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Elly on the Arts: Flin Flon residents honoured at Northern Juried Art Show

Les Mis is over! Lots of work for three days of glory, but it was glorious! Now it’s time to move onto other noteworthy arts and culture achievements in Flin Flon and area.

Les Mis is over! Lots of work for three days of glory, but it was glorious!

Now it’s time to move onto other noteworthy arts and culture achievements in Flin Flon and area.

The Northern Juried Art Show (NJAS) was held in Gillam April 24 to 26 and as has become a highly anticipated annual event with many local artists beautifully representing our communities and bringing back prizes.

The NJAS celebrated its 37th incarnation in 2015, which is a long time for an art show to maintain its momentum. It is a provincial event that has five regional partner shows throughout Manitoba.

The other regions are Central, Parklands, Interlake and Westman.  Artists throughout the province are asked to send up to six pieces in as many as eight categories of fine arts to the show location.

In the Flin Flon area that usually means the Northern Visual Arts Centre (NorVA) on Green Street will collect the works and send them on to the show.

The art works are all packaged by the artists to try and keep them secure and free from damage, but don’t try to use styrofoam peanuts as they are forbidden (they’re very messy!) 

The artworks are then shipped to the show location, courtesy of Gardewine North, and arranged for viewing by a local team of volunteers.  It is at this point, before the show is opened to the public, that the judging occurs.

Every year the NJAS invites a team of three jurors, each with different areas of expertise, to provide written feedback to each artist on every piece. 

This year the jurors were Pauline Braun, who is no stranger to NorVA having served as a mentor to the artists there during the last year, Jan Hall, an artist from Thompson, and Melanie Rocan, a Franco-Manitoban artist from Winnipeg

The jurors may also select first, second and third place winners in each category, which in 2015 ranged from oil painting to fibre art to graphics/digital arts.

Winners

In Gillam there were 24 prizes awarded, including a youth category, and Flin Flon and area artists won 10 of them.

Linda Sonnenberg-Jackson won second place in Painting, Karen Clark was first in Drawing/Printmaking and Matthew Enns took third place in that category. 

Avery Ascher, an artist who lives in The Pas but is very involved in the Flin Flon culture scene, was first in Fibre Art and Sonnenberg-Jackson and Ascher were first and second respectively in the Sculpture/3D category.

Patricia Evans and Crystal Banting were first and second in the Photography category and first and third respectively in Digital Arts/Graphics. Patricia Evans also won the Best in Show prize, as determined by the jurors.

We know that 15 pieces by 12 different artists went into the show from Flin Flon and area but are not aware of the total number of works shown.

The show usually attracts about 125 pieces. The NJAS moves around the main centres of the north each year and next year it is scheduled for The Pas. 

From Gillam, the prize-winning pieces will go to Winnipeg for the Manitoba Rural and Northern Art Show, to be held July 8 to 28 at the Assiniboine Park Pavilion Gallery.

All of the winning art works from each of the rural shows will again be juried and they will choose a piece as Best in Show there, as well.

This show is sponsored by the Manitoba Arts Network. The opening is on Sunday, July 12 from 4 to 6 pm and is free to all. If you are in the city in July, be sure to check it out. Good luck to all our Flin Flon area artists.

Calendar

In other NorVA news, along with their regular meetings of the Photography Club and the Sketch Club, NorVA is having a logo design contest, which ends May 31. Anyone can enter. 

 

There is also a new show opening May 21, of works by printmakers, as well as, a two-day painting workshop May 29 and 30. Drop into NorVA for details.

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