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.
Wisdom
Heather Bach
Second Prize
Year Created: 2024 Medium: Acrylic
Invasive Species 22
Mic Stowell
$250.00
Year Created: 2023 Medium: Ceramics: clay, glaze, luster Optional Brief Statement: This is a wall piece.
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.
Vision of the Two Spirit Ancestor
Sam St. John
$200.00
Year Created: 2024 Medium: Mixed Media Optional Brief Statement: Vision of the Two Spirit Ancestor is the story of how I received my name as an indigenous woman. My name was given to me when I was 13 by a Two Spirit person named Billy Two Feathers. I grew up disconnected to my culture so Billy Two Feathers explained to me that they will have a vision of my name. My name Mukwa ogitchidaa-ikwe which means Bear Warrior Woman. Growing up in Hastings, Minnesota, I am deeply influenced by the water and nature in my town. Mother nature, the Mississippi River, and the spirit of the bear are themes in my work. I wanted to make a piece of the origin of my name that has greatly influenced my work as an artist.
