Photo credit: Images provided by ArtFields
https://www.artfieldssc.org/news/2026-artfields-festival-winners/
Every spring, a quiet transformation overtakes Lake City, South Carolina. Historic 1920s warehouses, local boutiques, hair salons, and restaurants shed their everyday functions to become a sprawling, town-wide canvas. Founded in 2013 by billionaire financier and philanthropist Darla Moore, ArtFields was conceived with a radical, yet elegant vision: to honor Southeastern artists while revitalizing her rural hometown through the sheer agency of culture. By its 2026 iteration, the festival expanded to a monumental 17-day run from April 10 through May 2, firmly anchoring its reputation as a premier destination on the national arts calendar. With a prize pool exceeding $100,000, the event creates a highly competitive environment judged by elite curators. Below, Roberta Burns, ArtFields’ Marketing Director, unpacking the institutional mechanics of this rural cultural hub, followed by an intimate conversation with this year’s $50,000 Grand Prize winner, Jason Lord, whose mutable installation “Gathering Place” captured the complex spirit of a region in flux.
The Institutional Mechanics of a Living Gallery
Art News: ArtFields is frequently described by critics as the “Art Basel of the South.” How have you successfully managed to transform Lake City into a cultural epicenter that actively defines contemporary art trends across the Southeastern United States?
Roberta Burns: First off, we are always incredibly humbled and proud to hear that description. As our founder, Darla Moore, will tell you, this entire transformation started as a bit of an experiment. However, it was an experiment that was always deeply rooted in a staunch belief in two core things: our immediate community, and the inherent power of art to serve as a vital change agent. We have managed to get this far specifically because of the artists and the local community members who shared that exact same conviction.
There is also an operational element to this success that is due, in part, to the specific parameters of our competition. Artists naturally respond to their immediate environments and continually push the boundaries of their respective practices. Because our rules dictate that a piece must have been created within the past two years to be eligible for selection, we are able to see those contemporary trends emerging firsthand. Furthermore, artists from the Southeast possess a genuinely keen global vision that makes their artwork stand out. While some outside the region might hear “the South” and harbor a preconceived notion of what that art looks like, our celebration proves that artists living and working here can easily compete on major art stages anywhere in the world.
Art News: The festival’s spatial execution is fascinating, with nearly 400 professional works on display throughout the town in non-traditional spaces. How do you dictate which piece fits into each venue, and how does this “living gallery” framework alter the relationship between the viewer and the artwork?
Roberta Burns: This is a truly unique and special part of our festival infrastructure. The venues themselves actually get to choose which artworks are displayed within their physical spaces. Each year during our venue brunch, we implement a lottery system to establish the selection order. Each venue host then sits down with a comprehensive binder containing all the invited artworks to personally select what will be showcased in their establishment.
Over the years, our local venue hosts have developed a remarkably keen aesthetic eye and have learned to curate a highly specific style. Our organizational team will often look at a new submission and instantly think, “Oh, Joe’s Barber Shop is definitely going to pick that one,” or “Wow, this piece clearly belongs in The Elegant Bee.” By intentionally embedding artwork into accessible, everyday spaces, viewers feel inherently comfortable engaging with contemporary art that they might not normally encounter in a traditional museum setup. It democratizes the experience, encouraging spontaneous conversations about tough, complex topics that wouldn’t ordinarily be broached. We also watch as viewers realize just how much better these spaces feel with art on display, which frequently inspires them to purchase original artwork for their own homes or businesses, continuing the cycle of celebrating and supporting working artists.
Image Asset: “On The Way Home” by Gerald E. Burch (People’s Choice 2D Winner). Photo Credit: Second Floor Media
Art News: Beyond the obvious draw of the significant $100,000 prize fund, what professional doors does ArtFields open for participating artists regarding networking, institutional visibility, and national exposure?
Roberta Burns: While our prize money is certainly life-changing, we consistently find that simply bringing these artists together creates an unmatched creative synergy with incredible, long-lasting ripple effects. Our competition artists occupy so many diverse roles within the broader art ecosystem; because of this, we witness organic connections happening on the ground that result in future artist residencies, gallery exhibitions, major commissions, and much more.
