Location: Graham Auditorium
Registration is required.

Learn more about the 2025 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize finalists, Aliana Grace Bailey, Amanda Leigh Burnham, Lillian Jacobson, Jacob Mayberry, and Wonchul Ryu, as they share details about their practice and work on view at the Walters. Following the artists’ presentations, audiences are invited to ask questions in a Q&A session.

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This program is co-hosted with the Baltimore Office for Promotion and The Arts and presented in conjunction with the 20th annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize Finalists Exhibition, on view at the Walters from April 19 through July 20.

Thursday Nights are sponsored by T. Rowe Price.

About the Artists

Aliana Grace Bailey is an interdisciplinary fiber artist, designer, care worker, and founder of vibrant grace studio. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and lives and works in Baltimore. Aliana weaves layers of interconnection, comfort, healing, and storytelling through fiber. Aliana’s work embraces the vulnerability of artmaking to build intimacy, preserve memories, heal wounds, and create inner peace. Aliana’s work is large in scale, emotional, and vibrant in color, encompassing the body and providing viewers with a comforting hug while exploring familial connections, material, and experiences that tug at their hearts.

Amanda Leigh Burnham makes drawings of all kinds: artist books, comics, intimate observational drawings, dimensional collages, and large, site-specific installations which feel somewhere between a comic book and a stage set. A six-time Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize semifinalist, four-time Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Award winner, and a Rubys Grantee, Burnham’s work has been shown internationally, including at the Berman Museum, American University Art Museum, the Delaware Contemporary, and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. Since graduating with an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2007, Amanda has been a professor of art at Towson University.

Lillian Jacobson is a Baltimore-based Latiné artist of Colombian descent defining “belonging” through figurative painting. Adopted into a white American family, Lillian has always been attuned to how she is seen by others, which informs her empathetic approach to portraiture. Lillian holds a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited in group shows across the region, including the Maryland Art Place, Chesapeake Arts Center, Bowie City Hall, Maryland Federation of Art, and the Delaplaine Arts Center, where she won the People’s Choice Award for the 2024 exhibition Emerging Perspectives.

Jacob Mayberry, also known as Black Chakra, is a world-traveled spoken word artist and poetry champion. In Baltimore, Jacob cultivated his legacy by teaching youth how to find the power in their voices through poetry. He has coached eight statewide youth poetry champions and three international youth poetry finalist teams. He hopes to one day be remembered as an artist who changed the climate of Baltimore through his work.

Wonchul Ryu is an interdisciplinary artist based in Seoul, Korea, and Baltimore. He is currently pursuing his BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and expects to graduate in spring 2025. Ryu participated in the Yale Norfolk School of Art residency program in 2024 and has exhibited in group shows such as Exchange (Maryland Art Place, 2024) and Beyond Borders (The Bridge Arts Foundation, LA, 2023). In 2021, Ryu had a solo show, 우린 나쁜 꿈 속에 있었지, (We Were in the Bad Dreams.) at 양천리 갤러리 (Yangcheonri Gallery) (Seoul, Korea, 2021).