Jury Process

The Columbus Arts Festival jury will choose the Festival artists at a two-day public meeting in February. Jury panelists will review about 1,000 artist applications from across the country to determine the approximately 230 who will be invited to participate in the 2012 Columbus Arts Festival.

Artists were chosen in the following categories:   2D Mixed Media; 3D Mixed Media; Clay; Digital Art;  Drawing & Pastels; Fiber; Glass; Jewelry; Leather; Metal; Painting; Photography; Printmaking & Graphics; Sculpture;  Wood and for the second year, a category for Emerging Artists. Each year, artists who wish to be considered for the Festival apply through ZAPPlication™, an online application tool, by submitting four digital images of their work and one image of their booth display. A jury panel, selected by the GCAC staff, conducts a blind jury process, where jurors review the artists’ images and technical statements without knowing the artists’ names or hometown. The top scores, allowing for a balanced show across mediums, are invited to participate in the Festival.

2012 Columbus Arts Festival Jurors

Adam Brouillette is a born and raised Midwestern kid. He grew up in the suburbs making forts, playing Lego, and drawing. His creative endeavors eventually led him to Columbus College of Art in Design, from which he received a printmaking BFA in 2002. His time spent at the CCAD print lab helped him understand his aptitudes in communication, systematic approach and design sensibilities. His familiar, stylistic artwork developed from those understandings. After college, Brouillette worked as a visual merchandiser, an event planner and commercial artist to supplement his work as a fine artist. These experiences developed the abilities that helped him begin down an entrepreneurial path. During that time, he founded Little Red Men, a management company for his fine artwork, which expanded his artistic efforts around Ohio and numerous other states. Brouillette has been involved in several organizations related to promoting the creative community, including Junctionview Studios, Couchfire Collective and the Ohio Art League. While continuing to make art, Brouillette is now employing all his experiences as a founding member and executive director of Wonderland, a catalyst for the creative class. With Wonderland, he is hoping to reshape the concept of arts in the community. He hopes to produce a broader understanding of "arts" through creating a facility where collaboration, economic aptitude and sustainability change standard perceptions of creative endeavors.

Nicario Jimenez, born in a peasant community in the high Peruvian Andes, studied sculpture at the Centro de Capacitacion Artesanal de Huamanaga and attended the Universidad Nacional San Cristobal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru. His one person exhibitions include the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum, the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Museum of Man in San Diego, California, the North Dakota Museum of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design. His work was selected by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. for its Seeds of Change Exhibit and was subsequently purchased by the Smithsonian for its permanent collection. Jimenez has taught and lectured at the University of Miami, the University of California, San Diego, Whittier College and American University. Jimenez's work is included in numerous prestigious public, corporate and private collections. The artist now lives in Naples, Florida.

Susan Li O’Connor is a native of Taipei, Taiwan. Her work deals with the accumulation of everyday objects and the transformation of them into sculptural forms and installations. While the transformation of the mundane is the first thing a viewer sees, O’Connor is also entertaining ideas of identity, consumerism and consumption within our culture. O’Connor teaches at the Columbus College of Art & Design in the Foundation Studies department and is also Graduate Faculty in the new MFA program at CCAD. She holds a BFA degree from the Columbus College of Art and Design and an MFA degree from The Ohio State University. O’Connor exhibits nationally in California, Michigan, North Carolina, Colorado and Ohio. She lives and works in Columbus, Ohio.

Marty Shuter is an art instructor committed to creating a classroom where students fully engage in the process of learning, creating, re-inventing, collaborating, questioning, pushing, shaking, and making mistakes powerfully and with great intention. Shuter began her art practice while working eight years as an art critic in print journalism. Reviewing bad art inspired her to “do better.” Classes lead to a career change and she received his MFA in 2001 from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. She followed graduate school with several artist residencies including Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado and the Belden Brick Factory in Canton, Ohio. Shuter has taught at The Ohio State University, Otterbein College, Ohio Northern University, The Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Canada and was one of the first artists to work and teach at the The Shaw International Centre for Contemporary Ceramics in Medicine Hat, Canada. Shuter was a recipient in 2007 for the Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award for sculpture. Recent solo shows include Crossing the Road at the Cultural Centre, Medicine Hat, Canada in 2009, and Coming Home to Roost at the McConnell Arts Center of Worthington, Worthington, Ohio in 2011.

Janis Mars Wunderlich was born in Akron, OH in 1970.  She received her BFA from Brigham Young University (Provo,Utah) and an MFA from The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH). As a full-time, at-home artist and mother of five, Wunderlich has spent many years trying to balance art and family matters. Her deeply personal, narrative works capture the exhaustion and excitement of a busy family life, full of creative images, domestic duties, and nurturing responsibilities. Adapting to the frequent interruption of family duties, and with children working along her side in her studio, Wunderlich has managed to create an impressive and excessive body of work. While older work often showed the darker struggles of parenting, her newer work focuses on the humor, intensity and intricacy of family life. A recipient of several honors and grants, her work has been in hundreds of national and international exhibitions, and can be seen nationally and internationally in public and private collections. In any spare time she finds, she lectures and conducts workshops at several universities and art centers in the U.S. and Canada.