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Fall 2024 Awards
Jurors' 1st Choice Award
Vaccinium angustifolium
Katie Simmons
Ball pointpen and homemade dye made from wild blueberries and pignut hickories on silk
As an artist and wildlife biologist, I work with plants, lichens, algae, and fungi from which pigments can be extracted and apply these to surfaces on which I then create drawings in ballpoint pen. I investigate death, decay, growth, and the parallels I see between the exploitation of both the natural world and female bodies. Specifically, I’m fascinated by the abject otherness of my own body after the experience of being abducted, held against my will, and sexually assaulted by a stranger while traveling abroad. I exist in two spaces: one in which I am found and safe and the other in which a part of my brain and body is still missing. I often still live my life like a missing person in a state of animal-like hypervigilance, returning to these events repeatedly in both my mind and my art, trying to make myself and other people believe that what I’m saying is true. The horror of this revisiting is extreme and I cope with this by comforting my figures with things that make me feel safe: animals, plants, and all elements of the natural world. I embrace two aesthetics: one of uneasiness, uncertainty, and dread and the other of reassurance, wonderment, and hope.
Jurors' 2nd Choice Award
In Front the Headlights Shine
Claudia Bokulich
Oil, acrylic screen print, charcoal and chalk pastel on paper
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Working predominantly in oils, I juxtapose personal and found imagery to create contradictory and curious scenes within my paintings. Often bringing to awareness the absurdity of many aspects of human behavior, these painted narratives investigate the cultural constructions of gender roles and femininity as well as vanity and consumerism in contemporary life. My work deliberately pokes fun at these patterns in behavior while simultaneously giving grace to the human condition. With the inclusion of images depicting natural elements in my more recent works, these narratives provoke thought about the parallels and paradoxes humans experience with the environment, which we’ve grown apart from in these modern times.
Jurors' 3rd Choice Award
Arms #3
Grace Crabb
Soft Sculpture
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This work explores the relationship between femininity and monstrosity, and how the functionality of the body impacts the sense of self-worth. I am discussing my feelings of worthlessness surrounding the physical damage and neuropathy in my hands and how that damage has impacted my art making. Whenever I make a doll or soft sculpture, there comes a point when I start to feel like I’m taking care of something with a life, like they need to be hugged and held and loved in spite of their oddness, ugliness, or scariness. My work is a reflection of the most helpless part of my soul that has been brought into being by the part of me that needs to care for helpless things. When I make art, I liken it to birthing a child. The dolls I make are meant to be both pitiful and lovable, monstrous but still deserving, representing both my feelings of inadequacy and the hopefulness of finding ways to fight those feelings.
Honorable Mention
DON'T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU!
Claire Havenhill
Woodblock prints, embroidery and natural dyes on canvas​
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I often find inspiration in common proverbs and sayings as a method to connect my art to the human experience. This printed tapestry pulls from the phrase, “don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” but reinterprets it in the context of self-sabotage and self-hatred. Instead of combatting an outside provider like this phrase usually suggests, this printed tapestry looks at oneself as the provider. At the end of the day, all we have is ourselves to rely on. Don’t bite your own hand.
Honorable Mention
I am a Sponge
Molly Carroll
Graphite, ink, sponge, encaustic and gesso on paper​
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I am a sponge. I am what I know, I am who I touch, and I am what I love. I like to hold things close– soak it up so I can carry it with me, but I catch myself too full, molded, and heavy from the weight of absorption. I am a sponge that needs to be maintained, dispelling the waste while absorbing the funny and good. Although I absorb I am still my self, I am simply a sponge.
Honorable Mention
To Affect
Sylvia Baughman
Plastic Sheeting
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"To Affect" is made by melting plastic together, to formulate a structure. There is a clear contrast of the gross and gory nature, to the playful colors painted. This work is meant to be interpreted by the material, presentation, and context going into it.
Fall 2023 Awards
Jurors' Choice Award for Excellence
Time of the Cottonwood Trees
Claudia Bokulich
Oil on canvas
2023
My figurative oil paintings investigate the facets of female identity in conjunction with the cultural constructions that feed perceptions of femininity. Dealing with themes such as vanity, consumerism, and domesticity, I attempt to combat societal conventions of the female experience by introducing contradictions and challenging stereotypes. Personal impressions are an important part of my thought process, and I’m interested in the vulnerability of both how we are perceived by others as well as how we perceive ourselves. Referencing personal and found photographs, I hope to deconstruct the objectification of women through the male gaze and reclaim feminine identity.
Jurors' Choice (Sarah E. LaBarre)
Picea pungens
Katie Simmons
black ball point pen, dye made from blue spruce needles
2023
My art traverses different fields in which I’ve worked, including ornithology, ecology, and education. I’m compelled by the collapsing of distances between humans and the natural world in the Anthropocene and seek to take a rhizomatic approach to living beings rather than a hierarchical one in which humans are seemingly omnipotent. In my creative process, I work with the natural world to find plants, soils, and insects from which pigment can be isolated. After applying these colors to paper, textiles, wood, and other found surfaces, I create drawings in ballpoint pen that investigate themes of death and decay, birth and growth, and how energy flows through ecosystems. Recently, I’ve begun to explore and address the parallels I see between the commodification and abuse of the natural world and the exploitation of the female body.
