Artist Chandra Cox
Imagine... Enriching
Lives Through Art
Background
A graduate of The Ohio State University – Columbus (M.F.A., 1980) and Hampton University (B.A., 1976), Dr. Cox is presently the director of the College of Art and Design at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. She is a practicing artist and image-maker who works in a range of mediums from sculpture to digital. Her sculptures reflect the African American identity through the use of pattern and form, drawing upon historical documents as reference. Dr. Cox has traveled extensively in West Africa. This experience and knowledge appear in her work in the form of African patterns and markings indicating a search for self and meaning within the context of a broader cultural heritage.
Dr. Cox believes that an artist is a creative practitioner and image-maker. In the development of a work of art, the artist should bring form to emotions and ideas allowing the work to become a visual translation of those emotions in history.
Diggs Gallery exhibited Dr. Cox's Doors of No Return Series as one of the centerpieces of the exhibit, ASCENSION: Works by African American Artists of North Carolina. The upright sculptures with a hollow center signify "the doors of entry into the violence and degradation of slavery, as well as the initial point at which the history of the African American begins.
Dr. Cox also illustrated a children's book by Tony Medina entitled, Christmas Makes Me Think – the story of an African American boy searching for ways to celebrate Christmas in his community without harming a tree or spending any money, "Dr. Cox's cut paper, paint, pastel and colored pencil illustrations are quirky" and bring the book to life for readers.
Chandra Cox has won numerous awards and honors for her work and is exhibited throughout the United States.
