Best in Show (Traditional)
Cher Pruys
Best in Show
(Digital & Photography)
Dieter Setz
Dieter is an Austrian born master platinum gold and silversmith by profession and lives for the past 42 years in South Africa. He has worked since an early age with a variety of mediums, i.e. Sculptures in metal and wood, paper masche, Acrylic and oil paints , Jewellery . Since the past 5 Years Dieter is working with Photography and is creating “Pixel Art” or photographic art. Projects like “Wood art”, “Bedlinen”, “Into the light” and “Portraits with a difference” are ongoing. Coming from a 3D environment he strives to achieve a 3 D outcome in his 2D photographic art.
Best in Show
(3 Dimensional)
Martin Eichinger
2nd Place (Traditional)
Fay Biegun
BIO
A solitary child, Fay Biegun was very much a loner who used her time escaping into her own world and her work. She developed her imagination and her artistic skills at a very early age. With an active and colorful imagination, she created in her mind a total world with clothes of her own design, homes carved into the walls of mountains, home furnishings for these homes, city centers, unusual recipes and stories vivid and comprehensive enough to fill a grand novel.
Family members were involved in the arts and taught her the value of aesthetic and technical excellence and the importance of persistence and hard work.
Biegun received her BFA in painting and graphic art from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. She also studied sculpture under Jacques Lipchitz in Pietrasanta,Italy, and has a degree from Parsons School of Design, in New York City, in fashion design.
Following her graduation from Parsons, she worked on Seventh Avenue in New York City at Anne Klein Studio and other major fashion houses as a clothing designer and designer of home furnishings.
The fluctuations in her life caused by major changes are reflected in a variety of expression in her fine art work. At various times she has been influenced by artists such as Alice Neel, David Hockney, Al Held, assume vivid astro focus, and readings in anthropology and myth, literature, fashion, and the cinema.
Biegun is a member of the National Association of Women Artists, the Artist’s Collaborative of Hyde Park, the Woodstock Artists Association.
STATEMENT
My art has always been an expression of how I fit into the world. I often express a hopeful sentiment wherein I use archetypes to show how there are similarities between all cultures and one only has to look beyond the outer appearance of a story or myth to see that the underlying meanings are a universal one.
I use a variety of styles, rather than concentrating on one, to best express the changes and fluctuations in my life and develop the tone I need to manifest these. I will paint a naturalistic subject for a while and then something will happen in my life and I will feel the need to explore another topic. It is often about political analysis or self- analysis or I can be motivated by the simple joy of creating.
Children are fascinating to watch. Most haven’t added layers of psychological experiences to cover up their innocence. I have captured children posing and children caught off guard. I try to show theirn true nature and how each one is charming or sulky or even defiant.
To wee more of Fay’s work, please visit her website.
2nd Place
(Digital & Photography)
Peter C. Britton
Artist Statement
Life is an interesting experience that is shaped by the intellect of people. This experience with others allow for the sparking of ideas that escape words but have the ability to be re-created in the form of visual art. All of my works are inspirations of experiences, concepts and ideas. It’s the exploration of perspective and what ifs. Some are soft on the imagination while others maybe uncomfortably hard. My expression through art is the window to my perspective and the perspective that others have shared with me.
Bio
Peter C Britton is an Assistant Professor at Missouri Western State University (MWSU) in the Department of Art. He teaches Game Design and Digital Animation. Prior to MWSU he taught Computer Animation and Game Art Design at Digital Media Arts College and the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. He has worked on real-time visualization for real estate using Unity and Unreal gaming engines. In addition to interactive and non-interactive media, he has developed and design game controller add-ons for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One gaming systems.
For more information on Peter and his work, please email him directly.
2nd Place
(3 Dimensional)
Douglas Aja
Douglas Aja has been sculpting African wildlife since the late 1990s. Since that time he donates a portion of the sales proceeds to various conservation organizations as well as donates sculptures for fund raising events. Though he sculpts a variety of species, he specializes in the African elephant. Many elephants are known individuals from Amboseli National Park in Kenya. He has been a longtime supporter of Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE), ElephantVoices and The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT). Recently he has begun supporting Action for Cheetahs in Kenya (ACK) and Laikipia Wildlife Forum (LWF). Aja’s bronze sculptures are in the private collections of elephant researchers Cynthia Moss and Joyce Poole, wildlife cinematographer Martyn Colbeck, the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, the Bennington Center for the Arts and NBA great and Basketball Hall of Famer Sam Jones.
