Paint Exchange Recipients 1999
Following are the latest winners of the Liquitex Paint Exchange Program. Our selection jury thought that they had good ideas and as the work is completed it will be hung in the Liquitex Art Gallery.
DECEMBER 1999
Mia Thomsett, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design
As an artist aiming to bridge the present and the past, Mia hopes the Acrylic B 1000 will help her devise the ultimate 'Millennium Project.' The project will consist of five large-scale collages with over-laying painted objects. The rustic-looking backgrounds (made of items such as old bingo cards and car ads) will be the base for modern paintings such as that of laser printers and other contemporary items. Thomsett seeks to "bring painting and collage together, and to bring aspects the past into the future through detailed, painted images." As we head into a new, hi-tech millennium, Mia wishes to remind us all not to "forget about where it all started."NOVEMBER 1999
Erin T. Cluley, Midwestern State University
Erin is a proud recipient of the Acrylic A 750 package. She will use it in creating a large mural in her school's Student Recreation Center. Combining the stylings of M.C. Escher's woodcuts and Albrecht Durer's engravings, Cluley hopes to create a collage of images relating to leisure activities. A third year student, this art major hopes the piece will "challenge me visually and conceptually."
R-Jay Ruiz, High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
Seeking to display the environmental transitions that have occurred in his life, R-Jay plans to employ the Deluxe Intro 250 set to a develop a urban-tropical canvas. The 24'x 60' work will feature a large beach image, reminiscent of the Philippines, with its palm trees and bamboo houses fading into the modern industrial streets of downtown Houston.OCTOBER 1999
Lisa Hochtritt, Columbia University
By combining gel medium, acrylic paint and her new Acrylic B 1000 package, Lisa Hochtritt plans to create free standing clothing sculptures. By augmenting thrift store clothing with a blend of various media, Hochtritt seeks to highlight the "recycling of stories and journeys that discarded clothes make." She also hopes to use her package to further explore the colors and textures of "retro" clothing. Lisa will design two structures, each of which will be designed to "engage the viewer" and encourage them to "interact with clothing in a non-traditional way." In this way, Hochtritt hopes her totem-like structures will help the viewer and the clothing create "a new story and an extended journey for both participants."SEPTEMBER 1999
Joanne Cecchetti, William Paterson University
Joanne will use her new Acrylic A 750 package to design paintings and drawings that will explore the magnification of details. This exploration involves the theory of holarchies, or where "everything is a whole and a part, is based on evolution, and follows the formula of transcend and include." She will be using gels, glazes and iridescent colors to develop a luminescent tone. In the creation of these works, Cecchetti expects to find "what was personal on a large scale evolves into the transpersonal on a magnified detail in a small scale."AUGUST 1999
Dan Kelly, Steve Elrick, Michigan State University
Dan and Steve, in collaboration with the Michigan Land Use Institute, lead a group called Presence. This group seeks to preserve endangered parts of the environment via the magic of painting. With the aid of their new Acrylic B 1000 package, Dan and Steve will act as mentors to various groups of youths. These groups will travel to threatened landscapes and capture their beauty on canvas. In turn, these paintings will be displayed in various public buildings such as schools and libraries. In addition to boosting public awareness of critical land use, the Presence group will help foster student confidence and enhance young talent.JULY 1999
C.Susan Connor, The Art Institute of Boston
Already possessing a bachelor's degree of art from S.U.N.Y., Connor is hoping to use her new package (Acrylic C 750) to take her into the world of graphic design. She is striving to "infuse my painting with the flexibility of technology" and incorporate her 2-D art into computer based imagery. With self-constructed canvasses, Connor blends acrylic, gel and other water-based media into paintings that have a geometric, graphic edge. She hopes to use her award in creating a series of abstract 10" x 10" paintings which will fuse her current style with text, geometric templates and stenciled numbers.
Tiffany Broyles, University of Kentucky
A proud recipient of the Deluxe Intro 250 set, Tiffany seeks to "demonstrate how college students can make a positive impact on their housing." She will create two movable partitions for her apartment. Each one will feature multiple viewpoints of everyday objects in a student's life.JUNE 1999
Blain Hefner, Midwestern State University
Blain will use his Acrylic A 750 package to create a colorful, three-dimensional mural for Midwestern State University's Student Center. A playful tribute to Raphael's "School of Athens," Blain's large-scale mural will depict students at work in the university's various fields of study and will feature Midwestern's signature arches and columns. Blain will use Liquitex texture gels, Liquitex gesso and gloss medium on fabric, and other media to create the mural's three-dimensional effect.
