Judges


2020 EVAs Judges

AICUO is extremely selective when choosing the jury each year. First-round judges who determine our 6 winners are faculty in the art departments at participating institutions. Second-round judges consist of local artist who have made an immense impact on the arts community and those entering it. 



First-Round Judges

Andi Baumgartner

Zac Benson 
Photographed: Zac Benson
Benson is an international artist who has shown in Taiwan, Bulgaria, and throughout the United States.  He has also had public commissions in Australia, California, New York, and Washington, D.C..  His gallery work deals with the relationship between his personal faith and beliefs and his engagement with society while his public sculptures deal with the traditional relationship of scale and form. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Cedarville University where he teaches sculpture and ceramics. This will be his second year judging the EVAs. 
Institution's Website: www.cedarville.edu
Personal Website: www.zacbenson.com

Kathy Buszkiewicz 

Emily Hanako Momohara 
Photographed: Emily Hanako Momohara
Photographer: Emily Hecker


Momohara has exhibited nationally, including group shows at the Light Factory; Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Photographic Center Northwest, and others. She has been a visiting artist at several residency programs including the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing China, Fine Arts Work Center, MA and Headlands Center for the Arts, CA. In 2015, her work was featured in a 2-person exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum titled Sugar Islands. 
Momohara grew up near Seattle, Washington USA and earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Photography and her Bachelors of Arts in Art History from the University of Washington. She went on to receive her Masters of Fine Arts in Expanded Media from the University of Kansas, where she studied under Roger Shimomura. She moved to Cincinnati in 2003 to join the faculty at the Art Academy of Cincinnati where she is now an Associate Professor of Studio Art and head of the photography major. This will be her second year judging the EVAs. 
Institution's Website: www.artacademy.edu 
Personal Website: ehmomohara.com

Jim Higgins 

Geno Luketic 

Kevin Lyles 

Kathy L. McGhee
Photographed: Kathy L. McGhee
McGhee works at the Columbus College of Art and Design. There she a professor in fine arts and area coordinator of printmaking.  McGhee, who has shown her work both nationally and internationally, is a practicing printmaker who has had her work published in Printmakers Today. McGhee received the Greater Columbus Arts Council’s International Residency Award in 2005 and traveled to Germany. In 2010, she was a participant in the Xi’an International Printmaking Workshop held at Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in China, and in 2012, she received an international residency through the Ohio Arts Council.  In 2019, she was an artist in residence at the Great Smoky National Park.
She has a BS in plant biology, Ohio State University, 1997; BFA in drawing and painting, Ohio State University, 1997; MFA in printmaking, Ohio State University, 2000. McGhee has served as a judge for the EVAs three years previously. 
Institution's Website: www.ccad.edu
Personal Website:  https://kathymcghee.weebly.com/ 

Darlene G. Michitsch
Photographed:
Darlene G. Michitsch
Michitsch is an Associate Professor of Art History and is the Chair of the Art Department at Baldwin Wallace University, and this will be her first year serving as a judge for the EVAs. 
Institution's Website: www.bw.edu










Sheila ReStack 
Photographed: Sheila ReStack
ReStack was born and raised in Caribou River, Nova Scotia. ReStack is currently Associate Professor Studio Art at Denison University. She has her BFA from NSCAD University, Halifax and MFA from Goldmiths College, London. Recent solo shows include Build Your Altar, at Enjoy Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand, If Becoming This, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio and upcoming solo show at Eastern Edge Gallery (summer 2020). Recent solo shows with Dani ReStack include; Stack for Carrington’s Hyena, Iceberg Projects, Chicago and Stack at the Columbus Museum of Art. ReStack was co-director of Strangely Ordinary This Devotion, a video that premiered at the Whitney Biennial, 2017. Residencies include Headlands Center for the Arts, Struts and Faucet Media Centre, Banff Center for the Arts and upcoming McDowell fellowship. ReStack is the recipient of the Howard Foundation Fellowship for Photography and has received several Canada Council Project Grants.
"Conflating the miraculous with notions of chance and arbitrariness, Sheilah’s work alludes to religious motifs from a perspective of a sincere and heartbroken skeptic. It often centers around the empty center, an impossibility that she bravely faces while connecting history, land and personal experience into fluid and surprising actions within her artistic practice." Leeza Meksin for Temporary Contemporary, December 2012. 
Institution's Website: www.denison.edu 
Personal Website: www.sheilahwilsonrestack.com 

