We open Artspace Southern Illinois’ 2026–2027 season with one of our most ambitious exhibitions: Generations—Influence + Innovation (featuring 17 artists - mentors and mentees).
Celebrating the enduring process of artistic influence and connection, this exhibit brings together regional artists and artists they have mentored, influenced, encouraged, or inspired, including artists who now work throughout the Unites States.
Curated by Fern Logan, Artspace Southern Illinois Curator Emeritus
Opening Reception
304 Cultural Arts Center—304 W. Walnut Street, Carbondale
Sat., Sept. 12: Noon - 2 pm
As we begin an exciting new season, we open our 304 Cultural Arts Center Gallery with Generations—Influence + Innovation, an exhibition that reflects an idea that is fundamental to our organization’s work—strong artistic communities are built through connection and grow when artists encounter one another, when experience is shared across generations, and when emerging voices are welcomed into an artistic conversation already decades in the making.
Experience this inspiring and thoughtful exhibit not as a collection of individual works, but as a map of relationships. As you explore, you’ll find connections and contrasts, while discovering the stories behind the artists, their relationships, and the paths their work has taken.
Spanning a broad range of media
This exhibition includes an array of media, including painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, fiber and textile arts, mixed media, collage, assemblage, installation, digital media, video, works on paper, book arts, metalwork, wood, glass, found‑object art, conceptual work, and interdisciplinary practices.
Highlighting artistic influence, connections, and relationships
Artistic influence rarely travels in one direction, and artists have always learned from one another—across generations, disciplines, geographies, and traditions. Knowledge, innovations, and perspectives meet new questions, techniques, references, and ways of seeing. Over time, these exchanges become reciprocal, shaping each artist in ways both recognized and unseen. A technique encountered in another studio may open a new possibility; a conversation may redirect a body of work. A mentor may offer the confidence to take a risk, while a student or younger colleague may invite an established artist to see familiar ground differently.
In this exhibition, visitors will experience works in pairs and groups that showcase these relationships and how artistic ideas, knowledge, encouragement, and opportunity move between people. It considers an artistic lineage rooted in Southern Illinois yet extending far beyond it. Artists who studied, taught, worked, or formed relationships here have carried those influences into practices and communities across the country. The relationships in Generations—Influence + Innovations extend beyond conventional teacher-student roles. They have developed through studios, classrooms, exhibitions, friendships, professional networks, and years of shared experience.
This exhibition highlights how our region’s artists, educators, makers, and cultural leaders have built a creative community whose reach extends to the artists and communities they have helped nurture, and celebrates how mentorship is itself a creative act of generosity that allows another artist to find a voice entirely their own.
Curated to Carry
Works for Purchase
FInd a selection of works from this exhibit available for purchase at our 304 Cultural Arts Center.
Featured Artists—Mentors & Mentees
Mentor – Harris Deller
Medium: Ceramics
Exhibition Works:6126; 6214
Born in Brooklyn, New York, and based in Carbondale, Illinois, Harris Deller is a ceramic artist known for precise porcelain vessels that bridge pottery, sculpture, and painting. He uses geometry, repetition, balance, and the surprises of process to test abstraction, and his long teaching career at SIU has shaped generations of ceramic artists.
Mentee – Crystal Hunt-Michels
Medium: Ceramics
Exhibition Works: Ode to the Morning Glory; Bodacious Bowie
Crystal Hunt-Michels is a ceramic artist and art educator based in Mount Vernon, Illinois. A mentee of Harris Deller, she layers wheel-thrown forms with marks drawn from weathered surfaces, graffiti, flowers, and vintage objects to explore time, growth, and change.
Mentee – Andrew Maglathlin
Medium: Ceramics
Exhibition Works: Spring Flux; Miss Tangle
Raised in Berkley, Massachusetts, and now based in Foxboro, Massachusetts, Andrew Maglathlin is a ceramic artist and educator who studied with Harris Deller at SIU. His sculptural ceramics translate natural forms into balance, gesture, color, and improvisation, carrying Deller's lessons in rigor and composition into his own studio and teaching.
Mentee – Nancy Gardner
Medium: Ceramics
Exhibition Works: Gardner2; Gardner3
A Philadelphia native now based in Forest Park, Illinois, Nancy Gardner is a ceramic artist who studied with Harris Deller at SIU. She hand-builds functional and decorative earthenware, drawing on pattern, color, folk art, textiles, and nature to make useful pots with lively painted surfaces.
Mentor – Joe Emery
Medium: Multimedia
Exhibition Works: Powers Given; Retention Sutures
A Vienna, Illinois native, where he also maintains his studio, Joe Emery is a narrative multimedia artist and mentor. He moves among sculpture, painting, found objects, glass, fiber, and other materials to give physical form to personal, spiritual, social, and dream-based themes and to invite viewers into the work.
