Friday, January 23-Saturday, March 21st, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, January 23, 2026, 5:30-8:00 PM
Rescheduled Artist Talk: Saturday, February 28, 2026, 2:00-4:00 PM
Location: Chastain Arts Center & Gallery
135 Chastain Park Ave NW
Atlanta, GA 30342
About the Artist
Kevin Cole received his B.S. from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, an M.A. in art education from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and an M.F.A. from Northern Illinois University. Within the last 32 years, he has received 31 grants and fellowships, 68 awards in art, and 51 teaching awards. Featured in over 500 exhibitions around the United States and abroad, Kevin Cole has become a leading figure in the art world. Cole has created more than 45 public artworks, including the Coca-Cola Centennial, the Olympic Mural for the 1996 Olympic Games, and many more.
Voting became a constant motif in Kevin Cole’s career with almost 35 years of firsthand viewing accounts of the struggles for African Americans to vote. In Cole’s early years, he was greatly inspired by artists around him like John Howard, Tarrence Corbin, Henri Linton, and Earnest Davidson, all of whom have pushed boundaries, won awards, and shaped the future of African American artists. He believes that to create works of art is to document history — similar to music, sound, and art decorating and tell the stories of the past. Series are common in Cole’s artworks that share the complexities of history. His artworks embody the twists and turns, motifs, and feelings of time acting like “sound boards of human experiences.”
To question everything, is a method that Kevin Cole urges the viewers to implement anytime they view his works, but also in their everyday lives. Curious minds can untangle his works to find their meanings and motifs that continue to make the viewer question parts of history, learning about a variety of social topics, possibly ignored before dissecting the meaning of his artworks. His mission is to educate the viewer or his students and to encourage them to question everything.
Kevin Cole creates artwork inspired by music, emotion, and politics affecting the world, and in his personal life. Music is a major inspiration to Kevin Cole. His series Signs of the Time explores complex themes of homelessness, education, and age. Neck ties, a signature motif of Cole, become social and are tied to politics, struggles, and religion in the South. His work Signs of the Times is a stunning piece that shares the name with the album Sign o’ the Times by Prince. Cole tackles issues of homelessness, education, and age that are knotted together through flags, ribbons, bows, and neck ties that tie themes and people together.
Signage and what it depicts become integral in unraveling the meaning of the piece. In the red sign, the figures appear without feet, similar to living in constant motion with projects creating meaning at every step, and the young boy looks up to his mother. Cole noted that with all his works, he does research beforehand and comes up with the title before anything is created. In the Signs of the Times series, research on the themes to portray included a statistic that in public housing, 56% of children come from single-parent households, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Music, dreams, and educational goals become the forefront of commissions like Montage of a Dream that highlight the importance of what media and literature someone is surrounded by and how it influences them or changes their perspectives. Circles also become a continuous motif for Cole. In works like Frozen Smiles I, the circle represents a continuous cycle and the start of a new process, or back to the beginning. Constant struggles with voting issues, neck ties, and social issues that have yet to be solved continue in a cycle of being ignored, bringing awareness, and trying to help.
Political Issues
Many of Kevin Cole’s artworks are in series. The themes that Cole tries to convey are too complex to depict in a singular work of art. The bodies of art that Cole creates become a story of the complexities of different issues with research, and the title of each artwork established first at the start of his process in creating art. He views each of his works like puzzles fitting into the broader picture to encourage viewers to piece together to understand their meaning to the bigger issues. Major national tragedies inspired Cole to create art, including 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and COVID-19.
Political issues inspire Cole to create his artworks to spark a conversation and bring awareness to different events. Hurricane Katrina was a tragedy that affected many people. Kevin Cole followed the map of the storm mimicking the pattern in his own artwork. People survived off of hope and faith, hence the title Keeping Faith that emerged as its own pattern from interviews conducted by Kevin Cole of several families who survived. In total, he interviewed three families, however their stories showed many similarities and became only two artworks. These artworks showcased two families’ stories but allowed many more to relate, seeing many similarities in their own stories of surviving Katrina.
Another extremely impactful event came with the pandemic that stopped the world. COVID-19 impacted many lives and highlighted many issues of being stuck inside, medical risks, and the monotony of everyday life, as people were struggling to survive. His work Beyond Hope conveys the feelings felt by many during the unending pandemic conditions of COVID-19.
Unlike his other, more political work, this work highlights personal meaning and the impact of music on emotions. As the title suggests, Blues Walked In was a product of listening to Blues music, but also depicts Cole’s divorce. His skillful use of mixed media from the collage of torn pictures on the bottom, the sharp traveled roads of blue and orange, along with pinks and greens signifying moving on.
Commissions
Cole has created many commissions across the United States. His most memorable and the one he learned the most from is the Olympic mural, Unsung Heroes, in Georgia. The process, event, and his role were unique and important in his career to understand major projects. His personal goal for each commission is to create alongside the commissioner and to educate the viewer about something. He tries to fuse education, music, and emotion into his works, understanding those who commissioned his work to create the perfect piece for each commissioner.
Courtesy Kevin Cole and Hearne Fine Art