Juror: Jim Zingarelli   (B.F.A. Pratt Institute, M.A. Trintiy College, Ct., Nicoli Botteghe Artistici di Scultura, Carrara, Italy) is a sculptor and painter who is currently Professor of Art and Art Department Chair at Gordon College, Wenham, MA.  He has also taught sculpture at Gordon College’s Orvieto Semester, Italy as well as The Carving Studio & Sculpture Center in West Rutland Vermont. His work has been exhibited  at Dartmouth College, Yale University, Vorpal Gallery (Soho, N.Y. ), St. Paul’s Cathedral (Boston), the Attleboro Museum, and the Pepper Gallery, Newbury Street, Boston, MA. He lives in Amesbury, Massachusetts with his wife, Katherine.

Juror’s Overall Comments
 
In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh wrote, “A place is nothing, not even space, unless at its heart, a figure stands.” We become those figures as we look (in some way, along with the artist) at the places of solitude, activity, natural configurations, and structural markers represented by these works. Everyplace calls upon our approach, volition to enter, see and reflect. Some of these places will strike a memory of some likened landscape or home or boat from your own experience. Some of these places will challenge your assumptions about perception, color and materials. In each case, however, you will be traveling with a second pair of eyes, those of the artists themselves and therefore, the work will become an entirely new reference point in the dialogue of what can be seen.

Jim Zingarelli

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Mary Alice Arakelian Memorial Award for Best of Show
Artist: Lewis Illingworth
Town: Kensington, NH
Title: “Stratham Fields”*
Media: Oil

Beautifully organized and active planes. Particularly appreciate the indescribable color usage: yellow green grays in the sky, blue ochre-greens in the foreground grasses. Formal horizontal planes have a brushy sequence leading up to the higher horizon line and distance spaces which exist in a diffused light and more vertical play between trees, homes, and hills. Look at the chevron shapes that point from the high left that reengages the eye to the series of trees on the right. A handsome painting.


Institution for Savings Charitable Foundation Award for Oil/Acrylic
Artist: Betsy Lewis
Town: Newton, NH
Title: “Call of the Turtle”
Media: Oil

An intimate place where there is a gathering of lily pads in the pond, a circular landscape that moves from larger foreground leaves to tighter mixes of brushstrokes along the trunks and branches. Lush greens and reflective blues give greater depth to this place of meeting or encounter. Important “Breathing Points” of open space: upper sky area, middle grass, reflected blue. A “full” but not crowded space. A painting that reminds me, a painter’s hand has visited this place.


Newburyport Five Cent Savings Bank Award for Watercolor
Artist: Joanna Hammond
Town: Amesbury, MA
Title: “Shark’s Mouth”
Media: Watercolor

Absolutely fresh in the application and saturation of color and shape. Clear delineation of the brushes, rocks and sea, but not forced or overwrought. I appreciate the concentration of foliage in the foreground while deeper space is more open. We find ourselves looking from a rise and out toward a more distant place, a place we’ve yet to discover. May watercolor always have this kind of clarity.


Newburyport Area Industrial Development Foundation Award for Photography
Artist: Dawn Norris
Town: Boxford, MA
Title: “Lines”
Media: Photography

A clear sense of light, woven textures, rhythms, and surprise twists and knots. You bring us to a place of focus, something we may have missed in our travels through this space. There’s plenty of regularity in the wound cords, but wonderful variations and changed directions. Then we meet the hook (almost a pun, as the artist attempts to “hook” the viewer). And then the hook’s counterpart below it. It’s a photograph that reminds us that the everyday things that surround us are much more than simply their utilitarian selves.


Sam Sargent Award for Excellence in Sculpture/Fine Craft
Artist: Alfred Moskowitz
Town: Newburyport, MA
Title: “Male Head”*
Media: Hydrocal

A sensitive modeling of the head with attention to both volume and surface. Creasing in the face appropriately pulls and pushes at the cheeks, along the lips, and eyes. Excellent proportion and attention to issues of age and race. Patina is kept subtle so to better engage with the overall form and sense of reflection in the face. I am taken by the great care of the sculptor’s hands that are tracked across the entire work


Laura Coombs Hills Award for Excellence in Mixed Media/Printmaking
Artist: Barbara Nachmias-Kedesdy
Town: Newbury, MA
Title: “Spanish Lace”
Media: Printmaking/ Monotype

A dialogue between the broader bolder strokes and the intricacies of more delicate lines, between the sudden downward vertical movement and the even rhythms of the horizontal band at the bottom, between simplicity and complexity. Between the eternal and the terminal. For all of the marks of an engagement with process, the work is complete: but keeps me looking!




Mildred Hartson Award for Excellence in Pastel/Drawing
Artist: Janet MacLeod
Town: Newburyport, MA
Title: “Reflections in a pond”
Media: Pastel

Atmospheric space with a subtle meeting/joining of sea to sky. Strong rusty orange presence with its reflection. Subtle, suggested gestural elements that lighten and enliven the more physical and textural planes (leaves, lily pads). Still, there is a sense of mystery here, something concealed as well as revealed.


Artist Book Award
Artist: Barbara Nachmias-Kedesdy
Town: Newbury, MA
Title: “Hand Made”
Media: Artist Book/ Printmaking

Inventive variations on a theme. Earthiness of color and texture. Hook and hand paradox is intriguing: to catch: grab, take hold of. Lovely book.


Honorable Mention
Artist: Beverly Mitchell
Town: West Newbury, MA
Title: “Allysum and Petunias”
Media: Acrylic











Honorable Mention
Artist: Robin Luciano Beaty
Town: Byfield, MA
Title: “Everything Contained”
Media: Mixed: Ecaustic, yarn, string, copper on birch





Honorable Mention
Honorable Mention $25
Artist: Joyce Ketcham
Town: Newburyport, MA
Title: “Woven fiber and bead necklace with coins”
Media: Fiber Art



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