Longtime and sharp-eared listeners to Atlanta public radio may recall hearing Lisa Alembik’s last name in the days when Alembik, Fine & Callner, her father’s law firm, was an underwriter of programming on WABE-FM 90.1. By the time I began hearing that distinctive surname broadcast, Lisa and I had already met through the independent (and long defunct) Buckhead-based Oxford Books chain, where we both worked late last century. I wasn’t in touch with Lisa then to ask whether the name I was hearing was also hers. Years later we met again at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery, which she eventually came to run as gallery director. Whereas other members of her family — including Michael, her father, and a cousin, Gary — embarked upon legal careers, Lisa made her way as a curator and creator of works in various mediums, works often focused on storytelling, identity, and humanity’s relationship with nature.
These days, Lisa works as an assistant professor at Georgia Perimeter College and on art that “focuses on the effects of loss on the fleshy body.” Her work has shown at the Memphis College of Art’s gallery, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. She has also curated exhibitions at Rabun Gap’s Hambidge Center. And her relationship with the Dalton Gallery continues: she steered the 70th birthday party held there for critic Jerry Cullum, and she is organizing an exhibition for Agnes Scott that opens in the fall.
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