal University, and Shanghai Normal University. Since the fall of 2012, Keaton has been the Creative Director of the Dunhuang Creative Center established at Lanzhou City University where he has taught and serves as a Professor of Art. In this role under his direction, LZCU has developed the only ceramics degree program in Gansu province, which is now the largest program of its kind in western China. Recently, Keaton has completed a multi-year research project into the use of indigenous materials for ceramic production in western China and has established a visiting artists program in Lanzhou focusing on Western artists' responses to Yellow River culture, the Silk Road, and the Dunhuang Buddhist Grottoes. In 2017 he established the Center for Chinese Bie Modern Studies at GSW in collaboration with the Institute of Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education at Shanghai Normal University. This center encourages critical engagement of contemporary Chinese culture. In 2019, a sister center was established at the University of Primorska in Koper Slovenia. Keaton currently lives in Plains, Georgia with his wife Stephanie who works as a medical social worker. Together they have two children Ian and Maya, a Lab Pit Bull mix named Zoe, a yellow cat named Soren Kierkegaard, and his own personal cat Hildegard who secretly controls everyone.