Sixth Annual IFS Student Writing and Visual
Art Contests
For our Sixth Annual
Student Writing and Art Contests, we invited students to address the
theme “Reflecting Freedom: Journey’s through the Underground
Railroad and Beyond.” We were again honored with two excellent
outside judges, Kathy Y. Wilson, author of Your Negro Tour Guide:
Truths in Black and White, and Denise Burge, artist and
professor of art at the University of Cincinnati’s College of
Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. John Braden, Holly Doyle,
and Rees Storm, the winners of the writing contest, submitted works
of high quality in diverse media: a short story about an imagined
meeting between Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville; a poem about
a mother in the “pink-collar ghetto”; and an essay about
“underground education” after 1865. The winning art works, by
Rosilyne Markasi, Johnathan Gabis, and Sam Frankel, were equally
diverse: a painting about a contemporary mother whose son lay dying
in her hands; a photograph of the Ohio River symbolizing new
challenges in the quest for freedom today; and a spray-painting on a
traffic sign in which the spirit of those who survived the middle
passage give us direction even now.
Our students continue
to express the struggle for freedom in new ways and we look forward
to their submissions to next year’s contest.
—Bob Wallace, Art Contest Coordinator
Award-Winning Entries
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