Traveling to Africa for the first time in 1978, Doug took part in a wilderness education program with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). There he studied wilderness and mountaineering skills, outdoor leadership, minimum impact camping and Kenya’s culture. He continues to visit East Africa regularly to take photos, gather reference material and to further his knowledge and understanding of his subjects. He often backpacks on Mount Kenya, through Maasailand and has climbed Kilimanjaro.
For more information about Douglas’s work, please visit his website.
3rd Place (Traditional)
John Jaster
John works with heavy body acrylics on fairly large canvases with a lot of detail and bold colors. He calls his style ‘realistic impressions’ because, while the overall feel of the work is definitely realism, he offsets the detail with impressionistic splashes of color. Instead of smooth blending, he likes to use puzzle pieces of color to emphasize the complex relationship of light and shadow over form. John’s inspiration comes from the hidden beauty in ordinary objects.
To see more of John’s work please visit his website.
3rd Place
(Digital & Photography)
Sheri Emerson
Sheri has been a photographer her entire life, from a child snapping pictures with her 110 camera, to her first SLR, and finally into the digital world. She also has been an artist her entire life, winning her first art competition at the grand old age of five. In the past few years, she has intensively studied both Photoshop and Lightroom to learn how to enhance her photography and turn it into digital art. She has been published in “Living the Photo Artistic Life” magazine, “Photoshop Creative UK” magazine, “Conceptual Images” magazine, “A5 Magazine”, “MagazineGSPDigital”, and “Fine Eye Magazine” for fine art photography. She was recently named a finalist in the Photographer’s Forum 38th Annual Spring Photography Competition and was one of 40 artists selected to participate in a year-long exhibition celebrating ACLU of Arizona’s 60th Anniversary. She has placed in the top ten in eight Light, Space and Time competitions, has received several “Best in Show” awards, placed second in the SINWP “Creatures Great and Small” competition and earned a Gold Award in their member competitions, has earned a Best in Show and won a Solo Artist Showcase on FusionArt, and has been exhibited at galleries in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Greece. Sheri splits her time between Arizona and Labrador, Canada, and is dedicating herself to pushing her photography and digital art even further.
Her work is currently being sold on the curated ArtBoja website, and can be seen at www.sheriemersonphotography.com. Her regular website is www.sheriemerson.com.
3rd Place
(3-Dimensional)
Cecily Fazekas
How Cecily came to sculpt the divinely imperfect and paint the Divine Feminine is as interesting as the pieces themselves. She was in love with an unavailable man.
Her heart split open and the process was so excruciating that she had to literally “get it out.” So she began sculpting herself in agony – body limp with despair, crumpled in fetal position, rising in ecstasy, or stretched out with limbs and expressions longing for redemption. And there in the earthen clumps of grief lay the seeds of new life.
When Cecily began to crave color and a paintbrush, she simply went to the hardware store and purchased some house paint and masonite. Never formally trained as an artist yet completely enamored with color and line, she began using spontaneous swipes to celebrate, if not exaggerate, the female form, particularly the lines of the hips, breasts, jaw, and collarbone. The result is a poetic series of paintings pregnant with vulnerability, sensitivity, and sensuality- projected aspects of herself that she denied for too long. “The female body is itself art. I accentuate the curves and shapes because to me femininity is synonymous with authentic spiritual power, both receptive and open.”
Her most recent endeavor is a collage-on-mannequin series where she has pushed her edge yet again. Her inborn inclination to sift through and integrate the layers of her own life story, is no doubt part of what drives her to spend hours and days gluing together these collective stories; juxtaposing the sorrow with the hope, guilt with pleasure, shame with love.
Entrancing and unique, each mannequin is a beautiful and sometimes disturbing study of a subject certain to ignite something in the viewer.
To see more of Cecily’s work, please visit her website.
