Alumni Spotlight
A strong relationship with our Alumni is critical to the present and future of our school. We look forward to hearing from you and sharing your accomplishments here to encourage and inspire future professionals. Please and complete the alumni survey linked below.
Kephira Davis
FAC Visual Arts Alumna Kephira Davis has been named a Brandon Fellowship Recipient by the Greenville Center for Creative Arts (GCCA)! Her bio on the GCCA website states:
Kephira Davis graduated from Lander University with a BFA in 2D Studio. She also attended The Fine Arts Center throughout high school. Kephira’s artwork explores ideas of memory and the passage of time. She plans to expand upon her work by investigating her family history and finding the intersection of where her ancestry and ideas of memory meet. Kephira is excited to make meaningful connections with other artists in our community.
Adia Victoria Paul, FAC 2001-2004
“Over the three years I spent at Fine Arts Center culminating in my graduation in 2004, I changed my home address five times. Each home unfailingly lacked that singular space, no matter how small, an artist needs to interrogate her own mind. I lived in lack of “A Room of One’s Own” as Virginia Woolf apprised it—a space free from outside oversight and associations the budding artist requires to create. For me, Fine Arts Center became the room of my own in which to finally give my body the ability to make language of itself. The Fine Arts Center was the first space I trusted enough to allow myself to explore. My time in that dance studio provided the space and separation from the ordinary I needed learn, refine and grow. For a lot of kids that attend, FAC is the only place that takes them seriously and trusts the student to take her art seriously also. For a lot of kids in the Upstate trying to manifest worlds from within —The Fine Arts Center is their Room of One’s Own.”
Phillip Boykin
“The Fine Arts Center played a vital role in my career. It gave me a solid foundation which I was able to build upon and dream of becoming an artist. I honestly believe because of my inspiring time at the FAC, I - a poor black boy whose brother didn’t get to see his 19th birthday - have now received a TONY and a Grammy Award nomination. I won the Theater World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut. I’m also very proud to say that I was inducted into the SC Theater Hall of Fame. Recently, I performed the role of Olin Britt in The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. I’d like to say thank you to people like you who support the FAC and to the FAC for literally saving my life and making me the Artist that I am today.”
Arden Gillchrest (Architecture)
The UT Extraordinary Campus Leadership and Service awards recognize graduating students who are extraordinary campus leaders for their significant service to others. Arden Gillchrest is a first-generation college student who has enjoyed being an active part of the University of Tennessee. Through academic endeavors, student organizations, and community involvement, Arden has loved being a part of the Volunteer community.Allie Ward Chamberlain (Architecture)
FAC alumni and UT Architecture Student Combines Design and Entrepreneurialism for UT System Project. Allie Ward Chamberlain, 5th-year Architecture student and small business owner of Reclaim Creative, was approached by the UT Foundation in 2020 with interest for her to create an artistic design for UT System’s “Everywhere You Look, UT” campaign. The campaign seeks to raise awareness of the university’s impact across the state.
Chamberlain, who graduated in May 2021, was commissioned to create an original watercolor painting and from that, 150 prints that include all four UT System campuses. Her role in the project was all-encompassing. Using her design skills and entrepreneurial spirit, she had full creative license on the style, formatting and layout of the project.
Dr. Shaniece Criss ( Voice '98)
Dr. Shaniece Criss, a 1998 graduate of Southside High School and the Fine Arts Center, is an Assistant Professor of Health Science at Furman University. After receiving her undergraduate degree in communications from Oglethorpe University and a Master of Public Health from Emory University, Criss earned a Doctor of Science degree from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She also earned a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she was awarded a Presidential Public Service Fellowship and a Political Campaign Practicum. Dr. Criss served as producer and host for a national television show for the Ministry of Health in Guyana, South America, during her Peace Corps service. She partners with Furman’s Institute for the Advancement of Community Health as an academic lead on projects with Prisma Health-Upstate and LiveWell Greenville. Dr. Criss serves on the Travelers Rest City Council and the board of directors for Prisma Health, Public Education Partners, Dining for Women, and SC YMCA Youth in Government and Teen Achievers.
Stacy Isenbarger
Stacy Isenbarger’s creative pursuits include sculpture, installation, mixed-media drawings, student mentorship and supporting community exchange through art. In her studio practice, she works to create dialog by highlighting perceived boundaries built from one’s environment or their perception of it. Through explorations of unexpected material collisions, poetic narratives, and shared iconography, Isenbarger continuously seeks ways to express complex negotiations of place and the desire to feel whole within it.
Isenbarger has worked as a Foundations Educator in some capacity since 2007 and has been involved with FATE since 2010, serving as FATE’s SECAC Representative in 2011-13, President in 2013-2017, & VP of Communications in 2017-18. In the summer of 2020 she co-created the pedological studio art project share website www.WhatDoWeDoNow.art with fellow FATE board alum Assistant Professor Naomi J. Falk. As Foundations Coordinator and Associate Professor of Art + Design at the University of Idaho in Moscow, ID she further celebrates her opportunities to explore creative communication and empowerment. She received her BFA at Clemson University & her MFA from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia—two places she has tremendous gratitude for especially in regard to how both experiences shaped her approach to teaching. When she's not teaching or making—and sometimes when she is—she's usually dancing since the act continuously validates her joy of community acceptance and shaking up space.
