By Jennifer Sadler

The Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) is dedicated to providing quality arts experiences and understands that creative partnerships and collaborations are essential to supporting an environment where art and culture thrive. GCAC works to leverage its capacity building, programmatic and partnership building expertise to reach and assist a widening circle of arts organizations in Columbus.

By generating sustained support, and exploring and promoting arts-based initiatives, GCAC has led the way in fostering natural synergies among private and nonprofit organizations, audiences, community leaders and artists—the foundations of our creative environment. Growth is made in arts awareness, support and management when organizations use every opportunity to share their resources and expertise.

Our local arts sector has gone through major transformations as Columbus has grown and developed. And it has taken the work and of an entire community to gain the momentum that we are currently experiencing. GCAC has initiated several types of partnerships that encourage public participation in the arts; help local arts organizations to function more effectively; and support the professional development of arts leaders, arts educators and individual artists. Through advocacy, communication, cooperation and collaboration, GCAC is dedicated to ensuring the health of the arts and culture in Columbus and beyond.

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ColumbusArts.com Profile:  Photographer KOJO KAMAU

As the most comprehensive online events guide and resource for arts and culture in central Ohio, ColumbusArts.com offers a virtual guide through the Columbus art world with a searchable database of events, concerts, performances and more. ColumbusArts.com is an engaging place for artists and arts organizations to share what they do, with an average of 30,000 users per month. The ColumbusArts.com Artist Directory allows visual, performing and literary artists to create a profile and portfolio to showcase their work—for free—and enables art enthusiasts to easily search for and connect with them. Our monthly ColumbusArts.com artist profile series features interviews with a few of the many talented individuals who make up central Ohio’s thriving creative community.

This month's profile features Columbus native Kojo Kamau, a nationally acclaimed photographer and one of our civic treasures. Kamau has exhibited his award-winning photographs throughout the Midwest and around the globe. To celebrate Kamau’s 70th birthday year in 2009, the Columbus Museum of Art presented Kojo: Fifty Years in Photography, a retrospective that included more than sixty photographs, both color and black and white, reflecting his five decades working in the medium. The exhibition addressed themes that run throughout his work such as community, travels, portraits of local and international artists and musicians, and political and social issues.  GCAC and the Columbus Arts Endowment have just announced that Kamau is the recipient of the prestigious Raymond J. Hanley award.  The $10,000 fellowship named in honor of GCAC's former longtime president, is given annually to an artist who has demonstrated an unusual level of achievement in their arts career. 

" I am from the old school where we were taught that photographers paint with light. In the early days my photographs were published in newspapers and magazines which were printed in black and white. I have over 50 years experience shooting, processing and printing black and white photography. You do what you think you do best. I have always shot color negative film and transparences, never having complete control over the finished photograph. Now digital photography allows me the same creative control wether it is color or black and white"

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