Christopher Yost, University of Kentucky
Christopher plans to contribute to the urban revitalization of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, with a 12-foot mural in the city's new waterfront park. His canvas: the 1895 Fort Nelson building, slated for renovation after years of decay. The mural will depict the evolution of the city and its architecture, Christopher says, and will be largely abstract, "revealing its subject matter only after multiple visits and close inspection." A Louisville native, Christopher looks forward to using his Deluxe Intro 250 package to help beautify his home town.MAY 1999
Giselle Ladouceur-Borowicz, Buffalo State College
With her Acrylic B 1000 package, Giselle will continue her work on a project entitled Artists Books from Recycled Artwork, which she started with the 1999 Arts and Humanities Student Award from Buffalo State University. Giselle's project is to take discarded artwork and remake it into artist books. At this stage of the project, she is pushing the boundaries of the concept and using an old piano needing to be refinished as a functional "book" using Liquitex acrylic paints and mediums.APRIL 1999
Lisa Gronseth, Yale School of Art
Lisa will be the recipient of the Acrylic B 1000 package to create a large collage painting. She builds her painting in a literal way, by painting with acrylic on paper, then cutting and reassembling the pieces to create an illusionary space. This allows her to "deal with the intersection of two fictional worlds." The first fictional world is the flatness of a surface made to contain depth by the illusion of perspective, and the second is the architectural representation of pleasure resorts. "This process is a compilation of ways of painting: the literal surface, the hard edge, the painterly." Lisa will also use her B 1000 set to experiment with how different mediums interact and compliment papers with different surfaces and structures.MARCH 1999
Isabel Manalo, Yale University
Liquitex has chosen to make Isabel's final MFA semester at Yale a memorable one. She will receive the Acrylic B 1000 package to help her finish a set of four large prints. Combining landscapes and mapping systems that feature such places as Wisconsin and the Philippines, Isabel creates spatial paintings that vary greatly in light, surface and color. She uses a variety of paints — from super matte to high gloss — and uses a thin layer of gesso as a primer. While she intends to focus primarily on color relationships, Isabel also plans to include "a lot of white." Her next paintings will feature a mapped out city (most likely Manila) set in the mouth of a volcano. With the aid of the B 1000 package, Isabel will investigate and explore these surreal, conceptual landscapes that are ecologically as well as historically driven.FEBRUARY 1999
Kristin DeGraeve, University Of Northern Iowa
In an effort to "reemphasize the fun and convenience that we used to look forward to in the future," Kristin will combine self supporting acrylic sheets and a collection of imagery to create works that will emphasize pop-art style futurism. Kristin will use her new Acrylic B 1000 package to help her in this task. With a subtle sense of humor, Kristin will connect futuristic-looking acrylic sheets, image transfers, painting, block printing, graphic design, computer designed images, bright colors, deep surface textures and back lighting to highlight her imagery's meaning. Kristin hopes to create at least 30 pieces. Each will be clustered into groups based on subject matter.JANUARY 1999
Barbara Toczydlowska, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
A recipient of the Liquitex Acrylic A 750 package, Barbara hopes to use paintings of car parts to show the relationship of what things actually are and what they appear to be. By dissecting the familiar parts of a car and breaking them down into smaller and more isolated objects, she will play with the ambiguity of space and use the objects to create "male" and "female" connotations. Taken out of their normal context, circles, ovals, bars and hoses can become eyes, ears and other body parts. Eight paintings will be made in all — each showing how perception of reality and actual reality can be very different indeed.
Danny Jimenez, Midland College
Danny and his colleague Adrian Dominguez are looking to fill a barren musical rehearsal room with an enormous mural. To aid them in this large task, they will be getting a Deluxe Intro 250 set from Liquitex The proposed mural, 13' x 30' in size, will be musical in nature. It will contain large scale imagery of musical figures from throughout the ages. All forms of composing — from early classical to modern electronic — will be represented. Mixing two art forms together, the two colleagues will seek advice from their musical peers to help create a "lasting reality" and "visual serenade to music." Additional funding for this project was provided by a grant from the Midland Arts Assembly.
Award recipients from 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002
