Marita Gootee is a Professor of Art at Mississippi State University. Her work was included in the 2008 “Women to Watch” Invitational at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. She was a featured artist in the September 2008 issue of MORE magazine. Notable jurors such as Elizabeth Ferrer, John Yood, Lilly Wei and Nina Felshin have selected her four times for inclusion into the Mississippi Invitational at the Mississippi Museum of Art that showcases the state’s most significant contemporary artists.