The Artist Space Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the third Botanicals online Art Exhibition. Along with the selected artists, the jury selected award winners in the following art categories: painting, photography and sculpture. The show displayed a variety of artistic styles and mediums: acrylic, pastel, graphite, sratchboard, photography, colored pencil, oil on panel, watercolor, collage. Out of all submissions received 78 artworks were selected to be included in the exhibition.
Best of Show
Pamela Clements
Short Biography and Statement
I love walking the woods, urban pathways, and gardens searching for a glimpse of nature consisting of a little something extraordinary, what I call ‘a purple leaf’ or inspiration, for my natural still life colored pencil artworks. I am fascinated by natural objects composed by nature, time, and conditions that reveal this uniquely beautiful but seldom noticed natural world. The aesthetic beauty of leaves, diverse in types, shapes and colors, combined with elements of earth, water and stone, are my purple leaf or inspiration guiding my artistic journey to discover and share my vision of nature's serenity. Frank Lloyd Wright said it best: “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” While the foliage of woodland trees keeps me returning to the natural world, it’s the beautiful organic lines, the rich earth colors, the dramatic lighting, and the interesting textures that keep me there. I love to hear the sound of leaves rustling in the wind, the smell of rich moist soil, and an overall feeling of tranquility while walking through the woods. Nature does not stand still but I strive to capture the special moments of beauty, of absolute wonder, and serenity of nature in my still life artworks.
Painting Prize
Carina Imbrogno
Short Biography and Statement
I’m a self taught disabled award winning artist and illustrator and now an inspirational artist who has defeated death many times. I was born with a rare genetic disorder called EDS Syndrome and Marfanoid Habitus which caused my spine to collapse I’m truly a walking miracle. I have 26 screws and two rod’s holding my spine. I also have severe learning disabilities and memory problems. I began my art in 2015 at the age of 40 after once again being near death. I discovered the artist Akiane Kramarik’s life and art work. Akiane Kramarik is a child prodigy who painted the image of Jesus at the age of eight titled the Prince of Peace. Akiane started drawing and painting at the age of four. When I first saw the Jesus, the artist in me woke up and since then I have created over 150 works of art. I enjoy depicting people, children, pets, wildlife, landscapes, nature, still lives and botanicals. My inability to ever have children of my own draws me to depict them. I enjoy depicting the beauty of nature and everything in it. I don’t enjoy depicting all the trauma I went through. I feel we have enough horror in the world. I began exhibiting my art work in local gallery in 2017 and in September on 2021 I began exhibiting my art online. I have received 371 awards so far. My work has also been featured in 16 magazines. I recently started teaching myself how to paint in acrylics. I photographed a bouquet of roses that were sent to Akiane Kramarik at the inauguration of her gallery in 2023. While I painted these roses I came off of a cocktail of medications that caused me two pulmonary embolism and I feel as I miraculously healed.
Sculpture Prize
Michele Brody
Short Biography and Statement
Michele Brody earned an MFA in Fibers and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994, marking the beginning of a 30-year career as an independent installation artist. Grants and artist residencies awarded by respected institutions such as NYFA, NYSCA, LMCC, Pollock/Krasner Foundation, Bronx Council on the Arts, Skowhegan, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Wave Hill allowed her to maintain a full-time creative practice as a mixed-media environmental artist outside of traditional gallery markets. Michele has created commissioned installations in France, Costa Rica, Germany, and Taiwan alongside national shows in Chicago, Indiana, Arizona, and Vermont. Collaborations with NYC exhibition venues showcasing her work include LES Tenement Museum, Hudson Guild, Bronx Museum, NY Botanical Gardens, and the artist-run spaces of JVS Project Space and AAA3A. The materiality of her work explores a nuanced understanding of environmental flux due to natural entropy and human-made climate change. At its core, her focus is on crafting sustainable site-generated environmental installations that illuminate the subtle beauty of the everyday while grappling with the challenges of globalization, over-development and more extreme weather events. Her practice has developed from a long exploration into how we navigate change and the constant flux of life. She is intrigued by creating a controlled environment where her work organically develops and changes over time, as a metaphor for the continuous entropy surrounding us. Through a laborious process of regenerating local and non-native natural detritus into paper pulp, she imbues her prominent material of handmade paper with historical and biological connections to the porous borders of interspecies relationships. She seeks to evoke a visceral social encounter within a shared space, commenting on the delicate relationship between nature and humanity within the built environment.
Photography Prize
Brad Rhodes
Short Biography and Statement
Brad Rhodes (b. 1972) is a visual designer and mostly self-taught photographer, driven by curiosity—about people, places, things and the fleeting moments that define them. His photographic work moves between urban and natural spaces, seeking poetry in the ordinary. Whether capturing stark geometry or focused detail, his images aim to provoke reflection, inviting viewers to pause and reconsider the familiar through a different lens.
Winners