4th Place (Traditional)
Ashley Gardner
I am investigating the layered generational and familial dynamism through the metaphorical theme of self-reflection. In order to cultivate this dynamism, the photo references are comprised of fleeting moments inside subdued interior spaces, outside in familiar landscapes and intuitive marks expressing unknown movements in time. In the African American community, family is a crucial component of building and sustaining tradition and culture, especially through intergenerational relationships. Delving deep into these dynamics the composition of my paintings have interwoven scenes of my own experiences with family members who have passed and are still present.
To see more of Ashley’s work, please visit her website.
4th Place
(Digital & Photography)
Margaret Kalms
Margaret Kalms Bio
Margaret studied photography at Canberra Institute of Technology and ecology at University of Canberra. Ecology gave her skills in GIS (Geographic Information Systems). She obtained jobs making maps on computers where every mark, line and colour had specific meanings. Learning Photoshop revived Margaret’s love of photography and creativity. She learnt the basics from photography magazines and books, then expanded her skills from online courses. Much of Margaret’s photography is layered and blended creating works of art often quite different from the original photograph. Margaret’s first solo exhibition, Period Piece, articulated what being a woman felt like. Then Margaret heard about endometriosis and was shocked by the severity of this nasty disease. In compassion she pledged to use her art to raise awareness of endometriosis. She is inspired by Jesus who healed a bleeding woman. Margaret sells her photo art and has regularly received awards in competitions. Her photo art has been used in online articles, function presentations and is regularly published in “Artists Down Under” magazine. Margaret is a member of; Kaizen group of artists, Marsden Art Group, Belconnen Artist’s Network and PhotoAccess. She explores general art themes by participating in group exhibitions in Australia and internationally online (between 4-7 times a year). These challenge Margaret to stretch her skills and explore diverse art subjects. Margaret has exhibited in international shows; SeeMe at The Louvre in Paris, “Our Bodies, Our Blood” in Canada and recently “Figurative” Light, Space and Time online and “The Healing Power of Art” hosted by Manhattan Arts, New York. Margaret has hosted solo exhibitions in Canberra, Sydney and London. She has presented talks illustrated with her imagery with Endometriosis UK and in Vancouver her “Faces of Endometriosis” collection was shown at the opening of 13th World Congress on Endometriosis. Margaret recently published (2019) a small book of her images together with some information about endometriosis, ‘Life with Endometriosis’.
Margaret Kalms Artist Statement My current art project, ‘Life with Endometriosis’, affirms women with endometriosis by acknowledging their experiences and placing their experiences in a wider context. I affirm the women by listening and taking their concerns seriously. My art turns hidden feelings into clear visual messages. My art can aid in communicating with medical professionals and family by providing images of hidden symptoms such as pain and excessive bleeding. My art can say things that are awkward to say in words, thus opening up difficult discussions. My art connects with people who wouldn’t normally hear about endometriosis. I photograph women with endometriosis, not paid models taking a pose. I encourage the women to express themselves, a kind of acting out how they feel. This gives my photos a genuine, powerful, honesty. I overlay other images of objects and symbols inspired by what the women have said to me about endometriosis. My images show how endometriosis feels. They are visual screams!
See images: https://www.endowomanart.com/life-with-endometriosis.
4th Place
(3-Dimensional)
Irene Sirko
Irene’s sculpture plays a very important part in her life. She always needed to express her artistic feelings. For many years, she had searched to find the right medium for 3-dimensional work. From the very first time she placed her hands-on stone to sculpt, she was captivated. The freedom that comes with creating what she feels is enlightening and a perfect outlet for her creativity. Though Irene sculpted exclusively by hand for many years, she now includes the use of power tools. This enables her to expand how she sculpts and thereby create more interesting sculptures. Her art training includes Toronto School of Art, Wilfrid Laurier University, Haliburton School of Arts and private studies. She continuously experiences other media to expand her basis for creativity. Irene experiences an indescribable freedom when she sculpts. It is this freedom that provides her motivation. Focusing on the abstract also ensures that the freedom continues. When sculpting, Irene takes into account the visual impact of the stone, the planes that exist and the potential movement that can be created. She is constantly feeling the curves and lines of the sculpture. The continuous flow of the work is critical. Her style is to create sculptures that are simple, diverse and organic in nature. Overall, Irene would like others to appreciate stone as a medium, sculpture as an art form and abstract as an open-ended way of having new perspectives, whatever that may be.
To learn more about Irene’s work, please visit her website.