The festival also regularly attracts savvy arts administrators who are actively looking for fresh talent to collaborate with and innovative ways to reimagine their own regional programming—and there is truly no better place to get inspiration than an environment where over 350 highly vetted artworks are on display simultaneously. Additionally, by having a high-caliber jury panel, we are able to directly place an artists’ work in front of highly qualified, exceptionally well-connected art professionals. For several emerging creators, participating in ArtFields helps them clear the psychological hurdle of moving away from the mental delineation of a “hobbyist” and firmly step into the identity of a professional “artist.” Every creator arrives with vastly different professional needs, and we always try to meet as many of those individual needs as possible.
Image Asset: “Extra Extra Read All About It.” by Tammy Cockfield (People’s Choice 3D Winner). Photo Credit: Second Floor Media
The View from the Ladder—A Conversation with Grand Prize Winner Jason Lord
Following the institutional curation of the festival comes the raw reality of the practitioners themselves. This year, the distinguished jury awarded the $50,000 Grand Prize to Durham-based interdisciplinary artist Jason Lord for his work, “Gathering Place.” Collected from industrial fragments across the state lines of the South, Lord’s work stands as a poignant philosophical inquiry into relationship, history, and spatial dialogue.
Art News: The competition at ArtFields is notoriously fierce, with nearly 400 professional works vying for recognition. What was your immediate reaction when your name was announced at the Block Party ceremony as the Grand Prize winner, knowing you were selected by such an esteemed panel of curators and critics?
Jason Lord: Unfortunately, I had to make the incredibly difficult decision not to attend the awards ceremony in person. I was recovering from an illness and found myself behind schedule on a large-scale installation I was actively constructing at the Scrap Exchange, a nationally acclaimed creative reuse center located in Durham. I was actually halfway up a ten-foot step ladder when I suddenly received a notification on my phone; I could see that ArtFields had tagged me in an Instagram post.
My first thought was simply that someone on the ArtFields communications team had been assigned the onerous task of tagging all 400 of us participating artists, but when I clicked on the notification, what I saw was a beautiful detailed photograph of my own work accompanied by the words: GRAND PRIZE WINNER.
To be honest, I didn’t exactly fall off the ladder so much as I collapsed onto a pile of loose cardboard covering the studio floor while I tried to process what this post actually said and fundamentally meant for my life. I am genuinely not sure I have ever quite felt whatever emotional cocktail that was—an intense mix of shock, elation, deep gratitude, disbelief, pride, and profound relief. Whatever you want to call it, it felt big. In retrospect, I am somewhat glad I was alone when I learned the news, because it was a deeply emotional moment. Of course, suddenly my absence from the physical ceremony was noted, and I found myself wishing for some sort of teleportation device that would allow me to occupy two places at one exact time.
I quickly started texting back and forth with some of the ArtFields organizers, saying, “I could realistically be down there in three and a half hours—should I get on the road right now?” They graciously assured me that it was perfectly fine and that we would arrange for me to come down to Lake City properly in the following weeks. It was, and remains, deeply important to me that the hundreds of people who spent months orchestrating this massive festival, the jurors, the entire Lake City community, and my fellow artists, understand the sheer scope of my gratitude for merely being included in the festival line-up, grand prize win or not. But I regrettably missed the public moment to express that.
Image Asset: “Gathering Place” by Jason Lord. Photo Credit: Second Floor Media
Art News: Your winning installation, “Gathering Place,” is now permanently etched into ArtFields’ history. How do you perceive the work as reflecting the distinct spirit of the modern American South, and what local thematic narratives were most vital for you to address?
Jason Lord: We so often conceptually think of the American South strictly as a fixed geography, but I choose to see it as a distinct condition. Much like my installation Gathering Place, the South is a complex system in constant flux, defined by porous edges. Its shifting demographic, industrial, and cultural identities exist in a permanent state of tension with its historical and political identities. It is not a place of stagnancy; it is a place of constant agitation and motion.
Because the physical installation itself is always changing—with individual objects being systematically moved, completely removed, or newly added—it never settles into a single, permanent form. The work is intentionally not static; it is always in the active process of becoming. That specific relational structure sits in direct tension with a much longer history in the South of fixed hierarchies—historical ways of deciding far in advance exactly what matters and holding that status quo in place.
