‘Stages of Life’ in art: Winners of $1,000 prize to be announced Tuesday

Home Culture ‘Stages of Life’ in art: Winners of $1,000 prize to be announced Tuesday

“It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.”

This ending line of Walt Whitman’s “This Compost” was the inspiration for sophomore Cecily Parell’s entry in this year’s thematic art competition.

Parell’s work, a wet-clay sculpture of a cow skull, represents death, which she called “the great provider of life.”

“Without death you don’t have the elements to go back into the soil to be renewed and made into something else,” Parell said.

This year’s theme is “Stages of Life,” and the three winners of the 17 submissions will be announced at the opening of the student art show on Tuesday at 4 p.m. There will be a prize of $1,000 awarded to the best drawing and painting piece, $1,000 for the best sculpture, and $1,000 for the best digital-medium piece, as judged by the entirety of the art faculty.

Associate Professor of Art Barbara Bushey said this year’s entries were some of the strongest she’s seen.
“All media are represented,” she said. “I think that divvying up the prize money was a good thing, because somebody who worked in sculpture might think ‘it’s too hard for me to get to the point where it’s done,’ and someone in photography might think ‘I can do a whole lot but I might not be considered because oil paintings take more time.’ We thought dividing by media might encourage more people to participate, and we were right.”

The contest began in 2007, and topics over the years have included Shakespeare, mythology, biblical love, the American founding, portraits, hands, and energy.

“The art faculty had all sorts of ideas for how we would have approached energy, but it didn’t work so well,” Bushey said.

Junior Forester McClatchey submitted a 30” by 36” oil painting of baby sea turtles fleeing towards the surf.
“The theme was ‘Stages of Life’ and for some reason that was an inescapable image. When baby sea turtles hatch it’s a terrifying experience for them — less than four percent survive,” he said. “I didn’t want it to be strictly a metaphor, but it definitely has a bleaker tone than some of the other submissions. From the perspective of the birds diving down to get them, they are allowing their chicks to survive.”

McClatchey’s piece took him a month of nightly work to complete, and Parell’s piece broke three times during the process.

“I have a collection of skulls. My dad’s a veterinarian and my original interest here was biology. I’ve been doing skulls for a while. It helps me to learn the anatomical features,” she said. “It’s fun to sculpt skulls because they are so fragile. It’s a challenge. Mine broke three times. With wet clay you have to work really quickly and if one part is too thick or too thin, or if you don’t put a break in there, like I didn’t in the eye socket, it will pop off.”

One caveat to the contest was that students were not permitted to seek any advice or approval from an art
department professor. McClatchey saw this as both a challenge and a benefit.

“There were certain mistakes that I made that I couldn’t see till I was finished. But I also made some risky moves that I probably wouldn’t have been permitted to do by professors.”