Winners & Awards

Ravine Garden Reflections

Nature

In Ravine Garden Reflections, Nathan Leemis dissolves the boundary between landscape and perception. Branches, sky, and water merge into a shifting surface where reflection becomes the subject itself. The rhythmic ripples pull the composition inward, transforming the natural scene into a living abstraction shaped by motion, light, and time. Earthy reds and browns anchor the image, while flashes of blue and green suggest fleeting moments of clarity before dissolving again. Rather than offering a fixed view of nature, this work invites the viewer to linger in its instability—where the world is seen not as it is, but as it continually changes.

Best of Show — Nature (September 2025)

A New Meter

WATER

In A New Meter, Cori Matyas brings together ceramics and steel in a quietly kinetic meditation on water, measurement, and unseen systems. Suspended forms drip, funnel, and balance, suggesting both utility and ritual—an object that feels at once engineered and ceremonial. Guest Judge Geraldo Rodriguez described the work as “an expected/unexpected combination that makes you want to see more,” a sentiment echoed in the sculpture’s tension between industrial structure and organic material. Rooted in clay yet responsive to movement and gravity, A New Meter reimagines how we sense water and energy—not as static resources, but as rhythms continuously shaping the world around us.

Best of Show — WATER (July 2025)

Me Myself and Oh… Me Again

What Makes You, YOU

In Me Myself and Oh… Me Again, Justin Alsedek turns the act of self-portraiture into a layered exploration of identity, repetition, and self-observation. The artist depicts himself mid-process, surrounded by personal artifacts—paint, instruments, books, and objects of daily life—each acting as a fragment of lived experience. The fractured portrait within the painting mirrors the way identity is constructed: never singular, always shifting between reflection, memory, and perception. By placing the artist both inside and outside the image, the work blurs the line between creator and subject, asking whether the self is something we define, perform, or endlessly reinterpret.

Best of Show — What Makes You, YOU (December 2025)

The Petal Collection I

ABSTRACT

Ceramic

In The Petal Collection I, Darina Palmire presents an abstract form that feels both organic and intentional—unfolding like a moment of arrested growth. Layered, rippling surfaces evoke petals, coral, or geological formations, inviting the viewer to experience the sculpture as something discovered rather than constructed. The work shifts subtly with perspective, revealing new rhythms of texture and shadow as one moves around it. Palmire’s restrained palette allows form and surface to take center stage. The clustered markings and undulating contours suggest expansion and contraction, delicacy and strength held in balance. Though nonrepresentational, the piece carries a distinctly bodily presence, echoing natural processes of emergence, resilience, and transformation.

Best of Show — ABSTRACT (January 2025)

The Red Priestess

AMORE

In The Red Priestess, Christopher Hershberger conjures a figure that feels both ancient and immediate—an embodiment of devotion, desire, and inner power. Saturated in deep crimsons and earthen reds, the composition radiates heat and intensity, pulling the viewer into a charged, almost ritualistic encounter. The figure’s direct gaze is unwavering, commanding attention while remaining inwardly focused, as if suspended between revelation and concealment. The layered textures and fluid transitions between flesh, fabric, and atmosphere blur the boundary between body and environment, suggesting transformation rather than stasis. Red here becomes more than color—it functions as symbol: passion, sacrifice, love, and authority entwined. The priestess stands not as an object of longing, but as its source.

Best of Show — AMORE (February 2025)

Promesse Celate

Portrait

In Promesse Celate (“Hidden Promises”), Pietro Capone fuses classical portraiture with poetic symbolism and historical texture. The figure’s gaze is both intimate and distant, holding the viewer in a quiet psychological tension, while handwritten Italian script flows across the surface like memory, prayer, and confession. The layered text does not simply decorate the composition—it becomes part of the identity of the figure herself, embedding language into flesh, thought into form. Capone’s refined technique and luminous realism evoke Renaissance tradition, while the conceptual layering situates the work firmly in the contemporary moment. The result is a portrait that feels timeless yet personal—an image of inner life, hidden vows, and unspoken devotion rendered with elegance and restraint.