Joseph Van Kerkhove
Photographed: Joseph Van Kerkhove
Van Kerkhove is an Assistant Professor of Art and Director of the Diane Kidd Gallery at Tiffin University in Tiffin, OH. He resides in Toledo, Ohio where he works out of his home printmaking studio. He holds an M.F.A. in Printmaking from Indiana University and a B.F.A. from The Columbus College of Art and Design. Joseph’s work incorporatesvarious printmaking techniques, both traditional and experimental, that express his own personal experiences. He manipulates familiar images into complex compositions that allows the viewers to reflect and relate the images to their memories and personal experiences. Joseph’s artworks have been exhibited in a variety of venues nationally and internationally. He is represented by Harris- Stanton Gallery in Cleveland and Akron. This will be Van Kerkhove's second year judging the EVAs.
Van Kerkhove is a co-curator of the EVAC Project and oversees the recruitment of the participating artists. The EVAC Project has traveled to over a dozen venues since its inception in 2017, including Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Ronald Reagan National Airport and Rutherford B. Hayes Library and Museum, Manhattan College and the Artist Archives of the Western Reserve to name a few. 
Institution's Website:  https://www.tiffin.edu/
Personal Website:  http://joevankerkhove.com/



Second-Round Judges

Alexandra Nicholis Coon
Photographed: Alexandra Nicholis Coon
Coon, executive director for the Massillon Museum, holds a BA in art history from Kent State University, an MA in art history through the joint program at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Case Western Reserve University, and a collections care certificate from the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies.  She has been with the Massillon Museum since 2001 and served as its curator from 2003 to 2010. Coon is immediate past president of the Ohio Museums Association (2017-19), a trustee of the Cleveland Print Room and Massillon WestStark Chamber Foundation, Vice President for the Stark County Convention and Visitors’ Bureau (Visit Canton), and a member of the City of Massillon’s Community Improvement Corporation. Museum Advocacy is near and dear to her heart; she has joined museum colleagues nationwide on Capitol Hill for six years now as part of the American Alliance of Museums Advocacy Day and communicates regularly with elected officials at the state and local levels. 
Her love of photography led her to curate Darkrooms in a Digital Age(2007) and Between Two Worlds: The Photography of Nell Dorr(2010) for the Massillon Museum, among numerous other exhibitions.  She enjoys digital photography and earned honorable mention in the Professional Women Photographer’s 37th International Women’s Call for Entry (2012) and has been exhibited in several Northeast Ohio shows. From 2010-2018, she led a renovation effort of the Massillon Museum’s collections storage facility, upgrading it to a state-of-the-art, award-winning preservation space, and is currently overseeing the Museum’s $6  million dollar expansion to increase its capacity to serve the community by 18,000 square feet.  In 2011, she was recognized with the YStark! “Twenty Under 40” award and was a 2012 inductee to the Canton YWCA Women’s Hall of Fame.  She is a member of Soroptimist International Canton/Stark County and the Akron Chapter DAR and resides in North Canton with her husband and twin daughters.

Matthew Gallagher 

Sarah Hahn 
Photographed: Sarah Hahn
Hahn seeks to express the intricacies of life and all of its interwoven aspects within her art work which she exhibits both regionally and nationally. She primarily works with ceramics, utilizing both the figure and abstract forms. Her artistic journey first began at Ohio Wesleyan University where she earned her BFA and continued at the University of Kentucky where she received her MFA. Throughout her career she has taught functional and sculptural ceramics and drawing at colleges and universities in Kentucky, Ohio, and New York. She has also taught and worked for the Governor’s School for the Arts in Kentucky. In addition to educating, she sculpts life-size and larger figures for bronze monuments. Recently she has started teaching ceramic classes at the Cultural Art Center. This will be Hahn's second year judging the EVAs. 
Personal Website: sehahnstudio.com

Brittni Hall 
Photographed: Brittni Hall
Hall is a native Columbus, Ohio artist with a focus in oil paintings. Her technique is a bit unique and involves lots of walnut oil, liquin impasto, brushes, and palette knives. Many of her pieces are inspired by nature, space, and the fluid beauty they create. This will be Hall's second year judging the EVAs. 
Personal Website: hallartdesigns.com 





Sam Hitchman 
Photographed: Sam Hitchman
Sam Hitchman is a full time ceramic artist, living in Cincinnati Ohio, with 20 years of experience working in clay. Sam received his BFA from Miami University of Oxford, Ohio in 2010. He founded his business in January of 2013 and since his business's inception has participated in over 120 juried art shows across the country and is represented by numerous fine craft galleries. Inspired by nature, Sam focuses on creating utilitarian wares which blend elements of fine art design with functional craft. This will be Hitchman's second year as an EVA's judge. 
Personal Website: www.SamHCeramics.com

Stacy Leeman 

Rosa Rumora

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