Honorable Mention
(Digital & Photography)
Esther Byrt

Esther fell in love with art as soon as she was able to hold a crayon. As a child she whiled away many hours colouring or trying to draw comic book characters. She experimented with sketching in various mediums and later ventured into oil, acrylic and watercolour painting. Ah, but when she discovered digital art she finally found the niche she loves. Now she has the means to use her passion for photography and art together and the techniques to combine them into her vision.

To inquire about this award winning piece or to view more of Esther’s work, please visit her website.

Honorable Mention
(3-Dimensional)
Tony Gangitano

Tony received a Bachelors of Landscape Architecture from the University of Georgia and returned to work in New York City. He moved to San Diego CA to study art.

Independent study/travel in many countries led Tony to Italy, where he lived and worked as a sculptor for two years. He interned in ceramic and bronze with sculptor Alberto Ricci in Rome, then did internships and independent study of stone carving at Studio Sem and bronze casting at Tommasi Foundry, both in Pietra Santa, Italy.

Upon returning to California, he pursued a Masters of Fine Art at San Diego State University. There the love of carving stone and casting bronze took a back seat to less traditional materials, which he incorporated into more conceptual sculptures and site-specific installations.

Tony’s work was exhibited in group shows, two-person shows, and featured artist shows until the year 2000, when he took a hiatus from sculpture and focused on environmental landscape architecture design projects. In 2015, he re-emerged as a well-seasoned, creative, high energy, conceptually oriented mixed media sculptor. His current work is fresh and exciting, incorporating thoughtful concepts and new materials.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Fine Art is my first language. I am fortunate to have been raised by artists and creative craftsmen, and a mother who excused my inherent eccentric behavior by saying in a Brooklyn accent, “Its ok… He’s an Artist.”

My work is about the integration of aesthetic form and emotional and intellectual content. The evolution of my art has progressed on confluent paths. Traditional figurative style merged with the abstract, which then incorporated conceptual mixed-media elements. My current emphasis is abstract figurative in stone and bronze, incorporating objects and materials that represent aspects of the human condition. I use archetypal images that communicate the essential commonalities of the human experience. These images, combined with the juxtaposition and dialogue between figures, shapes, and materials, provoke visual, visceral, and intellectual interaction with the viewer.

To see more of Tony’s work, please email him directly.

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Aaron Burks

The world of the sailor is one of challenge, pride, exoticism, adversity and even tragedy. My work seeks to express these traits on both large scale and personal terms, telling these visual “sea stories” to a wide audience. I draw my subject inspiration from my own experiences as a sailor as well as from those who continue to sail in warships. I create this work because I feel that the Sea has made me who I am today. In essence, it has become a part of me. Like many things people fall in love with, the Sea can be both beautiful and majestic, or cruel and unmerciful. While much of my work may bring a sense of familiarity to former or current sailors, I hope to bring the story to the layman as well. Using items and arts familiar to a life at sea as devices to tell the story, I am immersing the viewer in the world of the sailor. Size is also a factor when conveying the story, whether large and overwhelming to small, inviting the viewer to step in closer, I make these decisions based on the story being told. Many of the frames are hand built by me. This makes not just the work itself personal, but the surrounding window to the view personal as well. Some of the work here has led to ideas for my next projects, exploring more in depth a particular subject that I dealt with while aboard ship, but still has great and sometimes tragic effects on sailors today. In this I hope to hash out my thoughts on my own time at sea while staying connected with those still on the ocean, telling their story to you. Ultimately, I want these works to be inspiring to those who have not spent time at sea, as well as bring a renewed sense of pride to those who have.

To see more of Aaron’s work, please visit his website.

Honorable Mention
(3-Dimensional)
Marlene Siff

Marlene Siff was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. She was an art honor student at the eponymous High School of Music and Art (now LaGuardia High School of Music, Art and Performing Arts located near Lincoln Center). She graduated from Hunter College with a B.A. degree, majoring in Fine Arts and was elected to Kappa Pi, the Honorary Arts Society.

