MINT Gallery announces Leap Year grant recipients

MINT has just made three artists very happy.

Yesterday, the gallery announced the recipients of Leap Year, its year-long mentorship program which pairs emerging creative voices in the city with both resources and support.

Jessica Caldas, Johnny Drago (CL’s 2012 Fiction Contest winner), and Rebecca Hanna — a printmaker, dramatist, and artist, respectively — have each been named and will receive free membership to various Atlanta arts organizations, the guidance of two mentors, and access to medium-specific workshops and discussions, in addition to a stipend for supplies and studio space at The Goat Farm.

Leap Year is grant-based, with donations from Possible Futures, The Sarah Giles Moore Foundation, Georgia Council for the Arts, and The Goat Farm Arts Center’s Stodja House Platform. Its bundled benefits, according to a press release, are part of a larger effort on the part of MINT to “offer exhibition space, curatorial opportunities, and other resources to artists.”

Caldas, Drago, and Hanna will take advantage of all of it: in their statements, the trio seems excited and surprised (and humbled and grateful). Their 12 months begin Sept. 1, with a group exhibition of new work to cap it off at the end.

After the jump, take a look at some past work as a possible preview of what’s to come.