Many sweet memories are waiting to be made at artCamp 2022 for ages 8 to 14! Registration opens June 13, 2022. Visit www.artcentralcarthage.org for updates and details!
Recently going through the big box Tuesday rainy morning check out, engaged in a conversation with my clerk and the customer behind me, when they asked why I was buying so many picnic supplies, I told them about artCentral’s end-of-the-week picnic for eighty. They all but rolled their eyes when I assured them the skies would be clear in time for our set up and celebration. They questioned my reliance on the positive weather predictions supporting my optimism. They reminded me the weather people often get forecasts wrong. To which I replied, “I am working a different channel. I’m sure the trend will be in our favor. We have something important to do. We will be honoring artists and art lovers as together. We will be making sweet memories!”
Then came rain! rain! and more rain! and yet I remained confident. Our picnic weather for artCentral’s Annual Membership Picnic and Awards would be perfect. It was!
By Thursday the skies were sunny and the temps exquisitely balmy for our pre-picnic setup as artCentral board members and volunteers carried tables and chairs onto the lawn and patio in anticipation of hosting our eighty picnickers.
Friday’s weather was magically sublime as folks arrived to take a preview gallery tour of the 2022 Annual Membership Exhibition then selected beverages and settled at the colorfully clothed tables for a picnic dinner of scrumptious chicken pot pies from The Pie Safe on the Carthage Square accompanied by a gourmet salad compliments of Betsy and Bren Flanigan and dressed by Wendi Douglas plus a plethora of brownies lovingly created by members of artCentral’s board!
Before announcing recipients of awards for juror-selected superlative artworks, I extended appreciation to the exhibition’s gracious underwriter, the McCune-Brooks Healthcare Foundation and expressed gratitude for the exhibit’s thoughtful jurors Beth Simmons, Director of McCune-Brooks Healthcare Foundation, and artCentral’s board of members. Both Beth and the board members shared the challenge of selecting outstanding art from the forty-five works comprising this year’s membership collection.
Four HONORABLE MENTION awards were made to Jim Bray for “Kristianborg for A Dream Too Far”, a large format collage in acrylic; Linda Kyger for “Full Bloom”, created with fiber and threads; John Mills for his oil on panel landscape titled “Dancing with the Hoodoos”, and Mary Parks L. Parks for her intimate, colorful “Chroma” rendered in acrylic.
BRONZE, SILVER and GOLD awards were selected over two days by the board of directors. The BRONZE was awarded to Jane McCaulley for her translucent, fused glass “Effervescent” a sparkling medallion is sea blues and greens. Clint Thornton’s “Percussion Fantasy” received SILVER for his spaciously spirited, vibrantly lyrical painting made with acrylic that pops. Both the GOLD and UNDERWRITER awards went to Andrew W. Batcheller for his show-stopping oil on linen—“The Black Swan That Stole Her Eyes” described by Beth Simmons, Underwriter Juror, as “made by a master of technique using beautifully curving contours and sensuous lines enhanced with the richness of detail—a gorgeously evocative and mysterious painting that with color and compositional drama intrigues the viewer to look and intimately engage again and again.
PEOPLES CHOICE, a new award, will be given for the first time this year. Each Gallery Guest is entitled to cast one vote. The award recipient will be announced July 24, 2022, at the close of the Exhibition.
Do treat yourself to a lovely afternoon and make your own sweet memories in artCentral’s elegant Hyde House at 1110 East Thirteenth Street in Carthage. The Annual Membership Exhibition continues through July 23. Weekend Gallery Hours are set for Fridays and Saturdays, 5:00-12:00. For more information visit www.artcentralcarthage.org.
