CHARLY PALMER (b. 1960, Fayette, AL), Charly “Carlos” Palmer, an Atlanta-based painter, graphic designer, and illustrator, was raised in Milwaukee, WI. As his journey took place across several destinations, such as Chicago where he received a BFA from School of the Art Institute (SAIC) and studied at the American Academy of Art, his artwork is nomadic of the Black experience. His body of work radiates expressionism yet grounds itself in Black portraiture. For Black subjects—some recognizable, some unknown—Palmer’s art conjures an ancestral altar: memorials of Civil Rights leaders, stylistic elements from Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day, layers of geometric shape, bold color palettes, and African-inspired patterns that call and respond to one another. During the coronavirus pandemic, Palmer's artistic voice rises above political clamor. Bigger Love, an album cover for John Legend, won a Grammy for Best R&B Album Cover in 2021. His work was featured in a retrospective at the Hammonds House Museum in April 2021. He graced the cover of Time Magazine in 2020 for the “America Must Change” Issue with the work In Her Eyes, which shows the amalgamation of past and present efforts for Black power through a child’s eyes. Palmer has a dynamic roster of commissioned work. In 2018, his children’s book illustration of Mama Africa, chronicling the life of Miriam Makeba, won a Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award. Two years prior, he illustrated There's A Dragon In My Closet and created artwork that commemorated Fisk University’s and Howard University’s 150th year anniversaries. Many private and public collections contain his work: Atlanta Life Insurance, McDonald’s Corporation, Miller Brewing Company, the Coca Cola Company, the NFL Green Bay Packers, and Vanderbilt University. His previous work, His Story, belongs to the estate of Dr. Maya Angelou.