Ekua Holmes
Ekua currently serves as the Assistant Director at the Center for Art and Community Partnerships at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Director of sparc! the ArtMobile, MassArt's art-inspiring, art-transforming vehicle retrofitted to create and contribute to community based, multidisciplinary arts programming currently focused in Mission Hill, Roxbury, and Dorchester MA.
She is a fine artist whose mixed media collages explore universal themes of childhood, family, and remembering. She uses news clippings, photographs, vibrant color and skillful composition to infuse her work with energy. In 2015, Holmes took the children’s book world by storm with her illustrations in Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, written by Carole Boston Weatherford. The book went on to receive numerous awards, including a Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrator’s Original Art exhibition, four starred reviews, Robert F. Sibert and Randolph Caldecott Honors, and a Coretta Scott King John Steptoe New Illustrator Award.