HARRISBURG– The State Museum of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation want to remind artists and craftspeople to submit applications to exhibit their work in the annual Art of the State by the May 6 deadline.
Now in its 54th year, this acclaimed juried exhibition boasts a tradition of presenting highly creative art by Pennsylvanians, chosen by a distinguished panel of jurors.
Art of the State is scheduled to open to the public on-site at The State Museum on Sunday, September 11, 2022, and will close January 15, 2022.
More than $4,000 in cash awards will be presented. Awards for first place ($500), second place ($300), and third place ($200) will be given in each of the five categories. The William D. Davis Memorial Award for Drawing ($250) and the Art Docents’ Choice Award ($300) will also be presented.
Selection jurors will review and assign a numeric score to all work submitted. Those artists with the highest ratings in each category will be featured in the exhibition.
This year’s selection jurors are Sheila Cuellar-Shaffer, Michele Carlson and Roland Graf.
Cuellar-Shaffer is a Colombian American artist who graduated with a degree in architectural design from the Fundación Academia de Dibujo Profesional and studied fine arts at the Instituto Departamental de Bellas Artes in Cali, Colombia.
Cuellar-Shaffer’s practice represents her interest in identity, diversity and human rights. Her work has been shown at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Susquehanna Museum of Art, Kniznick Gallery at Brandeis University, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and The State Museum of Pennsylvania. She has been invited to show her work at the Pennsylvania State Capitol and the United States Department of Energy. In 2018 her design Democracy is Power was chosen by the Amplifier Foundation curatorial team, which includes Shepard Fairey and America Ferrera, to travel around the country with #powertothepolls. In 2020 Cuellar-Shaffer was awarded funds from the Heinz Endowments Just Arts program as Lead Artist of the recently completed Billboard Art Project. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Westmoreland Diversity Coalition and the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, and she has recently been appointed to Welcoming Westmoreland, a broad-based coalition taking on diversity and inclusion across Westmoreland County. Her work has been mentioned in publications including Forbes.com, Bloomberg CityLab and The Boston Globe.
Carlson is an associate professor of printmaking at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. She was born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in Seattle, Washington. She is a multidisciplinary practitioner working across the fields of art, writing, publishing and collective practice. She is formally trained as a printmaker but works across many mediums and approaches. Her visual work has been exhibited nationally at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Korean Cultural Center LA, Cerasoli Gallery LA, and Kearny Street Workshop. She has received residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Kala Art Institute, and Montalvo Center for the Arts.
Carlson began building her multidisciplinary practice in her undergraduate studies at the University of Washington, where she received degrees in printmaking (BFA), interdisciplinary visual arts (B.A.), and history (B.A.). Her printmaking and writing practice were further developed at the California College of the Arts, where she earned her graduate degrees in printmaking (MFA) and visual and critical studies (M.A.). Carlson’s critical writings on art and culture can be found in numerous publications including KQED, Art in America, Hyphen, and Afterimage. She is currently working on a manuscript titled The Visits, which examines the way kinship and family are constructed, set against the backdrop of incarceration and transnational adoption. This project has supported by the San Leandro Arts Commission individual artist grants, Kearny Street Workshop, and the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts.
Graf is an Austrian media artist, designer and associate professor at the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design. He crosses many disciplines to design objects, intervene in public spaces, and develop novel interactive systems that reframe the body and interactivity in the built environment. Graf’s doctoral research focused on tracing a convergence of artistic and ludic (playful) engineering approaches at the intersection of interactive art and human-computer interaction.
Since 1997 Graf has codirected the artist collective Assocreation, best known for its award-winning interactive installations that often manipulate the ground the public walks on, such as the telematic sidewalk Bump (Prix Ars Electronica Distinction) or the street video game Solar Pink Pong (Excellence Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival). Graf’s eclectic individual and collaborative creative work is all rooted in the same interest in space, technology and the future of human interaction. It has been shown internationally at art festivals, museums, galleries, design fairs, film festivals, conferences and computer expos, including the Bienal de Valencia, The Vienna Künstlerhaus, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, CENTRALE for contemporary art in Brussels, Milan Design Week, AVIFF Art Film Festival in Cannes, Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, CeBIT in Hanover, TEI in Stanford, as well as in the streets of New York, Detroit, Sao Paulo, Istanbul, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Kathmandu.
This year’s awards juror is Cynthia Haveson Veloric, who will select recipients in each of the categories.
Haveson Veloric is an art historian, curator, writer, lecturer and environmentalist. She has worked in the curatorial departments of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She recently combined her passion for art and environmental advocacy by pursuing a Ph.D. focused on international contemporary artists’ responses to climate change. Her dissertation is titled “Prolonged Looking and Sensing: How Ecoartists Are Shifting Consciousness Around the Climate Crisis.” In 2018 she curated the exhibition Repairing Our Earth, Diane Burko Artist/Environmental Activist and this fall she will curate the exhibition Risky Beauty: Aesthetics and Climate Change at the Main Line Art Center in Haverford, Pennsylvania.
Last year Veloric chaired the session “From Wheatfields to Ecosophy: A Consideration of Women Artists in the History of Climate Change” at the College Art Association conference. At this year’s conference, she is presenting on the Pollution Pods of Michael Pinsky, an architectural installation that has been shown at international climate conferences. She has published on Saint Gaudens’ sculpture Diana, the painters Barkley Hendricks and Martin Johnson Heade, historical and contemporary Philadelphia women artists, and environmental photography. Her recent public service includes the art committee for the upcoming Pennsylvania Climate Convergence in Harrisburg, the Clean Air Council in Philadelphia, the advisory board of the Brodsky Center for Printmaking and Papermaking at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the board of the Main Line Art Center.
Art of the State is open to Pennsylvania residents who are at least 18 years of age. Artists will compete in five categories: painting, work on paper, sculpture, craft, and photography/digital media. Entries to the competition must be submitted online. Additional information and the link to enter are available at statemuseumpa.org/ArtoftheState. The application deadline is Friday, May 6, 2022.
