15 Merit Awards Distributed in AAG Member Show

The 2024 Anderson Artists Guild Membership Show opened on June 21 at the Anderson Arts Center. It will run through Aug. 8. The juror was Jer Nelsen of Anderson University.

Fifteen merit awards were given out. They ranged from $100 to $250.

Here are reflections on their works by the top four merit award winners:

$250 merit award: Three Muses, Gorky, Pablo and Willem (mixed media) by Lori Solymosi

“This painting was inspired by a Greek sculpture at the Louvre. I was thinking about the influence of classical art on the development of modern art and how innovative these three artists were and how instrumental in movements of Abstract Expressionism, Cubism and Surrealism. I allowed myself to be even more expressive than usual and applied paint in several ways and using several mediums.”

$200 merit awards:

Life After Death (fiber sculpture) by Elaine Bailey

“This sculpture began when I found an interesting piece of weathered wood while out walking.  I knew I wanted to do something with it, but it sat in my studio for months until I found the right inspiration from an online course by Australian fiber artist Wendy Bailye.  Her wet felting techniques to replicate nature's patterns and textures are so much fun! I got carried away making fungi and mosses and realized the perfect way to display them was on that waiting piece of wood. The title Life After Death reflects nature's unending cycle of decay and new growth.”

Through Good Times and Bad (fiber) by Evelyn Beck

“There are three elements I’ve been struggling with for quite some time: color, emotion, and the right level of abstractness. Finally, with this piece, I felt that they were starting to come together. I was pleased with this palette, as well as with the emotion that comes through, perhaps because I was creating during an emotional time when my husband was suffering physically and I was thinking a lot about how important our marriage vows were to both of us. I also experimented with a slight alteration in how I manipulated the source photo of an old couple in Lunapic (free online editing software), adding some distressed elements that reinforced the meaning I was seeking.”

El Rastro del Gato (oil) by Den Latham

“The composition is from a photo I took when we were hiking the Window Trail in Big Bend National Park. My colors, of course, aren't realistic; Big Bend is more desert. In this painting, I attempted to play with complementary hues. The inclusion of the mountain lion was (oddly enough) inspired by Matisse's The Cat with Red Fishes.”

For a list of all entries in the show, see the link at https://www.andersonartistsguild.com/.