The Mind Behind AM Creatrix

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Ayanna "Yanni" Mabry is a multidisciplinary artist, teaching artist, and creative entrepreneur based in Atlanta, Georgia. Born and raised in Columbus, Georgia, she works across painting, muralism, poetry, singing, and dance. She treats each discipline as a different language for the same inner life.

Yanni came to visual art during college. In undergraduate studio courses she found a knack for sculpting and wire-wrapping and fell in love with abstract and expressionist work. She was shaped by professors who pushed her in two directions at once: process-based art-making on one side and the discipline of realism on the other. That pull between intuition and technique still drives her work.

Her practice is rooted in contemporary abstract expressionism viewed through an esoteric lens. Hands are a recurring motif throughout her work, and she works across painting, mixed media, and sculptural material. Her public and community work includes nearly five years assisting on large-scale murals, her first fully solo live mural event, exhibiting at Future Gallery, and a 404 Day collaboration with MARTA, Atlanta's transit authority, centered on her painting 404, Fasho!

Teaching is as central to her practice as making. The daughter of an elementary school art teacher, Yanni sees herself as a legacy art educator. She has taught middle school visual art, mentored AP Visual Arts seniors, and led art enrichment programs with After School All Stars and Callanwolde Fine Arts Center. Her classroom runs on one principle: come as you are. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Teaching in Art Education at Georgia State University.

In 2026 Yanni founded AM Creatrix LLC, the home for her studio practice and community programming. "Creatrix," the feminine Latin form of "creator," is a name she has identified with since she was a teenager. For Yanni, art is both a personal practice and a shared one: a way to process, to heal, and to make room for others to do the same.