Mentee – Tabitha Tripp
Medium: Painting / Mixed Media
Exhibition Works: What Remains; Aufbruch
Born and raised in southernmost Illinois and now based in Anna, Illinois, Tabitha Tripp is a painter and mixed-media artist mentored by Joe Emery. Working with oil, cold wax, encaustic, and layered surfaces, she turns ecological grief and concern for human dignity into tactile abstractions rooted in nature.
Mentor – Steve Grimmer
Medium: Ceramics
Exhibition Works: Grimmer_1; Grimmer_2
With roots in southern Illinois, Steve Grimmer returned from Manitoba and now works at Alto Clay Works in Alto Pass, Illinois. A ceramic artist and mentor, he makes wood-fired functional stoneware and porcelain to deepen the personal, cultural, and communal meaning of everyday rituals.
Mentee – Keren Ya'ari
Medium: Ceramics
Exhibition Works: Pitcher; Fermentation Jar
Born in Israel and now based in Alto Pass, Illinois, Keren Ya'ari is a ceramic artist apprenticing with Steve Grimmer at Alto Clay Works. She makes functional and sculptural vessels to slow the mind, engage the body, and bring beauty and intention to ordinary daily use.
Mentor – Fern Logan
Medium: Photography / Mixed Media
Exhibition Works: Still We Rise; Going Under
Born and raised on Long Island, New York, and now living in Chicago, Illinois, Fern Logan is a photographer, mixed-media artist, and Professor Emerita at SIU. She treats art as a spiritual and restorative practice, using images of identity, resilience, Black experience, and human connection while mentoring artists across generations.
Mentee – Breawna Austin
Medium: Mixed Media
Exhibition Works: Unseen Crown; Silent Patriot
Born and raised in Southeast Missouri and now based in Southern Illinois, Breawna Austin is a mixed-media artist mentored by Fern Logan. She uses portraiture, abstraction, and Afrocentric imagery to address identity and social justice, aiming to create dialogue, healing, and connection across communities.
Mentee – Jessica Edmond
Medium: Photography / Digital Media
Exhibition Works: Tomorrow Together; Backyard Dive
From Diehlstadt, Missouri, and now based in Carbondale, Illinois, Jessica Edmond is a photographer and digital-media artist mentored by Fern Logan. She uses documentary and constructed images to examine identity, memory, beauty, and Black representation, treating photography as a tool for storytelling and transformation.
Mentor – Antonio Martinez
Medium: Photography
Exhibition Works: Gravel Bike; Leaf Skeletons
Born in California, raised in Oklahoma, and now based in Carbondale, Illinois, Antonio Martinez is a photographer, intermedia artist, and SIU educator. He combines historic photographic processes with digital tools to study materiality and transformation, and he mentors artists through the same process-driven experimentation.
Mentee – Olivia Zambetta
Medium: Printmaking and Photography
Exhibition Works:7446; 7447
From Makanda, Illinois, Olivia is a printmaker and recent SIU graduate working in southern Illinois under the mentorship of Antonio Martinez. She uses the physical act of carving and printing to confront questions of life, death, nature, and uncertainty, finding meaning in both control and surrender.
Mentee – Kylen Lunn
Medium: Photography
Exhibition Works: Infinity Song; Lorde
From Swansea, Illinois, and now living in Brooklyn, New York, Kylen Lunn is a photographer mentored by Antonio Martinez. He photographs concerts, portraits, and passing details to preserve the emotion of a moment and make viewers feel present inside the frame.
Mentee – Aspen Hochhalter
Medium: Photography
Exhibition Works:Hochhalter1; Hochhalter4
A Colorado native now based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Aspen Hochhalter is a fine-art photographer and educator mentored by Antonio Martinez. She combines digital tools with historic and experimental photographic processes to give images physical presence and push the boundaries between analog and digital making.
Mentor – Dale McReynolds
Medium: Pastels / Charcoal
Exhibition Works: 1940s City Guy; Uncle Earl
A Paducah, Kentucky native now based in Metropolis, Illinois, Dale McReynolds is a pastel and charcoal artist and mentor known for expressive portraits. She draws on memory, mood, Southern history, and family heritage to spark recognition, conversation, and, when possible, a smile.
Mentee – Joanne Wong-Hammonds
Medium: Drawing / Painting / Mixed Media
Exhibition Works: The Interlude; Quiet Reflection
Joanne Wong-Hammonds is a Metropolis, Illinois-based artist working in drawing, painting, and mixed media. A mentee of Dale McReynolds, she draws on multicultural experience, ordinary objects, and personal memory to make work grounded in optimism, pride, and hope.