Year Created: 2024 Medium: Digital Photograph Optional Brief Statement: I met Hien in 1994 when she came to Winona from Vietnam after the Amerasian Homecoming Act was passed in 1987. I am fortunate that she likes to be in front of the camera as much as I enjoy being behind it.
Invasive Species 22
Mic Stowell
$250.00
Year Created: 2023 Medium: Ceramics: clay, glaze, luster Optional Brief Statement: This is a wall piece.
Lying in the Weeds
Scott Onsager
$550.00
Year Created: 2023 Medium: ceramics, found sticks Optional Brief Statement: This piece was inspired by my alcoholic brother who resisted help in dealing with his disease and was lost to us.
Subliminal de-comp.
Carter Briggs
Year Created: 2022 Medium: Ceramic Optional Brief Statement: This explores love and loss, the knowledge and power of Wu Wei, the beauty of rot, and feeling helpless. And contrapasto of course.
Backyard Magic
Kate Miller-Wilson
$300.00
Year Created: 2023 Medium: Silver gelatin print, toned in tea
Feathered Basket
Kathryn Ness
$65.00
Year Created: 2024 Medium: fabric Optional Brief Statement: I found a passion for re-purposing fabric! I collect fabric samples, upholstery remnants, jeans and other unwanted items which I up-cycle to create one-of-a-kind pieces. Each item is crafted with the utmost attention to detail, making them truly unique. This basket was created using upcycled jeans inseams.
The Scavenger
Bonnie Wedge
$400.00
Year Created: 2023 Medium: Mixed
Rising Moon // Setting Sun
Matt Wagner
$60.00
Year Created: 2024 Medium: Ink Drawing
Nelumbo lutea, Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge
Michelle Cochran
Year Created: 2024 Medium: Watercolor on paper Optional Brief Statement: Native to Minnesota, Nelumbo lutea, or the lotus plant, grows most commonly in the backwaters of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. The lotus plant is treasured by various religions, symbolizing the ability to overcome adversity and challenges and rebirth. (Minnesota Wildflowers.org; Bouqs.com/blog/lotus-flower-meaning-and-symbolism)
During the summer of 2015, a year of personal loss, I learned to kayak in the quiet backwaters of the Mississippi River. The Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge, home to the lotus, is where I photographed this especially beautiful plant during the summer of 2023. This is my first attempt to share my experience of the lotus through a painting.
Michelle Cochran, August 2024
Watershed
Paula Eickman
Year Created: 2024 Medium: Acrylic paint on stretched canvas
Enough Light
Lynne Burgess
$275.00
Year Created: 2023 Medium: Monotype
Robbinsdale Library
Stefanie Kiihn
$3,300.00
Honorable Mention
Year Created: 2024 Medium: Ink on Paper Optional Brief Statement: The all-female Library Club supported the creation and development of the Robbinsdale Public Library. The library was housed in various businesses around Robbinsdale until 1917, when the Club purchased a small bakery building, moved it to 4915 -42nd Avenue North, and converted it into a little library. In 1925, the bakery building was replaced by the existing building. Costs of construction were funded by local citizens and the Library Club. The library was much loved by the community, but by 1976, the library was consolidated into a new Rockford Road library two miles away.
Wisdom
Heather Bach
Second Prize
Year Created: 2024 Medium: Acrylic
Grace
Heather Bach
Year Created: 2023 Medium: Acrylic
Arbitrary Auerlandsfjord
Jennifer Williams
$525.00
Year Created: 2023 Medium: Pastel Optional Brief Statement: The Driftless area of Wisconsin/Southeast Minnesota where I live and find inspiration: the region’s bluffs, rivers and roads and roads inform my work. When I travel, I find parallels with these landscape forms, as Norwegian fjords echo Mississippi River bluffs. Painting and drawing serve as vehicles for connecting more deeply with the self and with nature, through its process and physicality. Like nature itself, I view the process of painting as transformative (both physically and philosophically) as light shifts and colors blend, creating new perceptions and experiences. Conceptually I am interested in the way we as individuals and as a society identify with and define notions of landscape through travel, place-specificity, and ecological imperatives.
Birdcrash with Swan and Pelican
Janice Hovey
$500.00
Year Created: 2024 Medium: Analog Collage Optional Brief Statement: Vintage Audubon prints from The Birds of North America, (c. 1941), cut and woven on an original mono-print. The birds, when combined and taken out of the context of Audubon’s serene backgrounds have so much movement and seem to be crashing into each other. Their expressions seem anxious, confused and sometimes humorous and I love playing with their variety of textures, shapes and colors.
Parabola
Joy Davis Ripley
$450.00
Year Created: 2023 Medium: Giclee-printed photograph with archival inks on 100% cotton paper in a reclaimed-wood frame Optional Brief Statement: The old wood swing shapes the air.
A parabola grows.
A tree branch begins to bud,
a hand pushes,
another reaches back,
and shadows give chase.
There is loss, rooted in every detail,
as the swing reaches for its vertex, its zenith,
its apogee and apex, vertiginous all the while,
these words rare enough in a life
refusing to be smaller, constrained, predetermined.
What is the turning point? Still,
let this loss be your strength. Still,
let this splintering become a vector pointing the way.
Warm your feet. Hold watermelon on your tongue. Breathe
deeply. Truly see the color blue, its possibilities, a bridge
from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Repeat.
Repeat. These smooth grief’s sharp points, the before
and after. Divide your grief, let it flow from your body.
Captured impermanence -- futurity at play -- is
the tension of a line running from heedless headlong girlhood
into womanhood.
Crawdad Snack
Tim Zenk
$350.00
Year Created: 2024 Medium: Wood and Copper Optional Brief Statement: Fishing lures as fine art.
