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Winners Announced
at 2003 Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region Exhibition
Opening
Contact: Karl Luntta (518) 437-4980
ALBANY, N.Y.
(July 10, 2003) -- The University Art Museum today announced
the winners of the 2003 Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region
Juried Exhibition. The exhibit, founded in 1936, is one
of the longest running consecutive regional art exhibits
in the nation and remains the benchmark exhibition for
the finest contemporary artists working within a 100-mile
radius of the Capital Region.
The exhibit's
Swyer Companies Best in Show honor was awarded to UAlbany
graduate student
Christopher Cassidy for his installation From Albany
to the Adirondacks,
inspired by a found library filing cabinet that once classified microfiche
of newspaper archives. To create the installation, Cassidy
drew survey line between
his studio and a location on Snowy Mountain in the Adirondacks. He then divided
the 77-mile span into 15 equidistant points, which correspond to the number
of sections inside of the cabinet. Cassidy visited each
location using a compass
and topographical map to find the precise spot, and documented each trip by
taking photographs, removing from the spot a sample of
its dirt, plants, and seed. He
then organized the material into the filing cabinet, which he modified to create
a self-contained environment to sustain the organic information.
Other awards
include the Picotte Companies Juror�s Award to JoAnn
Axford for Botanical Improvisation II; the Times Union
Juror�s
Award to Kenneth Ragsdale
for digital prints of fabricated paper titled Farmyard I, II, III, IV; the
Friends of Mayor Jennings Juror�s Award to Michael Oatman for The Birds,
a collage on
paper mounted on a welded steel frame; and Austin & Co, Inc Juror�s Award
for sculptures in chocolate, The Twelve Realms of Purity, by Jenny McShan.
A full list of award winners can be found at www.albany.edu/museum/home.html.
This
year�s juror is Maura Heffner, the newly appointed director of Exhibitions
and Programs at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut.
She is a former assistant curator from the Whitney Museum of American Art
where she held numerous positions, including coordinator of the 2000 Biennial
Exhibition
and project director of Mies in America. Ms. Heffner also curated Once
Upon a Time: Fiction and Fantasy in Contemporary Art, recently
on view at the
New York
State Museum. Past jurors have come from the ranks of renowned artists,
museum curators and writers, including artist Edward Hopper
(1936), poet John Yau
(1987), Dan Cameron, a curator (1997), and artist Xu Bing (2000).
"I was
able to review an enormous amount of work -- over 1,000
slides from over 220 artists -- being produced in this
region by its artists," Heffner
said. "It is evident that there is a very high level of artistic
production and a thriving community that continually seeks higher standards
for its work."
Heffner�s
final juried selection from more than 225 entries includes
35 works by 17 artists. Selections include work in a
variety of media
and
reflect
the expansive range of issues and subject matter that contemporary
artists are
dealing with both in the Capital Region and in the larger art world.
The
17 Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region for 2003 are JoAnn
Axford (Glenmont, New York); Justin Baker (Albany, New
York); Josephine Bloodgood
(New Paltz,
New York); Jane Bloodgood-Abrams, (Kingston, New York); David Brickman
(Albany, New
York); Christopher Cassidy (Albany, New York); Jeanette Fintz (Surprise,
New York); Louanne Genet Getty (New Hartford, New York); Allison
Hunter (Albany, New York); Carolou Kristofik (Middleburgh,
New York); David
E. Levine, (Red
Hook, New York); Harold Lohner (Albany, New York); Jenny McShan (Latham,
New
York);
Chris Moran (Scotia, New York); Michael Oatman (Troy, New York);
Kenneth Ragsdale (Albany, New York); and Marie Triller
(Albany, New York).
The 35 works
will be displayed in the University Art Museum, designed
by Edward Durrell Stone
and a prime example of 20th century late
Modernist architecture, through November 1, 2003.
Museum summer
hours are Tues.--Sat., 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. For more information,
call (518) 442-4035 or visit www.albany.edu/museum. |
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