Meet our 2024 Featured Artist

DIMITRI STEVENS  

Dimitri Stevens (b.1992) is a multimedia artist and educator from Oakland, TN. Stevens received a BFA from Memphis College of Art in 2015. His formal abstract paintings and drawings deal with existential questions about matter coming into being on a physical, spiritual, and molecular level. His work has been shown at the James Lee House, Arrow Creative,The Dixon, and Nonesuch Gallery in Nova Scotia, Canada. In 2014, Stevens received the River Arts Memphis Grant. His mural commissions are featured on walls around Memphis, and his work is held in numerous private collections.

See more of Dimitri’s artwork at: @dimitristevens

HAILEY ROATEN 

was born in Atlanta Georgia in 1971 and relocated to Memphis, TN with her family in August, 1976—the same day Elvis Presley died. She attended middle school at St. Mary’s Episcopal School and White Station High School. Roaten graduated from The University of Memphis in 1995 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA). Since graduation, Hailey has been painting in her home, raising her family, and working in the art logistics field. Hailey’s work has been on display around the Memphis area, including Art For Jobs, Methodist Hospitals, and Art on Fire at the Dixon Museum. Her work can be found as well in private collections around the Southeast.

Hailey’s artwork is unique in its own right—watercolor applied on canvas. Use of copper leaf, pastel, and graphite drawing lend to her work rich layers and textures. In the hectic rhythms of today’s world, Hailey’s work seeks to find rest in the presence of beauty. She aims to draw onlookers in close, and reveal her own experience of the subject matter to the viewer.

View more of Hailey’s artwork at: @haileyroaten

ROSE MARR 

Rose Marr was born Rosemary Marr in Senatobia, Mississippi into a sharecropper family.  At age five, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee with her mother, maternal grandmother, and three siblings.  She earned her BFA in Drawing and Printmaking from Memphis College of Art and an MS in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Memphis.

In 1995, she relocated to Oakland, California where she held a long career as a high school art teacher and later as an administrator.  In March 2020 during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, she decided to retire early and return to her hometown of Memphis.

Since returning to Memphis - she has established a full-time artist-in-residency practice and has had several solo exhibitions.  As a very young girl, she began drawing Black celebrity portraits from photographs she found in Jet and Ebony magazines.  Her love for drawing portraits stayed with her throughout her adulthood.  She continues to draw Black celebrities on occasion - but also draws portraits of various subjects - including commissions.  

She manages a home art gallery - The Mayfair Gallery - which is dedicated to showcasing the original artworks of her deceased mother.  Mayfair was an obscure  self-taught folk artist with masterful talent. 

Rose was married to the late Carl Scott, a Memphis artist and muralist. 

For more of Rose’s work, visit: @crayon_wood