Tuesday, November 10, 2009

And the award goes to...

On Saturday I dropped by the Potomac Valley Watercolorists annual exhibition at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, VA to select the awards for the show.

It was a lot more difficult than what I had anticipated, as the talent and skill was abundant in nearly every member of the PVA and I spent quite a lot of time walking around and debating with myself.

In the end the award winners that I selected were:

Best in Show - Jill Poyerd
Second Prize - Julie Smith
Third Prize - Jane Thomas
Honorable Mention - Carolyn Grosse Garewicki
Honorable Mention - Jackie Saunders
Honorable Mention - Barbara Sullivan
Honorable Mention - Peter Ulrich

Clearly the men got their palette's kicked by the female artists and it was good of Mr.Ulrich's gorgeous "Contemplating Calder" watercolor to save a shut out by the female members of PVA.

Peter Ulrich, Contemplating Calder
When the doors opened to the public at 4PM, I was astounded to see artwork fly off the walls as sales started right away from both the work on display on the walls as well as the many bins.

I say astounded because one rarely sees a buying frenzy like that in a gallery exhibition anymore. This exhibition is a perfect example of an organization looking for alternative venues for their members' work to be exhibited and sold, and after several years of doing this, they have a set of collectors who puts their money where their art collecting sensibililites tell them to.

As always, I was honored to be asked to jury the show for the awards. Here's a quick walk through the award winners:

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