Juried show offers a little bit of everything

Friday, June 27, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by DICKSON MERCER The 14th annual juried show continues at Mattawoman Creek Art Center through July 13. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Of course, plenty of pieces do not fit in either category. Part of this juried show’s appeal, like most of its kind, is that it creates a collection of work from artists whose abilities and aspirations are as far ranging as their senses of realism and abstraction or their ideas of good, bad, tame and risqué. There is everything from photography to paintings, sculptures, etchings and drawings.

Juror Joel T. Keener, an assistant professor of art at Cheyney University in Pennsylvania, chose 78 pieces from more than 100 submissions. Awards were given for first, second and third places. There were also five honorable mentions.

Gene McCandless’ acrylic ‘‘Sunset in the Smokey Mountains” took top prize. The layered landscape — done in bright, dramatic colors — mixes both realism and abstraction. McCandless also contributed one of the juried show’s odd and playful sculptures, ‘‘Looking for the Sun,” which is made of gourd, metal and concrete.

Mary Sokol’s ‘‘Creation of the Horse,” a dream-like mixed media piece on plexiglass, in which you must look closely to see the profile of a horse, took second place. Among the more unique submissions, it might also be noted for what would seem its bargain selling price of $80.

Third place was Patrick Holmes’ ‘‘Shaman’s Transformation” on soapstone. Two artists who received honorable mentions, Harriet Lawler and Nancy Aldrich-Wolf, who submitted ‘‘Fossil,” a detailed etching, both use the presses at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria. Lawler’s piece, the monotype⁄chine colle, ‘‘Running Wild,” included some wild grasses.

In the end, how do you really compare a batik on canvas to a traditional oil portrait? It might come down to the juror’s personal taste or a thematic vision he or she develops early on for assembling a show.

The fun can begin once the official judging is over: Visitors can take the winding road to the gallery and make choices of their own.