Photograph by Nadya Zeitlin
Nine months into the pandemic, the directors of the Hambidge Center could sense Atlanta’s arts community had lost its greatest asset: connection. Dayna Thacker, who oversees programs and marketing for the north Georgia artists’ retreat, says seeing fewer creative people was a burden. “The loss of social interaction among peers was difficult and isolating,” Thacker says. That’s where the center’s new Atlanta-based Cross-Pollination Art Lab came in. The team long had wanted to plant roots in the city, and, though Covid delayed those plans, Thacker says the pandemic created greater demand for this type of space. “Artists need each other,” she says.