Lions and Rabbits Center For the Arts chose a theme of repetition for this year’s ArtPrize festival.

About Candace:

With a background in book art, Candace Hicks’s work is based on reading fiction. With the exhibition Read Me at Lawndale Art Center, Hicks opened the book form into a room-sized interactive installation in which viewers pieced together a puzzle of narrative to find the correct solution. The Locked Room at Living Arts in Tulsa focused on a specific genre of literature the “locked room” mystery, and visitors were tasked with the challenge to find the means of metaphorically escaping the gallery. Egress at Pump Project explored literary connections and coincidences through sculpture and text. Her installation Many Mini Murder Scenes at Women and Their Work immersed visitors in an experience in detection. She is the Coordinator of Foundations at Stephen F. Austin State University. She earned a Master of Fine Art degree in Printmaking from Texas Christian University. Her artist’s books are in collections including the Museum of Modern Art New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bainbridge Museum, Spencer Museum of Art, and many university special collections including Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Stanford.

Find more of her work @candacehicksart on Instagram.

About her ArtPrize 2022 pieces:

These hand-embroidered pages confront the existential possibilities of the blank page. The size, format, and color palette of notebook paper, they are familiar and warped at the same time. From across the room, they appear as flat, linear designs, but upon closer inspection reveal themselves to be delicately textured. My work has taken literature as its subject for many years, and writing has been central to my artistic practice. As Covid-19 changed all of our lives, I found it arrested my ability to compose a coherent text. The stories and commentary that had previously poured out of me were now blocked. As the winter storms of early 2021 compounded our isolation, I began drawing versions of a blank sheet of paper in blue thread onto canvas. Where I had previously embroidered the text and illustrations of my artist’s books, I created a void. Not the first or last to confront the dread of the blank page or to bend writer’s block into subject matter, I have named my humble drawings for the theoretical framework uniting all matter and forces at play in the universe.

About Denny:

Denny’s interest in and passion for photography started with a photojournalism course at Ohio University. He graduated from there in 1967 with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism.

As Air Force information officer, newspaper reporter, public relations executive and marketing communications resource, Denny’s creative output involved more writing than photography. Retiring in 2012 helped him focus more on photography as a medium for artistic expression.

This is the third time Denny’s work has been featured in the international ArtPrize exhibit and competition. His photoart has also earned honors at national and regional levels.

Originally from Toledo, Ohio, Denny became a proud resident of Pure Michigan in 2010. He lives in Kentwood with wife Patty and dog Libby.

About his 2022 ArtPrize piece:

Each framed image started with selective cropping of a digital photograph. The cropped selection is joined with a mirrored image of itself. The resulting color, composition and symmetry is an abstract photograph with a surreal take on Rorschach ink blots. From stepping back for full effect to coming close for detail, each visual interpretation is influenced by personal perception and experience.

About Elizabeth:

An actively exhibiting artist, Elizabeth Mesa-Gaido has participated in exhibitions for over two decades, including one person, international to regional juried, and invitational. Her pieces have been presented at numerous venues, including the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture, Mexic-Arte Museum, Spaces, Indianapolis Art Center, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Speed Art Museum, KMAC Museum, Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts, and Aluna Art Foundation.

Mesa-Gaido's work has been supported through grants, such as Art Matters, Alternate Roots, the Kentucky Arts Council, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Great Meadows Foundation. Recognition of her work is evident through awards at competitive international, national and regional juried exhibitions. Two pieces from Mesa-Gaido’s installation, Cuban-American Piñatas, is part of The American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora’s permanent collection in Miami, Florida, and commissions include the Carnegie Museum of National History, Speed Art Museum, and the Lexington Arts and Cultural Council.

Images and/or critical reviews of Elizabeth Mesa-Gaido’s artwork have been published in books, journals, periodicals and newspapers, including: In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics (University of Michigan); The Latino Studies Reader: Culture, Politics and Society (Oxford: Blackwell); Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Philosophy, Psychology and the Arts (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University); Fiberart International (Fiber Arts Guild of Pittsburgh); Bound (The Women’s Caucus for Art); Art Miami; The Nation, New Art Examiner, ART PAPERS, The Miami Herald, and Surface Design Journal. Inclusion in a book on piñatas by the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo de Costa Rica is forthcoming.

