CDAF Juried Arts Competition

Carefully juried works from both local and regional artists!

Photos provided by MSU Art Galleries

The Cotton District Arts Festival includes the Juried Arts Competition and Exhibit: carefully juried works from both local and regional artists. Submissions to the Juried Arts Show are entirely separate from the Artisan Village. An artist may participate in either or both, but must submit to each separately for consideration.

Each piece in this Exhibit is hand selected by a notable guest juror. From the accepted pieces, prizes are awarded in several categories. In addition, numerous merit prizes, provided by local individuals and businesses, are given to artists selected by the juror as honorable mentions.

We are very proud of both the quality of the work and the number of pieces sold and enjoyed by those in attendance each year. The depth and breadth of the art, and the creative and invigorating atmosphere found at the Juried Arts Exhibition each year is phenomenal, you won’t want to miss it.

To be selected as an exhibiting artist for the Juried Art show is an honor in itself. Works selected are viewed by thousands of festival goers providing the artist with recognition and publicity. The competition is open to artists eighteen years old and older, and whether you have been creating art for years, or are just getting started, we encourage you to enter the competition. To submit, please navigate to the Applications page. Starting with #CDAF2019, works admitted to the Juried Arts Exhibit are now part of an extended show.

CDAF 2022 Juried Art Competition

Extended Show: Oct. 24 - Nov. 4
Reception: Oct. 28,
5-6 pm - Private Reception for Purchasers
6-7 pm - Public Reception

Located at the MSU Visual Arts Center (in the Cotton District) during the festival.

Jurors

2022 Juror: Derek Smith

Derek Covington Smith is a self-educated contemporary realist painter born in New Orleans and adopted and raised in Brookhaven, Mississippi.

It was not until Smith was in high school that his family could find local resources and get him into art lessons, where he quickly absorbed every technique the class studied. The lack of available resources as a youth would later greatly influence Smith's career path.

Smith went on to attend his local Community College in 2001-2002, thriving in their arts programming, but no longer seeing higher education as a viable option due to the skyrocketing tuitions and movement away from studio arts into digital media. He spent the next six years between Orlando, FL, and Santa Rosa, CA, before attending Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute, receiving his degree in Culinary Science Patisserie and Baking. Smith married fine art and sugar, specializing in extravagant cakes, and moved to Wilmington, NC, to take an executive Pastry position. While sugar was paying the bills, it had inadvertently awoken his desire to be a part of the art world. In 2012 Smith made another significant change. He left the culinary world, moved back to Orlando, and began to study. He placed all focus and spare time on research.

Smith would eventually move to New York, where a Contemporary Pop Art gallery discovered him called THNK1994, bringing opportunities to collaborate and produce work for ABC, Shondaland, PopSugar, Bravo, and more.

Smith moved back to his hometown of Brookhaven and, in 2018, opened The Little Yellow Building. Remembering the lack of access from his youth, Smith offers after-school programs and summer camps to the local Community while building online platforms to promote Mississippi Visual Artists and provide no-cost submissions for artists looking to gain experience and develop their resumes.

Through The Little Yellow Building, Smith has produced six physical and online exhibitions, four books, a podcast documenting the lives of artists living in our State, and continues to grow a network of Mississippi artists ready to be a part of something bigger.

Past Jurors

2021: Julian Rankin, Executive Director of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art
2020: Turry Flucker, Tougaloo College Art Collections Director + Curator
2019: Kate Cherry, Executive Director for the Meridian Museum of Art
2018: Elizabeth Abston, Curator for the Mississippi Museum of Art
2017: Ruth Miller, Artist
2016: James Davis, University of Southern Mississippi
2015: Robin Whitfield, Artist
2014: David Lambert, Artist
2013: Nan Cunningham, Artist

Awards

All submission fees, sponsorships, and donations to the Juried Arts Show fund a purse of prizes that are paid back out to artists in awards. Although the final amount of awards is ultimately in the discretion of SAAC and CDAF, the following awards are anticipated. These awards are paid whether or not the work is sold.

Best in Show: $750

1st Place (each category): $500

2nd Place (each category): $250

Support the Arts

Each year at the Cotton District Arts Festival, the Juried Arts Committee makes available two opportunities for supporters of the arts to be more involved in this venue:

Purchase Prize:
This is a pledge by an individual or business to purchase a piece of art from the exhibit at a private reception prior to the exhibit being opened to the public. The artist is paid the asking price on the piece and the check is made payable directly to the artist.

Merit Award (Honorable Mention):
This is a monetary award given either by an individual, in honor of someone, or in memory of someone. When the “First”, “Second”, and “Best in Show” prizes are awarded, the juror will choose artwork that is worthy of honorable mention and award each of them a Merit Award. The artist retains their artwork and receives the amount of the award as a prize. The recipient and the donor will find out on Saturday, at the awards ceremony, who was the recipient of their Merit Award.

Both of these prizes are an incentive for an artist to enter the competition and receive compensation for their work. There are labels placed on the pieces or art designating who purchased them or who sponsored a Merit Award and are displayed during the exhibit on Saturday. For further information, please email arts@starkvillearts.org.

2021 Juried Art Competition Winners

Best in Show

Cultivos, Ana Sofia Licona Luque

Ana Sofia Licona Luque is a multimedia Mexican artist who focuses on 3D arts. Sofia was born and raised in Mexico and currently resides in the city of Starkville where she is pursuing her bachelor’s in fine arts at Mississippi State University. Early in her academic career, Sofia worked with 2D arts such as drawing, painting, printmaking, and graphic design. However, she switched to 3D arts a couple of years ago when she was introduced to woodworking and welding which are the main mediums she works with today. Additionally, Sofia is one of two artists at the university with a concentration in sculpture where she is learning how to design and make furniture and decoration. Sofia’s art pieces have a strong sense of rectilinear designs inspired by architecture and interior decoration; in addition, her pieces feature neutral tones based on the Mexican culture she was raised in and different natural landscapes. Currently, Sofia is experimenting with different materials and processes such as papermaking, ceramics, fibers, and textiles to apply them to her main media. Sofia is a senior at the university and hopes to continue her artistic career by working in the construction and decoration field.