Huntsville City Hall: Meet the public artists

single-meta-cal May 20, 2024

Works by the following artists are on display in Huntsville City Hall. A piece by David Nuttall of Artimaps is slated for installation this fall:

Ben Butler

Ben Butler is a sculptor and public artist working in Memphis, Tennessee, and Quoque, New York. Besides showing his work extensively in gallery and museum exhibitions nationally, he has produced commissioned sculptures and installations in a range of media for universities, hospitals, parks, and other public spaces.

Butler received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BA from Bowdoin College. He is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Individual Artist Grant and numerous fellowships at residency programs including the MacDowell Colony, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and the Ucross Foundation.

Cal Breed

A native of Florence, Cal Breed is recognized as one of the Southeast’s most seasoned glass artists/sculptors. Breed’s work is found in many private and public collections, including The Huntsville Museum of Art, The Wiregrass Museum of Art and The Montgomery Museum of Art.

Cal and his wife, Christy Breed, own and run Orbix Hot Glass on Little River Canyon in Fort Payne, where Cal and his team make functional and decorative glass along with his sculptural works. The functional work has been used for years as a tool to sharpen his sensitivities to the material as well as to teach and refine the craftsmanship and the artistic skills of his team.

Cliff Garten

Cliff Garten is an internationally recognized sculptor and founder of Cliff Garten Studio in Venice, California.
By connecting people to places and infrastructure through sculptural material, social history and ecology, Garten’s work locates the latent potential in every public place and situation to become more than the specific functions it appears to perform. Sculpture and landscape, function and form, like public and private experiences are never distinct, but exchange places throughout the day.

Garten received a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Master of Landscape Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Guadalupe Lanning Robinson

Guadalupe has been working in Huntsville since moving from her native Mexico City in 1985. She studied ceramic arts at Centro de Artesan, as y Artes Plasticas lndependencia, Mexico City.

Guadalupe’s work has been shown in the Southeast for over 40 years. She has been recognized twice as an Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship recipient and has received several awards throughout her career. She cultivated a deep appreciation for the craft of quilting, which she has practiced for 17 years. Quilting has become a source of artistic integration for Guadalupe.

Ann Moeller

Ann Moeller, recognized for her versatility as an artist, entrepreneur and educator, embarked on her creative journey in early childhood. Her fascination with art, nurtured by her mother’s unwavering support, developed into a deep-rooted passion for artistic expression.

Co-founding Protégé Atelier was a pivotal step in honing her skills. Now thriving in Huntsville’s vibrant artistic community at Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment, Moeller’s work embodies the profound connection between humanity and nature, inspiring wonder, and appreciation for the limitless magic within each individual and the world.

She weaves a narrative of beauty, resilience, and the human spirit. Her artistic influence extends from the seafloor to the moon via her coral reef sculpture and several paintings archived in the Lunar Codex.

Jahni Moore

John “Jahni” Moore is a southern born visual artist. He works primarily in paint and charcoal but often makes use of assemblage and red clay as homage to his southern, Afro-Indigenous roots.

His early years were spent immersed in books, church, and nature. Through these, he developed an insatiable desire to “know and express through narrative” as well as an acute awareness to the idea of balance in the cosmos.”

Moore is a graduate of Alabama A&M University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Graphic Design, an M. Ed in Art, and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He also holds certifications from Savannah College of Art & Design and Rhode Island School of Design.

David Nuttall

Originally from Aberfan in South Wales, David Nuttall lived in southern England before moving to Huntsville in 1996. His focus is hand-drawn plausible fictitious maps, and he has been drawing these from age five.

Since 2011, he has created map art from his studio at Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment. He was trained as a cartographer by the British Government’s Military Survey mapping agency and works with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software for 911/Public Safety.

His artwork includes commissioned maps that incorporate customer’s life stories mixing reality and fiction as well as public art pieces.

Yuri Ozaki

Huntsville-based artist Yuri Ozaki grew up in a small town in Mie Prefecture on the Kii Peninsula of Japan. The area is known for its unique wet climate and mystical history. This area also features UNESCO World Heritage registered sacred sites and pilgrimage routes. The beauty and mystery of her home region would later influence Ozaki. Her work has been juried into many watercolor societies’ national and international shows since 2010.

Watercolor is her primary medium, but she also utilizes and enjoys many others, including acrylic. Her subject matters include figurative, landscape, cityscape and still-life.

Shuli Sadé

Shuli Sadé is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her commitment to creating site-specific public art projects has led to installations in diverse environments.

She explores themes related to memory imprints and signals within spatial and urban contexts, where architecture significantly influences the shaping and transformation of our surroundings.

Her artworks resonate with the idea of urban memory maps and the intrinsic DNA of a city.

Cynthia Wagner

Cynthia Wagner, a multidisciplinary artist, delves into the intricate internal landscapes and stories of the collective human experience. Her artistic repertoire spans painting, collage, sculpture, and photography, creating a rich tapestry of creativity.

Wagner holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the Herron School of Art and Design, Indiana University Indianapolis. Her art has been showcased at prestigious venues such as the A.I.R Gallery in Brooklyn, Montgomery Museum of Art, Huntsville Museum of Art, Wiregrass Museum of Art and the LaGrange Museum of Art.

Originally from Colorado, Wagner now calls Huntsville home.