my students are winners

 For the second year now, the Lander University President has sponsored the Public Sculpture Awards.  Dr. Cosentino understands the benefits of having art on campus and he supports the student artists who share their work with the community.  Students in the upper level sculpture classes are asked to submit public art proposals during the fall semester.  The president's cabinet and various committees work to choose the top three proposals.  These top three are given their choice of prominent exhibit locations on campus and they are each given a monetary award to help cover the costs of creating their sculptures.  

This year's first place public sculpture winner was Sabrina Sullivan with her installation of three steel yoga ladies.

 The installation is very tough to get a photo of, but they are each life sized (larger than Sabrina) figures made by bending and welding steel rods.

The sculptures took about two months to make and only about 30 minutes to install.

The second place winner was Spencer Bautista with his two piece sculpture.  This was an experimental process that involved a carefully made steel armature and a thick canvas material covered in resin.  The forms were inspired by a textural study of magnolia leaves and the texture inside the large form was created by using actual magnolia pods layered under the canvas.  Spencer loves to experiment with materials and this was a good experiment.

 Third place was also an experiment in materials by Dillon Watts.  Dillon spent much of his undergraduate work in Ceramics and this sculpture was an attempt to use steel and clay together.  

 The result was a unified use of materials in the image of a mother and child dragon set.

 Olivia Bolt won our Art Discipline Award this year.  In attitude, work ethic and sheer greatness, it's hard to top Bolt.

 We also honored our 1st and 2nd place winners of the Visual Art Symposium.  These students gave academic presentations about their artwork in front of the whole department.  Ashley Dever (left) won 1st and Katherine Rumminger (right) won 2nd.

The public art and symposium winners on stage at the Academic Awards Ceremony.  Those faces say so much.

And the whole group with Bolt at the reception after the Awards Ceremony.  Such a great group of students.

It's probably worth writing that 99% of the rest of my students are winners as well.  We all know that awards can be tricky and any time there are judged events with academics and with the arts, the differences can come down to tiny details and one person's preference.  The difference can often be that you actually have to enter and compete in order to win.  Next year I hope to have a lot more students making the decisions even harder for the committees and judges.

Congratulations to all these fine students.