Studioplex on Auburn
A cotton warehouse. A restoration. A community that made things. Built in 1905 to compress cotton for the railroad. Restored as an affordable live/work home for artists. This is where that story lands — and who it belongs to.
The artists community
The live/work community was envisioned with a commitment to the neighborhood’s historical fabric — retaining the original economic, racial and background diversity of its residents and businesses. The artists below are what that commitment produced.
Work held by the Smithsonian, the High Museum, Yale University Art Gallery and The Phillips Collection.
Olympic murals, Hartsfield-Jackson installations, the Auburn Avenue Water Tower and the SWATS Artists Mural.
Faculty and residencies at Emory, Spelman, Agnes Scott, Clark Atlanta and the Carlos Museum.
Janke Studios has fired up at Studioplex since 2000 — the metro area’s first hot glassblowing studio.
Who worked here
Painters, photographers, sculptors and glassblowers drawn from the original community in residence — and the makers who kept the tradition going.
b. 1935 · Photography
Documentary Photographer
Began documenting the response to Dr. King’s assassination in 1968 and never stopped. Photographer in residence at the Atlanta Neighborhood Arts Center and Clark College; founded the Photo/Media collective downtown in 1982. His jazz portraits toured with the Duke Ellington exhibition and anchored a solo show at the National Black Arts Festival.
Conceptual · Glass
Conceptual Artist
Works in repurposed industrial glass, building a visual vocabulary his mentor Ron Adams called “challenging & daring.” Draws on international travel to make pieces that pull the viewer into self-examination — and into questions about the unhoused and other overlooked lives.
490+ exhibitions
Painter · Sculptor
More than 490 exhibitions and 4,000 collections worldwide, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the High Museum, Yale University Art Gallery and The Phillips Collection. Created the Coca-Cola Centennial Olympic Mural for the 1996 Games; the City of South Fulton named February 1 Kevin Cole Day.
Mixed media · Photography
Painter · Photographer
A visual language built out of music — guitar lessons at four, Al Green and Chaka Khan on the record player, then the Art Institute of Atlanta. Works across wood panels, acrylics, oils, encaustics and paper cutouts, sometimes with motorized parts. Lives by the premise: create art for art’s sake.
At Studioplex since 2000
Glass Artist
Arrived in Atlanta in 1986 to find no glassblowing studio — so he built one. Janke Studios was recruited by the HDDC to relocate to the Old Fourth Ward and has been at Studioplex since 2000. His commissioned lighting hangs in The Optimist, Ponce City Market and Sweetwater Brewery.
Nairobi → Atlanta
Mixed Media
Born in Nairobi and raised across Addis Ababa, Virginia, Toronto and Gaborone before coming to Atlanta for art school. A self-described “third culture kid” whose work draws on a broad cultural base: “I am able at once to feel at home everywhere and nowhere.”
Documenting the South since 1989
Photo-Based Mixed Media
Collages photography, painting and writing with diaries and letters into image-based quilts and mixed-media sculpture, re-framing historical figures through the places attached to them. Visiting professor at Agnes Scott; also teaches at Spelman. Work held by MOCA GA, the High Museum and Hartsfield-Jackson.
Water Tower muralist
Artist · Activist
Preserves Black narratives as a radical act of social justice, drawing on indigenous traditions across Africa and the Diaspora. Rose Library artist-in-residence at Emory; her Remembrance as Resistance honored 800+ unmarked graves in Atlanta. Painted the mural inside the historic Auburn Avenue Water Tower.
Atlanta’s photo-cultural historian
Documentary Photographer
The PhotoGriot. Unofficial city photographer across six African-American mayoral administrations, and a founding member of Sistagraphy. Her iconic SHEROES anchored the FOR THE PEOPLE photo-mural on Auburn Avenue. Named a Jazz Hero in 2021 and honored by the National Black Arts Festival in 2023.
Abstract body portraits
Painter · Mixed Media
Cleveland-born, Clark Atlanta-trained, known for abstract body portraits built from layered mixed media. In his own words, the work symbolizes “freedom amidst confinement, healing despite pain, and calm within chaos.”
Former Studioplex artist
Portrait Painter
Painted the official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama — the first African American woman to complete a presidential portrait for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Clark Atlanta trained, and the first woman to win the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.
1940–2015
Sculptor · Painter — In Memoriam
Noted for her exploration of Southern vernacular architecture, Buchanan is best known for her paintings and sculptures of the “shack” — treated not as documentary but as images of endurance and personal history. Her sculpture A Hard Day’s Work Shack stands on the Studioplex grounds. A comprehensive exhibition of her work opened at the Brooklyn Museum in 2016.
Listed on the National Register
First as a marvel of 1905 cotton-industry engineering. Then as the cornerstone of Auburn Avenue’s revival — a community of artists. Both stories still live in these walls.
The Atlantic / Southeastern Compress & Warehouse opens, built of solid concrete — the oldest fire-proof structure in Atlanta. It made headlines before it was even constructed.
A 100,000-gallon tower rises beside the warehouse to service its sprinkler system. It has never been open to the public.
Martin Luther King Jr. is born at 501 Auburn Avenue, a few doors from the compress. The street is already the center of Black economic life in Atlanta.
The Historic District Development Corporation folds the building and eight surrounding acres into its revitalization of Auburn Avenue. The structure is carefully restored to keep its original architectural detail while providing affordable space for local artists to live, work and market their art.
The building is renamed Studioplex on Auburn. Janke Studios — recruited by the HDDC to relocate to the Old Fourth Ward — makes its permanent home here, and the town-hall style central corridor becomes a thoroughfare for the work made inside.
The building converts to loft condominiums, zoned multi-use. It continues to house live/work artists and retains gallery spaces at the northwest corner. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and permanently protected by Easements Atlanta and the Atlanta Preservation Center.