Arts Beacon

Arts Beacon Mission

We strive to be a beacon in our community with exceptional art education, inspiring exhibitions and to provide supportive environment for our resident artists. Arts Beacon's team is made up of resident artists. Our resident artists learn, teach, exhibit, curate and critique together. We share our collective knowledge with each other so we can improve our art practice, guide our students and inspire our community. Our foundational teaching philosophy is to develop creative thinking while teaching students to develop a rich visual aesthetic.

Jena is the owner/ director of Arts Beacon Studio. She holds a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and an MFA in Sculpture and Drawing from Queens College CUNY. She is the primary kiln overseer at Arts Beacon and director of the studio program and leader for the teen, adult program. She also founded the resident artist program and mentors the resident artists and teachers. Jena's specialty is in portfolio development, artist mentoring, observational drawing, figure drawing and handbuilt ceramic relief, sculpture and functional ware.

Jena teaches the resident artists the teen portfolio and occasional special classes and private lessons at Arts Beacon.

Private and Semi Private Lessons available Thursdays and Fridays.

Jena is currently a studio artist at Guardian Studios and you can often find her work at Echo Contemporary

See everything Jena is up to on her linktree

Follow Jena on Instagram

Erin Drakeford graduated from the University of Georgia with a BFA in painting and drawing in 2003. She is a studio artist at MINT Gallery and has had her work featured in Create! Magazine's women's issue, Candyfloss blog, I Like Your Work publication and Art Mums United podcast. Her paintings are a whirlwind of bright colors and materials. Most days, she will tell you that neon vibrancy is about positivity and always looking for hope and goodness in the world, but some days it's about the futility and superficiality of it all. These emotional mood swings and paradoxes are ever-present themes in her figurative, abstract, and floral paintings. In addition to painting, she curates shows, teaches expressive painting at Arts Beacon Studios, and is the founder of Bell Moon Arts.

See Erin's work at www.erindrakeford.com

Find out more about Bell Moon Arts

Follow Erin on Instagram

Karissa is a Georgia native with a focus on recycling found materials into new artworks. She is skilled in painting, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, wood works, metal works, drawing, assemblage, mixed media and jewelry making. She has earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art Education. 

When not teaching children in her community at Arts Beacon and Panorama Oaks Day Studio, her focus is building new pathways to self-expression through experimental creative processes in ceramics, sculpture and painting. Her personal work is focused on trauma and healing, spiritual inclinations and patterns as they relate to everyday life. Karissa’s work is both reactionary and visionary in the response to the world around her.

Karissa teaches our Zesty Clay, Intro to Printmaking, Butterflies and Teen printmaking classes!

A native of Atlanta, Stacey Beth Shulman first discovered pottery in kindergarten when she made letters and numbers out of smelly green modeling clay. Today she enjoys making and selling colorful handbuilt tableware painted with images that are inspired by Italian majolica pottery, southern folk art, and Chinese brush painting. Stacey received her BFA in Ceramics and Art Education and an MEd in Recreation Therapy, both from the University of Georgia. She is grateful to have studied under ceramicist Andy Nasisse and potters Ron Meyers, Michael Simon, and Rick Berman. When she is not in the studio, Stacey enjoys yoga, birdwatching, reading, and baking.

Stacey teaches Simple Forms in Clay!

Eve Brown is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Atlanta, Georgia. They are inspired by psychology, the yogic path, Buddhist thought, negative space, non-binary nature, anti-ableism, resisting capitalist structures, play and impressionist painters. Brown’s experience of chronic illness has impacted and inspired their work, especially provoking thought around what it means to be an artist outside of capitalist modes of production and the ableist expectations placed on artists to produce. Brown’s current project explores the paradoxical necessity and tension of the extension of self via social media as a chronically ill human. 

Brown holds a Bachelor of Arts from Bard College where they studied painting, sculpture, poetry and digital media. Brown also received the Ellen Battel Stoeckel Fellowship to study at the Yale/Norfolk Summer Painting Program. Eve has shown work at the Gadsden Museum of Art where their solo show Life is Like Unpeeling an Onion opened. They have also shown work at South River Art Studios where their collaborative show with Rebecca Rodriguez SHOW/ NAME opened.

Eve teaches our Beginning Drawing, Creative Expression, Tween and Owls Classes and also teaches a block of fashion and fiber art to the teens!

*Eve uses Eve instead of most pronouns, though they and she are used at times in this bio

Michael is a ceramicist and sculptor with a focus on functional design. He takes inspiration from architecture, nature, and the human form. When he is away from the studio, Michael is teaching yoga or building a garden. Beyond the work of crafting and decorating pottery, he is interested in designing interior spaces and building pieces that solve a problem, or work that just fits in just the right space.

You can find Michael at our Open studios on Sundays assisting with our ceramic program!

Annalise is a visual artist living in Atlanta, Ga. In life and work, she constantly bumps into and is inspired by the big and storied concepts of Time, Emotion, Language and Memory. Through painting, drawing, and writing she tries to access the realm where all those concepts can come through naturally.

Annalise received her BFA from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC and is part of South River Arts Studio collective in southeast Atlanta. She loves the south, playing through painting, talking about anything deep and is always trying to relax as much as possible.

Annalise teaches Expressive Drawing with Color!

Follow Annalise on Instagram

Shannon Kelly is a Kirkwood-based watercolor artist with a hyper-realistic style. Since she was a kid, she has always loved figuring out how to make stuff–from clothes to restoring furniture. She was a public school teacher for 12 years before taking the leap into the teaching and making art for a living. She loves to paint people and animals and gets a kick out of how nature infringes into the developed spaces in Atlanta. She can often be found at festivals and online selling her art under the name DaisyLions Studio.

She is also the mom of a funny, rambunctious 8-year-old.

Shannon teaches the Intermediate Watercolor, the Urban Painting and Sketching and two of our teen portfolio class blocks.

You can see Shannon's work here.

Follow Shannon on Instagram.

Jeremy Dost is an artist and technology lover. He is an oil painter of expressive figures and landscapes when he isn't being our technology expert, web designer and developer. Jeremy also designed our rockin sunburst logo.

follow Jeremy on Instagram

see Jeremy's website