Marlene’s work has been exhibited in museums, galleries and universities throughout the U.S. and abroad. Selected exhibitions include Scope Art Miami, Katonah Museum of Art, Embraer Executive Jets Showroom, Eastern Kentucky University, Walsh Art Gallery at Fairfield University, National Institutes of Health, Bergdorf Goodman, Columbia/Barnard University, Walter Wickiser Gallery, University of Texas, Calvin Charles Gallery, Premium Lounge of American Airlines at Miami International Airport, Red Dot Art Fair, Art Basel Miami, Times Square Billboard Premiere Event, The New Britain Museum of American Art, Attleboro Arts Museum, Mattatuck Museum, and The Aldrich Museum.

Marlene’s assemblage, Fallen Heroes Afghanistan, is on exhibition in Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes’ office at the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. Her painting Peace/War is part of the permanent collection of the B’Nai Brith Klutznick National Jewish Museum in Washington DC and her work on paper Pluie et Soleil is on permanent exhibition in the Brian C. Nevin Welcome Center at Cornell University. Marlene’s painting Staccato was recently placed on exhibition in the corporate lobby of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

In 2016, Marlene was featured in an episode of Creative Women Today, on CT Cablevision, and selected to appear in Years In The Making, a documentary film by Martin West. Since 2014 Marlene has been juried into 62 competitions throughout the United States and has won 19 awards. She currently lives in Westport, CT and works in her home-based studio.

Artist Statement

I am concerned with communicating a sense of harmony, balance, order and spirituality. We are all confronted on a daily basis with the fragmentation of our non-linear lives, trying, as in a puzzle, to make the pieces fit together to make sense of it all.

My paintings, works on paper, and sculpture depict imagery of personal events and psychological issues. They are expressed through geometric shapes, color, light, space, texture, edges and movement each interplaying with one another engaging the viewer to participate.

I am presently working on a new body of work related to music. I studied the piano for many years as a child and always listen to music when I work. The rhythm, structure and sounds influence the shapes, color, light, space and texture in my paintings. The multi-dimensionality and multi-layering of my work reference what one must uncover to penetrate the illusions of reality and reach the mystery and essence of the soul.

To see more of Marlene’s work, please visit her website.

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Anna Bulka

Anna Bulka was born in Poland, where she graduated from the Artistic Faculty (painting). Since 2015, she has been running her artistic atelier in England, where besides painting she practices also photography. The distinguishing features of the artist’s works are diversity of forms, wide range of colours and combination of various kinds of painting techniques. She specialises in portrait and abstract painting as well as in bas-relief combined with pictures. In her work, she likes using fluorescent, acrylic paints heavy textured mixed media.

To see more of Anna’s work, please visit her website.

Honorable Mention
(3-Dimensional)
Aiden Dale

Statement: It’s important to me to focus my creative energy on feeling grateful and seeing the good and beauty in the world. I find people and nature endlessly inspiring … and heart wrenchingly exquisite. I distill down the stunning ornate complexity of a moment into something that can live on through art. Whether the perfect curve of a smiling cheek or a windswept branch, wrinkles in a face that tell the story of every smile and frown, the love or skepticism in a wayward glance, or even the beauty of a rogue insect. To me, there is unfathomable beauty presented to us in every moment as long as we can stay open. Sometimes, the deepest heartbreak shows the clearest love. I don’t simply want to create a beautiful object, but rather a complete organism that is alive and breathing that facilitates an experience with the viewer. Perhaps a feeling of wonder, or a moment of respite that speaks to something deeper, something undeniably true.

Bio: As a boy, I could often be found in the woods behind my house playing in the creek. I would get lost in miniature worlds my imagination created in mossy banks, catching crayfish and marveling at how their seemingly rigid armored bodies could move so gracefully through their environment. And I was always making things. I built forts, carved sticks, made presents for all the people I loved. I developed a deep connection to wood, learning its grain patterns and how to form it with hand tools. I learned drawing, copper smithing, clay sculpture and much more.

This led me to pursue a higher education in art at Hampshire College where I focused on metal sculpture, woodworking, bookbinding, printmaking, portrait art and jewelry. Now I am working full time as an artist in Durham, N.C.

To see more of Aiden’s work please visit his website.

