Juror, Ann Tarantino
Ann is a multimedia artist investigating the impact of human behavior and geography on architecture and natural landscapes. Through drawing, painting, installation and site-specific public art, her work directly engages viewers in a dialogue concerning the nuances of contemporary life in response to space, time, culture, and materiality. Tarantino’s fascination with pattern and information charting renders her work as both literal and conceptual maps. Her work has been exhibited widely in the United States and abroad, with public art installations appearing in various settings including museums and galleries, botanical gardens, and city streets.
Recent exhibitions and projects include commissions for the Pittsburgh International Airport, collaborations with the Borough of Millvale, PA and Pittsburgh’s Office of Public Art; Cloud Countries, a new installation created for the Pittsburgh International Airport; a public-scale painting commissioned by the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority’s DotART program; and a solo exhibition of new paintings with Davis Editions (Phoenix, AZ).
Ann was featured in New American Paintings in 2005 and 2007, and was a 2016-17 recipient of a Fulbright Core Scholar Award for artistic practice in Brazil. She earned an honors degree in Visual Arts from Brown University and her Master of Fine Arts with a concentration in Painting from The Pennsylvania State University.
Show Winner
Erin Welsh
I’ll Leave the Lights On
Juror’s Comments: This joyful, exuberant painting is small in stature but big on layers and dynamic energy. The repeated circular forms create a patina or history of shape and texture, resulting in a piece that speaks to history, memory, and the passage of time.
Awards
2nd Place
You Are Not Your Thoughts, Melinda Curley
Juror’s Comments: This painting has a wonderful material texture that makes viewers want to reach out and touch it. Viewers can feel the energy of the paint application and recurring moments of color and texture.
3rd Place
Space Walk, Michael Pelikan
Juror’s Comments: This piece appealed to me for the mystery created by the textures and value shifts. Are we looking at a lunar landscape, the underside of a pile of leaves, or a close up of human skin? Photography is by nature inherently abstract although frequently we look to it for “truth.” I appreciate the ambiguousness of this image.
Honorable Mention
Bound, Dotty Ford
Juror’s Comments: This small print feels like it could be fabric, a collection of pressed papers from long ago, or an unraveling sweater. Handheld in size, it is mysterious, quiet, and calming.
Honorable Mention
Heaven & Earth, Joe Beddal
Juror’s Comments: This painting is unique in its layering of painting atop painting as well as the use of extruded material through its screen.
Honorable Mention
Ghost Winds & Burning Leaves, Ruth Knowles
Juror’s Comments: This piece feels like a piece of excavated history, pulled out from a sheath of old papers or dug up from the studio floor.
Artists
Rick Avery
Samuel Price
Marcia Tacconi
Carol Bickle
Susan Parsonage
Peter Frantz
Eric Markievich