Shawn Okpebholo was born in Lexington, Kentucky and a graduate of Tates Creek High School. He earned his doctoral degree in composition from the University of Cincinnati's Celloge-Conservatory of Music. Currently he serves as the Jonathan Blanchard Distinguished Professor of Composition at Wheaton College-Conservatory of Music and the Saykaly-Garbulinska Composer-in-Residence with the Lexington Philharmonic.

Two Black Churches is a song set in two movements for baritone soloist and orchestra. Originally composed for voice and piano, featuring baritone Will Liverman and pianist Paul Sanche, this orchestration was co-commissioned by the Lexington Philharmonic during Shawn E. Okpebholo's tenure as the Saykaly-Garbulnska Composer-in-Residence.
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Two Black Churches serves as a musical reflection of two significant and tragic events perpetrated at the hands of white supremacists in two Black churches, decades apart;

• The 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing Birmingham, Alabama which took the lives of four girls.
• The 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, taking the lives of nine parishioners.

After receiving his BFA from University of Louisville in 2005, James Robert Southard worked for years as a freelance photojournalist and artist. In 2008 he left for Pittsburgh for graduate school in Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating in 2011he was invited to international exhibitions such as the Moscow Biennale for Young Art, Hel’Pitts’Sinki’Burgh in Finland, Camaguey Cuba’s 5th International Video Art Fest and he has participated in the Internet Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in Venice Italy. After receiving his MFA in 2011, James taught as a photography professor at University of Louisville, Kentucky School of Art and Carnegie Mellon University as a professor of fine arts. In the winter and spring of 2012, James continued his series Tooth and Nail with the collaboration of the city of Seoul, Korea at Seoul Art Space Geumcheon. Soon after he took his project to Maine where he was a participant at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, then later at MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, Yaddo Retreat in New York, Jentel in Wyoming, Vermont Studio Center and to the MASS MoCA residency in North Adams, MA.
He has since returned to academia by teaching photography at the University of Kentucky.

Originally from Cynthiana, Kentucky, Wylie Caudill has emerged as a distinguished artist, rooted in the verdant landscape of Lexington. He is presently this year’s official artist for the prestigious 150th Kentucky Derby.
Wylie's artistic narrative is woven with a distinctive imprint—a signature style he affectionately terms as "organic repetition." This unique aesthetic can be easily recognized throughout his portfolio.
His work can be seen not just in Kentucky but across the United States, vitalizing urban landscapes with murals that echo his artistic ethos.
Wylie's artistic journey began when he was quite young. Pokemon, trains, and dragons served as his inspiration and ignited his imagination. However, it was while at college that Wylie found his artistic niche using chalk to draw on the streets and sidewalks of his campus, that earned him the nickname 'the chalk guy’. Murals were a natural transition from there.
Today, Wylie's artistic creativity transcends the confines of concrete walls to work on canvases, bourbon bottles, apparel, and beyond. He likes to think his journey stands as a testament to the transformative power of passion, dedication, and an unwavering commitment to his art.