Best of Show — Portrait (May 2025)

Imposter

DARK

In Imposter, Amanda Arroyo gives form to the unsettling tension between visibility and concealment. The figure confronts the viewer directly, hands raised in a gesture that feels both defensive and revealing, while the surrounding eyes embedded in the hair suggest constant observation and internalized scrutiny. Stark contrasts and monochromatic restraint heighten the psychological intensity, turning the face into a fragile threshold between performance and truth. Rather than depicting fear alone, the work captures the moment of recognition—when the mask falters, identity fractures, and the cost of pretending becomes impossible to ignore.

Best of Show — DARK (October 2025)

Amazing Grace

Black & White

In Amazing Grace, Jess Rodriguez-Marcano presents a figure suspended between fragility and care. Rendered in stark black and white, the drawing relies on line, negative space, and gesture to convey tenderness without sentimentality. The elongated body appears weightless yet vulnerable, cradled by hands that suggest protection, guidance, or surrender. Flowing hair becomes both anchor and extension of the form, blurring where the figure ends and emotion begins. By stripping away color, the work distills its message to the essentials—grace not as perfection, but as a quiet act of holding, being held, and enduring.

Best of Show — Black & White (June 2025)

Confined

Figurative

Acrylic on canvas · 24" x 48" · 2021

Confined captures a raw and intimate moment of internal tension, where vulnerability, isolation, and resilience coexist. The figure curls inward, shielding the face while the body remains exposed, creating a powerful contrast between emotional withdrawal and physical presence.

Best of Show — Figurative (November 2025)

Team Spirit

Works on Paper

In Team Spirit, Sherese Mesko demonstrates exceptional technical mastery and emotional sensitivity, transforming paper into a space of quiet intensity and depth. The work’s meticulous attention to detail draws the viewer in gradually, rewarding close observation with subtle shifts in value, texture, and expression. Set against a dark ground, the side profile becomes both striking and contemplative—its restraint amplifying its emotional resonance.

Best of Show — Works on Paper (March 2025)

Unfolding Remains

ABSTRACT 2

Constructed from photographs of the artist’s demolished home, Unfolding Remains transforms architectural fragments into a meditative system of infinite space. Through repetition and mirroring, corridors and exposed beams unfold into an impossible geometry—part blueprint, part memory map. Dust-toned browns carry both the weight of destruction and the quiet warmth of domestic life once lived. Along the upper edge, fractured columns take on the posture of robed figures, standing as silent witnesses to transition and loss. Rather than presenting infinity as something vast and distant, this work reveals it as an intimate process: the continual reshaping of what remains, where memory becomes structure and absence is given form.

Best of Show — Abstract 2 (January 2026)

Bridal Dance

Music

In Bridal Dance, O Yemi Tubi captures the rhythm, ceremony, and communal spirit of celebration through movement and color. Figures intertwine in a moment of shared joy as music, dance, and tradition merge into a single visual cadence. Bold hues and patterned textiles pulse across the composition, while floating currency and instruments emphasize the ritual exchange at the heart of the scene. Rather than portraying music as sound alone, this work translates it into motion—where culture, identity, and celebration are felt through the body, the crowd, and the collective beat.

Best of Show — Music (August 2025)

Följeslagare / Companions

Maria Heed

SYMBOLISM

Watercolor · 49 × 55

I’m fine

Steven Swanhart

COLOR & EMOTION

Color pencil on water color paper · 11 × 9 in · 2026

When we’re sad, hurt, disappointed, or overwhelmed, we say “I’m fine” instead of just being human. But it’s okay to feel. It’s okay to not be okay. The eyes always tell the truth — even when the words don’t.