The majority of the materials utilized in this installation are objects I have physically gathered over years of walking, primarily within North Carolina, but also throughout Virginia, Florida, and South Carolina. Many of these components are industrial remnants—things that once held a highly specific, functional purpose within a mechanical system, like an automobile or a building framework, then lay abandoned for years in fields or ditches, and have now re-entered a completely new context. The value of these discarded materials has completely transformed over time. While a few of these objects might catch your eye entirely on their own merit, others won’t. What deeply interests me is what new, collective understandings emerge when they are intentionally placed adjacent to one another. A sanded, wooden block tightly wrapped in tape reads one way when viewed alone, and another way entirely when placed next to an unadorned, hewn block, and differently again next to a detailed, hand-carved sculpture. Meaning emerges through relationship. In some ways, the work operates as a raw material history of the South, and in others, it is a philosophical experiment. It is through the visceral experience of hand-making these components and physically placing these materials—deeply reflecting on their shifting relationships—that I find myself wondering about the constancy of change, the ultimate value of plurality, and how these abstract ideas connect directly to both a universal human experience and the reality of the modern South.
Art News: For 17 days, your installation was experienced by thousands of viewers within an informal, radically democratic community setting rather than an insular museum environment. Did you receive any specific feedback from Lake City residents or visitors that genuinely moved you?
Jason Lord: One of my absolute favorite attributes of ArtFields is that it completely occupies the entire geography of the town: it utilizes traditional white cube gallery spaces, but also active hair salons, busy restaurants, and other real-world settings. Lake City possesses a local population ranging from folks with extensive, institutional knowledge about contemporary art to people who have none at all. Because of this, there are completely different, accessible entry points for people anywhere on that spectrum to genuinely engage with the work. What Darla Moore and the ArtFields team have built, and continue to expand, is incredibly special.
I received an overwhelmingly positive response to the work itself and the subsequent prize announcement. A number of fellow artists sent me beautiful congratulatory messages. A few in particular, who have followed my studio practice for some years, shared a common sense of deep validation. It felt like a win for those of us who intentionally make artwork that is sometimes quirky, quiet, or explicitly asks a viewer for deeper, prolonged attention. That validation is incredibly meaningful, especially in a massive group exhibition setting like this where a viewer’s attention is constantly pulled in so many competing directions by such an immense volume of excellent artwork.
Art News: Winning the ArtFields Grand Prize is an undeniable milestone in a career. How do you intend to leverage this success and the institutional support of the festival to fuel your upcoming creative trajectories?
Jason Lord: The financial support is, obviously, incredibly meaningful. Money is notoriously tight in the art world, and this award creates some invaluable breathing room. It provides me with the time and capacity to work intensely on some upcoming projects without interruption. I can buy a few specialized tools I’ve had my eye on for a long time. Furthermore, the air conditioning has been broken in my 2000 Toyota Tacoma for going on nine years now, and that is about to change.
However, at least as important to me as the financial prize is the profound acknowledgement of the work’s validity by this incredibly thoughtful panel of curators, artists, and critics—individuals whose collective finger is on the pulse of contemporary art. It signals that the work has been seen and taken seriously by people who are deeply engaged in the field. That is incredibly validating for interdisciplinary artists like myself, whose output is rarely clearly delineated by a single medium. Moving forward, what I hope this milestone opens up is a heightened ability to further build lasting relationships with universities, museums, and alternative community spaces. I want to create large-scale projects that combine physical installation, academic teaching, and active public engagement. My practice is already deeply rooted in pedagogical thinking regarding the intrinsic value of the creative act itself, and I hope this national recognition helps widen that path forward into the future.
The Porous Edges of Tomorrow
Ultimately, the triumph of ArtFields 2026 lies not just in the substantial financial validation of its winners, but in its radical rewriting of cultural geography. By dismantling the elitist walls of the traditional “white cube” and weaving contemporary art into the very fabric of local boutiques, historic warehouses, and everyday spaces, the festival proves that dialogue can flourish anywhere there is an open mind. As Roberta Burns brilliantly noted, this shared ecosystem breaks barriers, making complex global issues deeply accessible to all. And as Jason Lord’s mutable masterpiece reminds us, meaning is never static—it is a living, breathing history defined by shifting relationships and constant evolution.
In Lake City, the traditional American South and the global cutting edge do not merely coexist; they actively reshape one another, proving that a small town with a grand vision can easily hold the pulse of the contemporary art world.
