Founded in in 1977 by Doris Leeper, an internationally known sculptor and painter, as well as a visionary environmentalist, Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA) is a non-profit multidisciplinary artist residency facility located in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

ACA organizes programs for artists of all ages and professional levels. The Mentoring ArtistsResidency is the core program, and it has served over 3,500 emerging and mid-career artists from many disciplines. The residency is unique in that it is a mentoring program that couples prominent Mentoring Artists with selected Associate Artists for three-week periods.

The Mentoring Visual Artists who are leading ACA’s 2022 and 2023 residencies to date are Guadalupe Maravilla, Patrick Martinez, Ryan McGinness, Pamela Z, Larry Ossei-Mensah, Paul Rucker, Ernesto Pujol, and Dean Haspiel. The 200 artists who will attend these residencies will have the intellectual freedom, time, and space to create without any constraints, and to explore and develop peer-to-peer collaborations and networks. Five free events during each residency will stimulate open discussion and inquiry among the artists and with the public, engaging our community and partners. Individual and collaborative works-in-progress will be presented at the end of each residency.