JURORS

QUEEN BROOKS: Artist Queen Brooks was born in Columbus, Ohio.
She began her art career working as an arts and crafts instructor.
Brooks then went back to school and graduated from Ohio State
University with her B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees in art. Brooks won the
Lila Wallace, Reader’s Digest International Artist Award, which granted
her a residency in the French port city of Abidjan in the Republic of the
Ivory Coast, West Africa. She has received numerous honors and awards
for her artwork, including the Ohioana Career Award, the highest recognition
bestowed on an artist in the state of Ohio.

Brooks and her works have been featured in magazines, and on TV.
She has exhibited extensively and her works reside in many private
and public collections.

Her art is in the collections of the Columbus Museum of Art, the African American
Art Museum in Wilberforce Ohio, Otterbein University, Ohio Dominican University,
and the Martin de Porres Center, Columbus, Ohio.

RICHARD DUARTE BROWN: “My purpose is to use the history of my childhood,
the strengths and limitations of our city and the life I see around me, to connect
the generations and to ultimately create a family dynamic.

When I create art I set the table for us to sit, as a family and indulge in
connectedness, identity and hope. My art is like a loaf of bread we can
eat from, when people eat this bread we become a family.

When I look around I see that my city is declining. My solution to this concern
is to communicate a sense of connectedness to the next generation. We are
connected through family, relationship and hope. I use art as a medium to
go deep into the conscious and inspire people. I convey this message through
combining wood, scrapes, yoga mats, old television parts, dried tree limbs,
canvas wood and many other various pieces. I find these parts and pieces
like finding old family members and create 2D mixed media pieces. My 2D
art is used to connect with the family of mankind. The body of work
investigates man’s ability to comfort one another and the contemplation
of that reality at all the stages of development.“
-Richard Duarte Brown