Allison Boyd
Originally from Easley, South Carolina, Allison attended the Greenville Fine Arts Center, and earned her Bachelor of Music in Music Therapy from Florida State University (cum laude). She also served a six-month internship at San Antonio State Hospital (a mental health institution). Allison pursued a career as a singer/songwriter after college, recording three EPs and one full-length album. While touring, she was hired by Mars Music, Inc. to implement the Babies Make Music program in the metro Atlanta area.
Allison Boyd founded Metro Music Makers as a private Atlanta-based music studio offering in-home music lessons. In addition to overseeing a variety of instructors in the Metro Music Makers family, she is a board-certified Music Therapist licensed in the State of Georgia. Allison’s music therapy experience includes working in special needs classes, in private behavioral therapy and research with children diagnosed with autism, in music therapy and research with neonates, as a music therapist at a drug and alcohol rehab for teens, and as a music therapist in mental health settings.
In addition, Allison was a finalist in the Greenville Symphony Orchestra Russian Music Festival Piano Competition in 1990 and a semifinalist in the Young Keyboard Artists Association International Piano Competition in 1990. She toured with the band Life As Mary from 2000-2003, including an exciting showcase with A&R exposure at the 2002 Atlanta Music Conference.
Marcus King
Marcus is a 24-year-old songwriter and guitar phenom who is taking the music scene by storm. The Marcus King Band’s most recent release, “El Dorado,” was nominated for Vintage Guitar Magazine’s Readers Choice Award.
We received more great news when we learned that "El Dorado" was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of "Best Americana Album." Congratulations, Marcus!
Ben Sutherland
Ben Sutherland is a composer, music technologist, performer, and educator whose work and interests span a multitude of media and genres, including classical, popular, and experimental. His contemporary classical works have been performed by renowned ensembles including the Pacifica String Quartet, the Contemporary Chamber Players, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.
His compositional, research, and performance interests find a nexus in his work with interactive computer music systems, and in particular, systems of musical gesture acquisition, analysis, and processing. He has presented at conferences including New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), the Porto International Conference on Musical Gesture as Creative Interface, the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), and the Symposium of Laptop Ensembles and Orchestras (SLEO), and he is one half of the interactive computer music duo, “The Machine is Neither…,” with Emma Hospelhorn.
Alongside these endeavors, Ben has also been involved with numerous projects in popular, "underground," and cross-cultural genres, maintaining connections to his “musical roots” as a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, songwriter, and arranger. He holds a B.A. in Music from Oberlin College/ Conservatory and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of Chicago. Ben is currently the Chair of Audio Arts and Acoustics at Columbia College Chicago.
Erica Stine
Award-winning furniture designer credits her success to Greenville’s Fine Arts Center. The fledgling furniture designer recently won a Red Dot Award , an international design prize for product, brand and communication design as well as design concepts.
Savannah Ralph
Savannah Ralph is a painte and graduation of the Fine Arts Center whose work prompts discussions around important topics such as gender, beauty standards, and mental illness. It is her goad as an artist to make groups of people who aren't typically recognized feel seen. She plans to utilize the Brandon Fellowship to strengthen her ties in the community, improve her techniques, and push her art career forward.
About the Brandon Fellowship
The Brandon Fellowship is a 12-month program that aims to develop three emerging artists between the ages of 21-30 who reflect the diversity of the Greenville community by providing a supportive environment, mentorship, and art education.
Kelly Hall-Tompkins, Violin
Class of 1989
Acclaimed by the New York Times as “the versatile violinist who makes the music come alive” and for her “tonal mastery” (BBC Music Magazine) and “searing intensity” (American Record Guide), violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins is forging a dynamic career as a soloist and chamber musician. Recently featured on NBC’s Sunday Closer for her work with bringing classical music to homeless shelters.
Greenville County Schools Hall of Fame
Rory Scovel, Film
Class of 2007
Film Department graduate, Rory Scovel, recently inked an 8 episode deal with Comedy Central for his new show, “Those Who Can’t.” He previously starred in the TV shows, “Wrecked,” and “Undateable” and in the feature films, “Dean,” and “The House” with Will Ferrell. His one man special, “Tries Standup for the First Time,” is currently available on Netflix.
Elizabeth Bishop, Mezzo-Soprano
Class of 1985
American Mezzo-soprano, Betsy Bishop, has sung with leading opera companies all around the world such as The Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Palm Beach Opera, Florida Grand Opera, and Cincinnati Opera. She was recently hired as a professor of voice at The Juilliard School.
Greenville County Schools Hall of Fame
