In 2009 Atlanta Collage Society established its Mentor Program to identify individuals who would consult with the organization in defining its direction and growth. The program specified that Mentors would be selected from specialists in the art field: recognized artists, gallery directors, museum curators or marketing professionals. In lending their expertise and experience, ACS Mentors serve in an advisory role for the ACS board.

Our mentors share their many skills and generous spirit with our organization. Their knowledge and enthusiasm benefit the ACS membership on many levels through their participation.

Chery Baird

Mentor, Atlanta Collage Society
CheryBaird.com

In Chery’s words:
“Memories play an important part in every human’s life. Each of us accumulates information in many different ways. We access our past memories to interpret the present and point a path to the future. We always stand in the present looking both directions.

The complexity of my surfaces allows for a shifting dialogue of contrasting structures, techniques and mediums. This multilayered approach changes the conversation with each painting and evokes new sets of memories, feelings and thoughts. This rich variety of mark-making creates forms that are suggestive of the mysterious and personal, as well as the gesture of the body marking in space and time. Surfaces fuse, overlap and intertwine, shaping and reshaping, creating order and forming a memory of the act itself.

The act of painting becomes a time of meditation. My work is a record of those moments.”

For those interested in studying with Chery, she teaches multiple classes at Spruill Center for the Arts in Dunwoody.