5th Place (Traditional)
Duane Brown
An American artist from Northern California, I paint primarily in oil, but will occasionally move to watercolor, pastel, or anything that gets the desired effect. Going way back, my paintings would lean more toward photo-realism, but have learned over the years to take more chances with color and form, which has made my process more relaxed. My past work has been primarily by commission, with an occasional physical gallery showing, but working in the trades as a sub-contractor and raising a family has limited my time to painting whenever time allows.
I enjoy more freedom now with creating a painting as a scene, taken from multiple sources.
To see more of Duanes’ work, please visit his website.
5th Place
(Digital & Photography)
Barry Farley
Artist Statement:
Adventures in Abstract & Figurative Expressionism: Since Barry first gazed upon the works of Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon, and Edvard Munch, Abstract & Figurative Expressionism has very deeply influenced his imaginative aesthetic. Prior to beginning his artistic journey, Barry spent countless hours studying and analyzing Abstract & Figurative art’s greatest champions. Since then, he has developed his own digital styles that stem from his most influential artistic mentors and from the echoes of his innermost spiritual and emotional experiences that he has endured throughout life. He has also learned to create his art using only his eyes, due to the crippling effects of ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, with the aid of a tobiidynavox Eye Gaze computer.
Taking a New Direction with His Work:
Since beginning his creative quest in 2016, Barry has ruthlessly battled and decimated many of his most vicious personal demons through the power of art. Now with the new year well underway, he has seized the opportunity to expand his horizons through the use of intense color, immersive black & white design, new intuitive techniques, exciting new subjects, and bold concepts. With that being said, Barry strives to captivate the thoughts and capture the imagination of all who sees his work.
To visit Barry’s Abstract & Figurative Expressionist Galleries, go to: www.artmajeur.com/en/barryfarley/artworks/galleries.
5th Place
(3-Dimensional)
Suzanne Getz
Suzanne Getz is best known for her nature inspired figurative and abstract sculptures made from clay, glazes, paint and found objects. Suzanne grew up in the states and internationally, travelling extensively with her family, exposed to both art and nature which inspired her throughout her art career.
From her first creative experiences of putting waxy color to paper and learning oil painting from her artist mother to majoring in art at various universities including The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, DC and the University of California at San Diego, studying drawing, painting, printmaking, design and sculpture she discovered the textural experience of working with clay as her most profound medium. Her studies at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design focused on blending the genres of the new modern funk art of the 1960’s and 1970’s, traditional Japonese pottery and innovative glazing techniques. Inspired by her instructors Hara, William Lombardo and Robert Graham, Suzanne was chosen as lab assistant for several years where she mixed clay and glazes, built and fired ceramic kilns providing her with a strong foundation of ceramic and glazing skills. Through her education Suzanne expanded her creative artistic experiences to include performance art where nature based art bridged the boundary between performance art and fine art in shows around Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Suzanne’s work transcends from the figurative nature of the human form to the abstract essence of nature. Her dual career as a massage therapist provided a keen sense for the human body which shows through her work as a figurative sculptor of the human body as well as her study of handbuilding techniques, intensive workshops with Maria Martinez, a Tewa Indian of New Mexico’s San Ildefonso Pueblo, and well known figurative sculptors Patti Warashino, Susannah Zucker and most recently, Adrian Arleo.
Suzanne’s field of work today has not only been inspired and driven by her experiences of her youth, her sense of place, connection to nature, and education but also her exposure to other artists. Major influences through out her career include Georgia O’Keefe for the light, joy and sensual power of her work. Judy Chicago for her courage to rebel against the male dominated art scene in the 60’s and redress women’s traditional role in the visual arts. Jenny Orchard for her individualized and organic figures, bright and full of imagination, and California funk artist Robert Arneson for his humorous and colorful ceramic heads and Peter Volkos for being a strong abstract expressionist in clay.
Suzanne has served as President of the Willamette Ceramic Guild for two years and is presently serving on the Exhibition Committee at The Art’s Center in Corvallis Oregon. Suzanne has been in shows at The Art’s Center, Linn Benton Community College, Oregon State University, Footwise Window Gallery and the Guistino Gallery and was invited to show in the Philomath Open Studio show in Oregon in 2018.
To learn more about Suzanne and her work, please email her directly.