Celestial Landscape #7

Kyle Selley

NATURE'S PATTERNS

Firework Residue on Birch Panel · 48 × 36 in

Fulfillment

Małgorzata Gorzelewska-Namiota

OPEN THEME

Acrylic on canvas · 55 × 39

Beltane

Christopher Hershberger

MYTH & LEGEND

Acrylic and Oil on Panel · 20 × 20 in

A vision of Beltane as a sacred turning and rite of transformation, where the Winter King falls and the May Queen rises amid flame, drums, dance, and a thinning veil.

Escape the Chrysalis: Breaking Free Into the Light

Stacie Pedrick

METAMORPHOSIS

Oil on canvas panel · 5 × 7 in

The struggles around us often make us feel trapped. Breaking free, change, and self-discovery occur with an open heart and mind. Real change starts within ourselves.

Morning Watch

Rotag Alaco

LIGHT & LUMINOSITY

Oil on wood · 16 × 24 in

Time Strips My Memories

Vakim Pirdon

LIGHT & LUMINOSITY

Digital painting and phigital artwork able to be printed · 23.62 × 31.49

Biofodo Forest

Theodore Benedict

NATURE'S PATTERNS

Acrylic on wood panel · 16 × 20 in

Sabbatical

Rotag Alaco

METAMORPHOSIS

Oil on wood · 12 × 12 in

A portrait of a friend and his cat during a time of uncertainty.

Reflection

Steven Swanhart

OPEN THEME

Color Pencil · 11 × 14 in

Physical Stim

Charlie Alen

COLOR & EMOTION

Acrylic on canvas

Inspired by Autism. A depiction of intense physical stimming experienced in a completely unmasked state, with a flood of feelings and emotions.

Map of Memory

Daria Rozina, Ivan Bobrov (SALT art group)

SYMBOLISM

Photo collage

Un Moment de Paix

Melody Monet

OPEN THEME

Charcoal · 22 × 30 in

Rayburn’s Ripple

Leslie J Wengler

LIGHT & LUMINOSITY

Photography · 7 × 5 in

Totems time

Lipkin Victor

SYMBOLISM

Linocut · 60 × 40

Hidden technology

Mike Knapp

NATURE'S PATTERNS

Acrylic on canvas · 36 × 48 in

Venomous

Donna Turan

METAMORPHOSIS

Acrylic paint and alcohol markers on paper · 11 × 14 in

Venomous explores what happens when a woman begins to believe she is poison, using the serpent and shedding as symbols of adaptation and transformation.

Amplified

Holly Mathis

COLOR & EMOTION

Acrylic + Alcohol Ink on Canvas · 14 × 18 in

From the ashes of imposed limitations, creativity and purpose are amplified. Amplified is symbolic of the emotion associated with letting go of limiting beliefs and letting your true self and purpose come to light.

Cracks

Leslie J Wengler

NATURE'S PATTERNS

Photography · 7 × 5 in

Triptych: To Capture Hope

Jessie Leasure

LIGHT & LUMINOSITY

Acrylic on Canvas · 10 × 30 in

Unraveling

Jessie Leasure

METAMORPHOSIS

Marker and Colored Pencil on Paper · 18 × 24 in

A woman stands in a misty forest as the butterfly pattern on her dress transforms into real butterflies taking flight, symbolizing quiet transformation and growth.

Girlhood

Erika DiGirolamo

SYMBOLISM

Acrylic, colored pencil, glass beads · 8.5 × 10.25 in

I’m fine

Steven Swanhart

COLOR & EMOTION

Color pencil on water color paper · 11 × 9 in · 2026

When we’re sad, hurt, disappointed, or overwhelmed, we say “I’m fine” instead of just being human. But it’s okay to feel. It’s okay to not be okay. The eyes always tell the truth — even when the words don’t.

Ocean life reborn

Melanie Mason

OPEN THEME

Acrylic on Canvas · 48 × 24 in

The Transformation

Archita Saha

MYTH & LEGEND

Watercolor on paper · 18 × 24 in

An exploration of the sacred transition from human to enlightened, drawing on the Buddha's heroic journey and layered Oriental wash painting.