After receiving his BFA from University of Louisville in 2005, James Robert Southard worked for years as a freelance photojournalist and artist. In 2008 he left for Pittsburgh for graduate school in Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating in 2011he was invited to international exhibitions such as the Moscow Biennale for Young Art, Hel’Pitts’Sinki’Burgh in Finland, Camaguey Cuba’s 5th International Video Art Fest and he has participated in the Internet Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in Venice Italy. After receiving his MFA in 2011, James taught as a photography professor at University of Louisville, Kentucky School of Art and Carnegie Mellon University as a professor of fine arts. In the winter and spring of 2012, James continued his series Tooth and Nail with the collaboration of the city of Seoul, Korea at Seoul Art Space Geumcheon. Soon after he took his project to Maine where he was a participant at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, then later at MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, Yaddo Retreat in New York, Jentel in Wyoming, Vermont Studio Center and to the MASS MoCA residency in North Adams, MA.
He has since returned to academia by teaching photography at the University of Kentucky.

Originally from Cynthiana, Kentucky, Wylie Caudill has emerged as a distinguished artist, rooted in the verdant landscape of Lexington. He is presently this year’s official artist for the prestigious 150th Kentucky Derby.
Wylie's artistic narrative is woven with a distinctive imprint—a signature style he affectionately terms as "organic repetition." This unique aesthetic can be easily recognized throughout his portfolio.
His work can be seen not just in Kentucky but across the United States, vitalizing urban landscapes with murals that echo his artistic ethos.
Wylie's artistic journey began when he was quite young. Pokemon, trains, and dragons served as his inspiration and ignited his imagination. However, it was while at college that Wylie found his artistic niche using chalk to draw on the streets and sidewalks of his campus, that earned him the nickname 'the chalk guy’. Murals were a natural transition from there.
Today, Wylie's artistic creativity transcends the confines of concrete walls to work on canvases, bourbon bottles, apparel, and beyond. He likes to think his journey stands as a testament to the transformative power of passion, dedication, and an unwavering commitment to his art.

Kevin Nance is a photographer, arts journalist and poet living in Lexington, Kentucky. His photographs have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Chicago, Portland, Danville and Lexington, including at the Lexington Art League, the Lexington Public Library, the University of Kentucky Hospital and Arts Connect’s Mobile Gallery. His two collections of photographs and haiku are Even If (University of Kentucky Arts in HealthCare, 2020) and Midnight (Act of Power Press, 2022). As a journalist, Kevin’s work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, Poets & Writers Magazine, the Lexington Herald-Leader, Ace Magazine, UnderMain and many other publications.
​He’s the host of Out & About in Kentucky with Kevin Nance and a co-host of the Kentucky Writers' Roundtable, both on RadioLex.

​Born in 1942 in Espanola, New Mexico, Arturo Alonzo Sandoval is a fiber artist and educator best known for his weavings and for incorporating unconventional recycled materials – including vinyl and microfilm – into his works.
Arturo taught at several schools around the country before accepting a faculty position in the art department at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, in 1974, where he remained until his retirement. Sandoval has gained wide recognition for his experimental approach to working in fiber, receiving fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1973 and 1992) and the 2003 Artist Award from the Kentucky governor. Arturo has had his fiber art exhibited regionally, nationally as well as accepted into numerous international juried exhibitions. His work is represented within numerous collections and museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council.
He is one of five artists whose work will be in the show RADIANCE opening at the Headley Whitney museum mid April thru June.
The others exhibiting work will be glass artists Guy Kemper, Stephen Rolfe Powell and Travis Adams as well as jewelry designer and artist Daria de Koning.

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall was born Oct. 17, 1937, in Chicago, but spent much of her childhood in Florida. She attended the University of Florida and earned a masters in English at Columbia University. She taught at Auburn University, Miami of Ohio and the University of Puerto Rico before coming to the University of Kentucky in 1977. She met and married her creative writing colleague, James Baker Hall, in 1982. Taylor-Hall’s most famous novel is Come and Go, Molly Snow, is about a single mother and musician, and considered a Kentucky classic. She has also published a book of short stories and three volumes of poetry. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in the Paris Review, the Sewanee Review and the Kenyon Review.
Her stories and poetry are inseparable from the rural landscape of Harrison County where she has found inspiration for nearly 5 decades. On March 25 she will be one of the three living inductees honored and welcomed into the Carnegie Center’s Kentucky Writers’ Hall of Fame 2024.
​
"It seems to me that almost everybody in Kentucky has a background that is worth fiction: how they got here, why they stayed, what happened on the way," she said. "I think that's one reason Kentucky is so rich in writers. It's both the people who live here, and it's the landscape. You drive down the roads, and you see history. People want to write about their own history or their parents' history, or they know a story they've been told. It's a storytelling place."

​Daniel Graham was raised in a military family and moved every two years for most of his life. ​He comes from a family of storytellers who love investigation and creativity. He earned his Undergraduate Degree at the University of Florida in Printmaking and a Masters Degree from the University of Georgia also in Printmaking.

Between the two programs of formal education Daniel lived in downtown Washington DC and trained as a furniture maker under woodworker Dennis Sitka. He has received numerous grants and awards over the course of his studio practice. His work has been in over 200 exhibitions in 8 countries and is housed in multiple collections including the library of congress.

Currently Daniel is a Professor of Art at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky where he teaches a variety of courses including Sculpture, Printmaking, 3D Design, and Luthiery. He recently shared an exhibition of his musical instruments with Ben Mason at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, Lexington, KY., and gave a demonstration at 21c Museum Hotel in Lexington.

Episode #23 of the Art Throb Podcast features a conversation with writer Jayne Moore Waldrop about her most recent illustrated children's book - She Remembered It All: The Art of Memory Painter Helen LaFrance.

Jayne is the author Drowned Town, names a 2022 Great Group Reads seletion by the Women's National Book Association and INDIES Book of the Year Award silver winner in fiction; She Remember It all: The Art of Memory Painter Helen LaFrance; A Journey in Color: The Art of Ellis Wilson; Pandemic Lent: A Season in Poems, and Retracing My Steps, a finalist in the New Women's Voices Chapbook Contest.
Her work has appeared in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Appalachian Review, Still: The Journal New Limestone Review, Women Speak Anthology, and other journals and anthologies.

Episode #22 of the Art Throb Podcast features a conversation with Kevin Lane Dearinger, a retired actor and teacher and recent author of a collection of poems titled COLD AS A SILVER SPOON.

Kevin has written four volumes of theatre history two memoirs, assorted plays and monologues and five volumes of poetry.
He tries to listen to a multitude of voices while striving to be true to his own voice. Which has always been a Kentucky voice.
His most recent book: COLD AS A SILVER SPOON is about growing old in Kentucky.