Elizabeth Mesa-Gaido teaches at Morehead State University and has a studio in Morehead, Kentucky. She received her M.F.A. degree from Ohio University and her B.A. degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

Find her at:
www.elizabethmesa-gaido.com

About her artwork for ArtPrize 2022:

A Pandemic Landscape, March 1-May 17, 2020 (2020) consists of fifty-one pieces, one for every U.S. state and the District of Columbia. The shapes were based on graphs published as part of the "Where U.S. Coronavirus Cases are on the Rise" article in The New York Times (May 18, 2020, by Chris Canipe and Lisa Schumaker); the graphs represented the number of cases per state between March 1 and May 17 of that same year. Each state/piece has a unique textile, every textile having been produced somewhere in the U.S., an intentional choice representing how the virus was fully replicating and spreading within our country by the time I began the work in mid-May of 2020; the virus' main spread was no longer due to individuals bringing it into the United States. At the time, I had read that most of the U.S. spread originated from New York (where people then traveled out across the country), which is where I acquired all the textiles in late December 2019. The textiles are ironically very tactile at a time when human contact was reduced or eliminated to reduce COVID’s spread (for ex. the inability to hug or touch someone not living in your own safety bubble). When I began the series, I was still processing the enormity of the pandemic and was self-isolating, so making each piece became a way to process the reality of the situation (individual and collective) - trying to get through the unknown and anxiety one day at a time. As the pieces are abstract, they potentially can be read as something other than the original source for their shapes, similar to our trying not to think about COVID 24/7 during the height of the pandemic. The sequence in which the pieces are placed is based on the lowest to highest number of cases as of May 17, 2020, with the multiple mountain ranges composition simulating the overall "ups and downs" of cases (which we continue to see within states and across the country).

About Joel:

For roughly 30 years, Joel Schoon-Tanis has been a working artist in Holland, Michigan. He has illustrated a handful of books (recently “40: the Gospels”, “At Psalm’s School” and “Lulu and the Long Walk”), painted murals around the world (including Kenya, Zambia, the Separation Wall in Palestine and exotic northern Wisconsin), and painted nearly a gazillion paintings in his career. His work is in churches, children’s hospitals, schools, restaurants, businesses and many private collections. In 2016 one of his images was presented to the Pope. In 2017 he joined international artists in Leipzig, Germany to create art around themes of social justice in conjunction with a gathering for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. His first international art experience was a showing of wildlife paintings in Nairobi, Kenya, and this piece brings him full circle.

Find him on Instagram @joel.schoon.tanis.art

About his ArtPrize 2022 artwork:

“For most of my art career, I have explored a whimsical, often childlike, approach to images. I try to be colorful and painterly and spread joy. While this painting follows most of my M.O., it diverges in one way. That is, these joyful, colorful elephants represent a darker part of humanity in that they represent the number of elephants that will be poached today. My hope is that that gut punch helps us all consider our relationship with nature, and our job to be good caretakers of it.”

About Joy:

While growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, I was never aware of how people influenced my art-bent life. My mother designed hats for the wealthy ladies of St. Louis. My father was a plant designer for the Jewel Box in Forest Park, St. Louis. My grandfather was a woodworking artisan, and my great-grandfather was an architect. I can't ever remember a time that I was not drawing. When I was very small my mother would sit me in front of a window and ask, “Do you see that squirrel? Draw it.” I’ve been drawing ever since. Although money was tight and we did not have a car, my mother would take a bus to the other side of St. Louis, to an art store. It seems, pencils and pastels were always in my hands. My mother provided me with many art supplies, along with her loving direction throughout my youth. Eventually, and with difficulty, my mom managed to put me through college. Today, every time something good happens in my art life, I raise a glass of wine to my mother in honor of everything she sacrificed for me and my art career. My most fun in high school, was working with clay and carving a large cross-section of a root system in my biology class – which is where my love for sculpting began. As for my portraits, I still have one that I did of my grandfather and Mr. Erdle, a German friend who stole over on a ship when he was 18 years old and ended up owning one of the best bakeries in St. Louis. I was incredibly honored to attend the Bixby Art School at Washington University in St. Louis, where I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in design. Nearby, was the St. Louis Art Museum, my home away from home, where I spent countless hours sketching. In college I turned down a Sculpture scholarship to major in the field of Design. Even though I free-lanced graphic design for many years after college, I found much enjoyment with the fine arts, especially in Grand Rapids with serigraphy, greatly influenced by John Goodyear (Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, and Metropolitan Museum). After the move to East Lansing I studied serigraphy at MSU, and also took etching and papermaking with MSU's Jim Fagan. I was hooked on printmaking. But I took time out for some welding with Jim Lawton, all of which I really enjoyed, as well as the men who taught me. For some 40 years, I coordinated a Contemporary Christian Art Show in Sparta and East Lansing – a totally free, high-caliber, juried art exhibit that attracted regional, national and international talent, along with out of state jurors from Chicago, St. Louis, New York City, etc. It was an education in itself and had a huge influence on me and the way I think.

