Quick Facts
Biography
Jess DuBois is an American artist. He graduated from the inaugural class of The Art Institute of Colorado in 1957. DuBois then traveled the country to study with several established artists including Ray Vanilla, David Lafel, and Daniel Greene. As a Creole of Cherokee ancestry, Dubois is passionate about Indian art. He showcased it in his successful DuBois Gallery in Estes Park, Colorado until he was forced to close following the town’s devastating 1982 flood.
He subsequently returned to his native Five Points neighborhood in Denver, Colorado where he cultivated the arts of glassblowing and sculpture, combining those skills with his existing media.
Jess received The Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1988 Denver Black Arts Festival, where he was lauded for his ability to "Project the soul of his subjects onto canvas.”
The Denver-area Regional Transportation District commissioned him to cast a bronze statue of Denver's first African-American doctor, obstetrician Dr. Justina Ford, which was dedicated in 1998. It can be viewed at the 30th & Downing Light Rail Station in Denver.
DuBois was one of three artists who received the Denver Mayor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts in 2004.
Jess teaches children’s art in a number of local settings, continues to take art classes himself, and says his goal in life is “To get better and better.”
DuBois was inducted into the Art Institute of Colorado Hall of Fame in 2004.