The Artist Space Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the first Red online Art Exhibition. Along with the selected artists, the jury selected award winners in the following art categories: painting, drawing and photography. The show displayed a variety of artistic styles and mediums: oil, watercolor, acrylic, steeel, collage, resin, photography, digital art, alcohol ink. Out of all submissions received 63 artworks were selected to be included in the exhibition.
Best of Show
Mark kaufman
Short Biography and Statement
I came of age during the 1960s. As a lawyer and citizen I was and am a champion for gender equality. I paint the female figure in sometimes absurd, sometimes haunting locations. Far from creating emotionless family portraits, I blend color and imagery to explore themes of mythology, literature and philosophy and emotion. Here and there I will do a floral or landscapes and faces too. I studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. My work has been shown in Galleries across the nation. I am a signature member of the Baltimore, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia watercolor societies. I choose watercolor as a medium because it is fluid and sometimes serendipitous. I also do woodcut prints and carvings in wood. Thirty years ago, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. In addition to painting, I am highly visible in the community providing support and advocacy for all those who suffer from mental illness. The bipolar helps shape my work, more in some collections than in others.
Painting Prize
Cher Pruys
Short Biography and Statement
Cher Pruys, ASAA SCA, IGOR, AAPL, CSAA, AMS, LMS, OSA, MAA, CFA, NOAPS, PSOA, AWA., AAOA. I am a self taught artists working in water based medium, mainly acrylic, but also at times gouache and water-colour. I am a hyperrealism painter fascinated by the world around me. I am very drawn to shiny surfaces as well as transparent objects, especially when the lighting brings them to life. I look for beauty in everyday objects that most people take for granted or just don’t truly see them as they are. The seemingly boring and mundane subjects can truly be like magnets if portrayed in the right light. Shiny metal is one of those materials that can host endless visions….the light hits it and the reflections are captured on the smooth, sleek surface…people and animals especially the eyes...an artists dream! My future art plans are to paint the countless subjects I have chosen to become paintings and to share my art with as many people as I can. "To take my inner visions with my hands and create a work of art for you the viewer .... That is the ultimate in self expression."
Sculpture Prize
Gregory Steel
Short Biography and Statement
Gregory Steel (b. 1954, Art Center Hospital, Detroit, MI.) focuses on transitional states and contemplative possibilities of Being. Steel's work explores tentative relationships with the modern world; his sculptures provide a respite from the onslaught of the media and the pressures to conform. Steel earned his B.F.A. from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan, and his M.F.A. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Steel also holds a Ph. D in philosophy, aesthetics, and critical theory from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in Visual Arts, Portland, ME. Peter Frank has selected his work for inclusion in the October International show at Amory Art Center, West Palm Beach, FL. Steel's work has also been seen at After the Pedestal, Sculpture Center, Cleveland, Ohio; Art Expo New York, Pier 94, New York, NY; KaatsBaan Cultural Center, Tivoli, NY; the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild Art Center; outdoor sculpture exhibit. Also, sculptural work has recently been exhibited at the Swope Museum, 79th Wabash Valley Exhibition, Terra Haute, IN, the Museum of Greater Lafayette, Indiana Now Exhibition, Lafayette, IN. Steel's solo shows include Galerie Penumbra in Indianapolis, IN, Barcelona, Spain, and Bay City, Michigan. His work has also been presented in China, Berlin, Basel, Switzerland, Venice, Italy, Shanghai, and Japan. Steel currently lives and works in Kokomo, Indiana.
Photography Prize
Kenneth Ricci
Short Biography and Statement
kentricci@gmail.com
K.G. Ricci, a self-taught New York City artist, made a collage on a file cabinet in 2015. The creative possibilities of the medium immediately inspired him. Fifty cut and paste panels followed, visual improvisations on 20” x 40” or 2’ X 4’ hardboard. Next, Ricci completed another series on 8” X 24” hardboard with implied literary reflections or narrative lines. He categorized hundreds of his panels in line with the evident themes of “Femma Dilemma”, “Hotel Kafka” and “3:43 A.M.” Recently, Ricci sustained his implied narrative focus in “Numbered-Not Named”, a series of original pieces, 6” x 9” on black stock. He followed the idea further with two projects: “Random Thoughts in the Waiting Room” and “Wait…what?” ~ a pair of visual flash fiction series of books with a single word or a fragment of text in each collage 7x10 composition. His current series “Incongruities” explores the narrative on a larger scale (18x24, 11x14) and with extended text. K.G. Ricci has exhibited in 27 galleries including solo shows and many more online galleries. His collages have been published in poetry and literary magazines nationally and internationally online and in print. Artist's Statement "I work in a sort of literary/philosophical framework so within that context my reference points are the parables of Kafka and the aphorisms of Kierkegaard. Because elements determine content, the process of creation is both constrained and liberated by the available elements at any given time and it is the improvised procedure of choice, assembly and judgment that settles the argument".
Winners