Today, my work has become more eclectic: handmade paper collages – combining my love of paper with the outdoors, photography, monotypes, collagraphs, life-drawing - a major love of mine, and over the past few years I sculpted heads out of white cement with Nancy Leiserowitz. I also enjoy found materials, as I am convinced there’s beauty in things that age. Much of my work deals with social issues, especially my paper pieces. I have a fascination for the unknown that comes with monotypes. Every print is both a challenge and a surprise and the possibilities are endless. There is much that needs to be said about the people who influenced me in my art. I never put much thought into it while growing up, but now in my life, I wish I could say thank you to all of them. I mentioned my mother, Philippine, but there is more to the story. She left the small town of Gorham in Southern Illinois at 18 and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she became acquainted with a number of influential families in the St. Louis Area. She had a distinctive talent. While still in her twenties, she owned and operated her own millinery shop in downtown St. Louis. She ended up designing one-of-a-kind hats for the wealthy ladies of St. Louis. She always told me to aim high. She isn't living today, but her independence became noticeable in many ways, including the fact that she owned a Model-T Ford. Her father was an artisan who had a woodworking shop along the banks of the Mississippi River. Her grandfather was an architect in St. Louis who designed residential homes and churches where he left a bit of himself in each one, like a hand carved altar, or baptismal font. My father was a landscape designer throughout Forest Park and received a prestigious award for his floral designs in the Jewel Box, one of the outstanding state-of- the-art greenhouses in the park. I taught Life Drawing for the MSU Evening College for years and ran a drop-in Life Drawing Session for almost 40 years, until the Covid pandemic put a stop to it. I hope to start the sessions up again. They are held weekly in East Lansing from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. I am so very proud of my five children, all of whom graduated from Okemos High School and Michigan State University. All of their homes are filled with original fine art. I had to drag one son to galleries when he was young, but the others went along willingly. They are all very supportive of me and I love them for that. I am honored to have been recognized with awards over the years … in the international shows of ArtPrize in Grand Rapids and ISEA (International Society of Experimental Artists) … as well as regional shows. I will never retire! And, if I can't be creative, I'll die. I'd rather be a tiger for one year than a sheep for a thousand.

About Joy’s artwork for ArtPrize 2022:

I was enamored by the plant, Prickly Pear, when I was in New Mexico. The color of the fruit was so vibrant; oranges, yellows, reds absolutely captivated me. So, I had to make a print. It was just something I had to do. But doing it presented a problem. What I finally came up with was the use of simple tools. The reds are the fingerprints of cleaning gloves. The dark black dots were affected by use of a comb for grooming horses. The swishes are all the colors in the print with the addition of greens and oranges. I thought it astounding that these colors were fruit on a cactus plant. It’s called Prickly Pear for good reason: difficult to handle yet delicious to eat!

About Susan:

Susan Clinthorne trained to be an artist at Eastern Michigan University. For 20 years she has explored many mediums including watercolor, pastel, acrylic and oil painting, installation, collage, and “pressed flower art.” Her art activities and organizations include Huron Valley Artist Collective, Chelsea Painters and serving as a docent at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. She co-created large scale, socially conscious art installations for Art Prize in the past (Letters Home and Broken). And for Pop-X Ann Arbor. As an art teacher, she has shared her discoveries most recently with UMMA as Family Day instructor. In the past she taught painting for AA Rec and Ed, AA Art Center. Additionally, she has had numerous volunteer teaching projects at home and abroad (Guatemala, Nepal, Ecuador, Detroit, Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, and more). Having participated in numerous art shows in the Ann Arbor area and sales through the annual Chelsea Painters Art Fair, her work is enjoyed by the Washtenaw County community.

Art organizations: Chelsea Painters Huron River Art Collective

Find her on Instagram @sclinthorne

About her ArtPrize 2022 entry:

In October 2021, I started with the idea of painting one painting per day for 30 days, but 180 days later, I was still painting. Originally, it was a way to mark time. During the pandemic, I had felt that all days were blending into one another, and this helped me feel grounded. Also, I wanted to feel that I was being productive and accomplishing something. By keeping the paintings small, I could keep them immediate, fresh, and fearless, knowing that tomorrow I could try again. There was always a new challenge: color, composition, brush stroke, etc. I never tired of the process even though they were all flowers. I never missed a day. Added perk; I looked at fresh flowers every day during a rather gloomy time. It was always the best part of my day."