Jurors' Choice (Mario Zoots)
El Corazón Mío
Natalia Martinez
Oil Painting
2023
Through my vibrant paintings, I celebrate rich traditions that are deeply embedded in Mexico, weaving a visual narrative that reflects the profound impact of my dual cultural identity. My artworks showcase cultural representation, a testament to the enduring beauty of Mexico. Vivid colors and geometric patterns imbued with my art come from the influences of my Aztec heritage that resonate with contemporary themes, creating a visual harmony that transcends time. Through my art, I aspire to connect with viewers on a profound level, inviting them to explore the multifaceted layers of identity, culture, and tradition.
Honorable Mentions
SET TO CYCLE
Haley Hagerman
installation
2023
scavenging is quintessential to my practice: interacting with my environment to glean supplies. everything i use is secondhand if that's directly off a roadside or locally thrifted. i think things/stuff/mediums have so much to say and i work as the artist to be a mediator for their agencies.
New Life Form; Stages 0-4
Brody Cox
Cast Bronze, Liver of Sulfur Patina
2023
New Life Form
Cast in bronze with a liver of sulfur patina and displayed in Petri dishes, this series of 5 rings depict an increasing viral infection that grows throughout the set.
Early Onset Retrieval Failure
Tristin Dorsey
Sculpture, filing cabinet, concrete, glass
2022
I think that things are sort of confusing and ugly and messy with small glimpses of true beauty… and that is how I paint. That’s what I aim to capture with my raw frantic movements and conglomerated compositions. My work contains heavy brush strokes and child-like mark-making where the real beauty is extremely subtle and only exists in a few moments. I am much more interested in the objectness and the feeling that this can produce in a painting rather than the medium's image-making qualities. For my sculpture work, I focus heavily on research-based approaches and current world issues such as plastic and alcoholism. This often leads to my work having autobiographical undertones as I am a product of the world that surrounds me, much like my sculptures. I make pieces that show the human hand behind them and are therefore unmistakably Anthropogenic.
Fall 2022 Awards
Jurors' Choice Award for Excellence
Workers
Noemi Gonzalez
Oil on Canvas
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I'm interested in dealing with topics of immigration, liminal spaces, identity, and sometimes personal memories. Working from found imagery in the media to intimate family photographs that uncover a history of migration allows me to create a new narrative and to re-situate the past and present, which transcends the western notion of time.
Juror's Choice (JayCee)
Desire
Annika Lahr
Oil on Canvas
My series of oil paintings explores the relationship between gender roles and societal expectations from a feminist viewpoint. I explore concepts of femininity and masculinity within western hegemonic ideals and interoperate ideas of the gaze through my work. I am interested in the preconceived perceptions of gender that influence ways of seeing. I aim to present these issues within my paintings by combining realism and abstraction, two art styles that I reference particularly in their abilities to have conflicting interactions and multidimensional elements. Organic versus the structural and rigid implications of form I feel reflect a level of feminine and masculine stereotypes. In relation, Cubism and Surrealism especially influence my practice because they question our means to understand life outside of our reality. Color interactions, form, and movement are all technical elements in the production of my work.
Juror's Choice (Mamiko)
ORANGE
David Castro Muruato
Street Photography
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My work focuses on capturing a moment in time in which authentic emotions and fluid motions are displayed in a single shot through the manipulation of color, contrast, shadow, and light. Ever since I was younger I've always been fascinated by the ability of a camera to be able to capture a moment in time that can only be revisited through memories. I fell in love and now I strive to capture moments in time that can spark visceral emotions which are timeless and can touch anyone who views my work.
Honorable Mentions
The Beauty of Quetzalcoatl
Natalia Martinez
Acrylic Painting
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This painting is inspired by Aztec mythology. The feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, Cráneo de Tezcatlipoca, and other small symbols and legends are presented in the painting. The canvas has burnt holes where different characters can be seen in.
Wave
Jordan Wieck
Wood, Copper wire
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This piece was made in a series to show the different movements and expressions our hands use everyday. I chose to mix this piece with wood because like hands, trees express a story inside and out.
Outside In
Ariel Sophabmisay
Gouache and Watercolor on Watercolor Paper
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Throughout history, humans have utilized nature in order to survive. However, in the 21st century, with industrialization and capitalism, overconsumption has stolen resources from the Earth and has suffocated the cycle of nature. The power of the Earth is undeniable as we have seen how nature is able to heal itself through the effects of COVID-19 and the pandemic. While humans stayed inside and left the Earth alone, in a short period of time animals reinhabited areas they have not occupied in decades. I wanted to take the power dynamic of humans invading and conquering natural spaces and juxtapose it by illustrating the environment invading man-made spaces.
Internal Growth
Charles Cohen
Digital Composite Poster made in Photoshop
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These posters include a series of Surreal art in a style that I have been recently inspired by. They represent feelings of change and growth in my life recently, which is the reason for the consistent use of leaves and flowers. By using split faces, I tried to communicate the idea of fatigue, and just not feeling like yourself. This series encapsulates many of the feelings I have been experiencing lately, and I hope that it has the same powerful effect on others. I created these using Photoshop by compositing commercial-free images into a unique composition.
You Are What You Eat
Ana Scott
Oil on Fabric, Ceramic, Metal, Plaster, and Plastic
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You Are What You Eat is a piece about the artificial substances we consume in our bodies. Studies have recently found microplastics in our blood. I wanted to make something that amplifies this issue as well as forces viewers to come to terms with this reality.