Jurors looked at all accepted artworks to determine this year's award recipients. Carefully observing each artwork, they reviewed the student based on their technical and media skills as it relates to the medium, their formal qualities, and their expression of creativity and personal voice.
Honorable Mention
$200 scholarship
Jessica Swofford
Sea Urchin
digital photograph
"This image is part of an ongoing photographic series exploring respite from the constant social and political noise of everyday life. The subject matter is a flower frozen in water. Air bubbles arise as the oxygen squeezes out of the flowers during the freezing process."
Honorable Mention
$200 Scholarship
Meibelin Vasquez
Peaceful
ceramic
"This is a wheel-thrown vessel. Handmade and painted with underglaze, the flowers and leaves appear to grow out of the ceramic form."
Honorable Mention
$200 scholarship
Keri Schneider
Motherland
watercolor on paper
"In a time where there is so much chaos, finding inner peace and calm is essential to my well being. It takes patience, quietness, and perseverance to create a quilt, but the reward is comfort and self-love with every stitch taken."
Honorable Mention
$200 scholarship
Sora Kang
Simplicity
digital illustration
"A figure of a woman, clearly divided in the detailed upper-half and a few simple strokes that make up the lower body, yet both parts equally draw the eye. The imbalance portrayed is further pushed by the unstable upside-down pyramid."
Honorable Mention
$200 scholarship
Colton Christensen
Alternate Endings
digital photograph
"This image is a composite of photographs of various train cars taken from the same angle. I took different parts of each photograph and superimposed them on one another, experimenting with various effects and blending modes to create something chaotic and visually interesting."
Honorable Mention
$200 scholarship
Alexandros Pandi
Modern Day Symposium with David
oil on canvas
"This painting shows a still-life arrangement of fruit in a bowl with wine. A close-up reference of Michelangelo's sculpture of David appears in the background of the image."
Honorable Mention
$200 scholarship
Chuck McHugh
Apache Star Light
digital photograph
"This is a mid-June, late evening photograph of the Milky Way above a remote lake on the White Mountain Apache Reservation. The camera is tripod mounted with a 20-second exposure."
Honorable Mention
$200 scholarship
Kim Valentine
If You Look, You Can See
graphite, ink, and acrylic paint on paper
"This portrait is of John Kapoor, a former CEO of Insys Therapeutics, serving five and a half years in prison for his involvement in various schemes to bribe doctors and boost sales of his company's fentanyl (opiate) drug. How can we look closer into the inner worlds of people who have done horrendous things? What will we find?"
Honorable Mention
$200 scholarship
Todd Schwartz
Prayer
digital photograph
"A candid photograph of a group prayer before a wedding ceremony."
Honorable Mention
$200 scholarship
Ari Avakian
A Flawless Unity
clay, acrylic on board
"Some individuals have very little understanding of their genitalia or feel shame for talking about their reproductive and sexual well-being. I made this work to encourage people to find beauty in themselves and find a new level of comfort with their bodies."
Honorable Mention
$200 scholarship
Shelley Rothgeb
Pebbles
altered photograph on fabric, cheesecloth, silk yarn, embroidery thread, cotton batting, and cotton thread
"This piece began as a photograph of a pebble beach on Maui. It expands and abstracts a detail of nature in a new way."
Juror's Award
$250 Scholarship
Cynthia Huettner
Stacked Elements
laser-cut art paper
"Inspired by the methods of Eric Stanley, this piece was digitally designed in 45 layers and cut by laser. The stack of archival-quality pastel papers, suspended in a shadow-box frame, sculpturally reveals images and symbolism of the traditional four elements of air, fire, water, and earth."
Juror's Award
$250 Scholarship
Eric Peta
The Weight of Knowledge
ceramic
"The golden age of Islam changed mathematics drastically for the whole world. In this work, the symbols of the Crescent Moon and Venus symbolize change for the better by pursuing knowledge. This strong-arm struggles to hold onto the pursuit of knowledge."
Juror's Award
$250 Scholarship
Raneem Mouslli
Deeply Life
animation
"If you look at a $100 banknote, you will see an image of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Each image we encounter, in popular culture, on our devices, has ties to an individual's life, a specific time and place." View the video animation of Deeply Life.
Juror's Award
$250 Scholarship
Brian Moore
Ribbons Of Time
digital photograph
"Iceland, September 2019. I wanted to show the relation of the past, represented by the turf house circa 840 A.D. and the aurora which emitted from the sun roughly two days prior, with the present represented by the colors in the image. Vikings would worship inside that building, and for me, heaven exists outside of religion."
Juror's Award
$250 Scholarship
Sean Dirks & Shelby Waggoner Griffitts
Murder Of Crows
Raku ceramics
"This collaborative project is a large, wheel-thrown vase that is 26 inches tall, fired with a Raku technique. Covering the body are over 40 individually sculpted crows attached in a spiral pattern going downwards over the entire vase. A black and white color scheme creates a sharp contrast between the body and the crows."
Juror's Award
$250 Scholarship
Michael Farmer
The Anniversary
oil on canvas
"This painting was done as a first-anniversary gift for my wife. It incorporates two bowls and a vase; one bowl is an Isleta ceramic bowl, one bowl is a Nambe silver bowl, given to us as wedding gifts. The black vase is a Mata Ortiz wedding vase I gave to my wife on the date of our first anniversary. The painting signifies the harvest of our love together."
Juror's Award
$250 Scholarship
Erinn Tatom
Fierce Dancer
digital photograph
"I made this image during a class photoshoot of Mesa Community College dancers. The height, strength, and fierce look of the dancer, Maezell Najera, is what I love most about this image. I would like to thank Tom Klare for being such a great inspiration and mentor."
Juror's Award
$250 Scholarship
MiJung Yun
Blossom
acrylic paint on canvas
"This was a painting exploring the theme of rhythm completed for my two-dimensional design class."
Third Place (Tied)
$350 Scholarship
Riley Barry
Cadmium Yellow
soft sculpture
"Cadmium Yellow is a large, nearly adult-sized soft sculpture replicating a tube of oil paint. Inspired by my favorite color and the very medium I use almost obsessively, I decided to hot glue this masterpiece together."
Third Place (Tied)
$350 Scholarship
Shachi Kale
Excavating Gold
collage, fiber, watercolor, and colored pencil on cloth
"Excavating Gold explores self-love and digging deep within one's layers of self-doubt and self-hatred to find the gold hidden inside."
Second Place
$400 Scholarship
Benjamin Askevold
Subliminal Fear
oil on panel
"Subliminal Fear encompasses insecurities triggering falling dreams."
Best in Show
$500 Scholarship
Susan Allred
Invitation to a Tea Party
found objects, rusted paper, polyester organza, rusted nails
"Whether trauma comes from sexual assault or emotional violence, it is initiated by an abuse of power. Someone playing a societal role - as father, priest, mother, coach - uses inherent trust to gain access to their chosen target. To reveal the durability of damage caused by trauma, but even more, the secondary damage from such a profound breach of trust, I invite viewers to a formal tea party. Behind the veil of the civility and intimacy of a tea party lies a bitter truth. The delicate, stained teacups are stand-ins for all the people I know who've been sexually or emotionally assaulted and now live with that trauma."