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Tubbesing

Tubbesing’s paintings and animations tend to be representational – fleeting glances through windows, around corners, or over hills onto otherwise unseen worlds. Onlookers have labeled these worlds somber, ominous, low-brow, cartoony, weird. Who are we to argue?

Takeaway thought: Creating art is a perilous enterprise, a trek through unmapped territory on a moonless night. It seems the only thing more difficult is not creating art.

To see more of Tubbesing’s work, please email him directly.

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Michael J. Connor

Michael Connor is an American artist best known for his abstract painting projects. His work examines the relationship between form and fluidity.

Born in Minneapolis, Michael briefly attended the Minneapolis School of Art before moving to California where he worked as a Creative Director in the Silicon Valley advertising industry. Following a near-death experience, his body of work took on a lucid form of storytelling. His non-linear narratives illustrate his experience navigating what he candidly describes as “going somewhere else.”

To see more of Michael’s work, please visit his website.

Honorable Mention
(Digital & Photography)
Nicholas Kozis

My interest in art and animation began during my final year as an undergraduate Fine Arts major at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. There I was influenced by the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky. His compositions and theory provided the inspiration to incorporate movement and color in my paintings. Upon graduation, I was accepted to the graduate program in Experimental Animation at the California Institute of the Arts. It was there that I met animation pioneer, Professor Jules Engel. Under his mentorship, I was encouraged to look outside commercial animation and explore other forms of art (dance, fine art, sculpture), which I then incorporated into filmmaking. Under his wing, I was exposed to the many experiential animators and artists who have greatly impacted the creation of my independent film.

To see more of Nicholas’ work, please visit his website.

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Chengyi Lu

Chengyi is a Canada based emerging Chinese artist. He graduated from OCAD University in 2016 and had been painting since the age of 6. For the last few years, he has focused on realism and abstraction mixed paintings.

To see more of Chengyi’s work please email him directly.

Honorable Mention
(Digital & Photography)
Meghan E. Jones

Women, Work, and Identity

Combing creative artistic expression with integrity deeply rooted in my background of photojournalism, I have had the pleasure of photographing women whose light shines bright throughout their work. From musicians to stay-at-home moms to burlesque dancers, they may all have vastly different occupations, but the common thread that pulls them together is their passion. The following photographs focus on Sasha: a cabaret performer, emcee extraordinaire, and passionate social justice advocate. Through these photographs we get a literal backstage glimpse into Sasha’s work of a self described, “Fancy Lady for Hire”.

To see more of Meghan’s work, please visit her website.

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Joseph Bounds

Bounds’s paintings speak through the language of light and the body, conveying themes of introspection, healing, solitude, and inner strength. His work focusses primarily on the figure, eliminating environments in favor of a black, womb-like, space in which the body is suspended and illuminated. Within their solitary spaces- just as the body of a dancer on stage expresses through movement- his figures express through pose. His work liberates the figures from direct narrative; dismisses the notion of character and story; and focusses instead on an indirect narrative of the inner emotions of rather ambiguous individuals, evoked by physical postures, implied bodily motions, the ambiance of the light as the setting, and the interaction of colors that occur to the eye only in the physical presence of carefully layered paint. By modulating degrees of opacity and color temperature between layers of paint, he creates a complex surface that speaks a deep and quiet language inspired by the subtle language of light and its transformations across human skin.

Joseph Bounds is a 25 year old artist currently living and working in North Carolina. He earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

To see more of Joseph’s work please visit his website.

Honorable Mention
(Digital & Photography)
Byeong Rok Lee

Byeong is a Korea based photographer. For many years he worked in a factory and pursued photography only as a hobby.  In 2015 he began exploring it more passionately.

To see more of Byeong’s work, please visit his website.

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Candace Cima

My artistic style is simply to show a scene that can create a story in the viewers mind. When looking at my art no matter what the subject I want the viewer to see a story in their imagination. What the subject meant to me is not the important thing it is that I have painted an image that speaks to the viewers and creates their own story. The ethereal mix of color and texture that is created by watercolors is fascinating to me. Every time water and color meets paper magic happens. And every time magic happens a story is told.

To see more of Candace’s work please visit her website.