Pretty Ugly: Art Beyond Beauty

Dimensions: 10 x 20
Artist statement: When it was alive, the Ram was called Rambo. His skull and horns were very beautiful in an ugly sort of way. Not having known him, I imagined what his face was like before it became a skull. I decided to depict him before and after death.

Dimensions: 12 x 12 x 1.5
Artist statement: Its the sadness of things unsaid and then, maybe its too late.

Dimensions: 21.5 x 17.5 x 1.5
Artist statement: I was compelled to create this piece based on a young couple I attended high school with who went missing. They met a tragic end. Over the span of 25 years information led to the capture of their murderer.

Dimensions: 15 x 8 x 2.5
Artist statement: Batman and Cookie Monster shred together carving through phantasmagoric cosmic slop. The Gypsy conjurer whispers of the wheels of fortune. Inertia. Balance. Beautiful.

Dimensions: 15 x 9.5 x 1.5
Artist statement: The pursuit of persona and image The happy consumer The price we are willing pay

Dimensions: 5 x 7 x 0.5
Artist statement: I photographed some crows I was watching. They were pecking at trash on a sidewalk. Later I was given a package of Thrills gum and I decided to combine the two incidents.

Dimensions: 5 x 7 x 0.5
Artist statement: I photographed some crows I was watching. They were pecking at trash on a sidewalk. Later I was given a package of Thrills gum and I decided to combine the two incidents.

Dimensions: 20 x 20 x 1.5
Artist statement: When humans and nature collide, it is usually nature that loses. So how to make reparations after a lone gull hits your windshield and suffers a fatal injury? “Face Plant” captures that instant and is an ode to the poor creature I tried but could not save. One less nuisance bird to steal your food or soil your car? Perhaps. But this work serves to remind us that life can change in the blink of an eye. Painted using layers of acrylic, ink and pencil, the piece also captures the helplessness of the gull’s tormented mate.

Dimensions: 36 x 36 x 1.5
Artist statement: “Queen of Night” is inspired by society’s obsession with physical beauty and unrealistic body images, while also recognizing the pursuit of beauty can be a source of pleasure rather than shame within the women’s movement. Painted in varied layers of pink acrylic and abstracted imagery, the piece conjures up scenes of a 1960s hair salon when bouffants and wigs were popular. The piece is meant to be playful in the face of ongoing debates over concepts of beauty. “Queen of Night” refers to the black tulip, which also challenges notions of what is and is not pretty.

Dimensions: 31 x 38.5 x 1.5
Artist statement: Call and Response – Triptych Two Versions In our culture it seems some emotions and states of being are more acceptable and desirable than others. Some we are drawn toward; some we reject in ourselves and others. What is rejected is often considered ugly, what we are drawn toward is beautiful. The main painting in this triptych represents sadness, depression, gloom. The second, smaller painting depicts a person offering comfort. Version one invites the viewer to place this figure next to the other while a second version leaves the figures in their own worlds. Empathy and offers of support is one response. The rocks offer a second response. But what do the rocks signify? The scenario depicted came from a memory, many decades ago of me, the moody teenager at the seaside with my parents but in a dark pit of my own. After awhile I noticed a sound in front of me. It was rocks dropping, being tossed by my father from behind. No words, but an achingly sweet way to reach out. For a man of few words, rocks were a term of endearment. Viewers are invited to place the figure on the right in whichever position they prefer, either with arm around the main figure or leave on the smaller painting. Technical note to juror: magnets on back of two paintings allow the consoling figure to be placed on either painting in a pre-defined position.

Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 1
Artist statement: I am responding to the animals with whom I share my surroundings. Here, I have created a collaborative artwork with local rats, engaging them to chew away the painting surface in order to unveil the underlying structure. It all started when: She saw that rat wander over almost seven months ago from across the street into the garden she called it like a cat kitty-kitty-kitty it stopped to ask is that an invitation? maybe how are you at dinner conversations? and that's how it all started. The rat settled in below the floorboards she overhears its movements and its mumblings whispering about architecture, philosophy, urban planning and the allure of art milking fault lines and storing things in anger so strong and mixed up with desire it licks its lips and pleasures its fury body with it's own tail. Every now and then she overhears her name but can't make out the context the seven-month invader weaponing little claws and teeth in justification of the meanest reminders has tunneled out the foundation. In clever unexpected ways the rat reworked how things stand up. When will you be over and moving on? when will you be done? she asked pretending it's a question will everything be hollowed out before we understand what you wanted but didn’t intend to mean? The empty vase left over from the last flowers is reused for collecting notes and scraps found when emptying pockets at the end of the day. The rat claims them unfolding each, and sets them in a row calling them poetry one minute and the next using them like tea leaves to predict the future. You talk about not listening that's not the future the rat is retelling the past and it isn't planning to leave. And just when despair sets in and the anxiety of counting up the costs she finds the courage to ask the rat to go. The rat holds her eyes then shrugs and simply says no, I’m not the one to go. I love you, says the rat and I love to see you squirm I’m saving you from hubris and your pride being committed to the world pretending civility and stewardship and art when you were made for private sufferings writing poems and communing with the dead. She fights back, rat, you’re wrong I’ve walked you in the round noticed all the angles hiding in your fur thinking the worst for your convenience building melodramatic suicidal contraptions to justify your actions trailing a wasteland. Your love was spent prematurely breeding up a storm. Left are constellation holes chewed in the roof icicles on the edges are spearing shards of crystal dripping from the ceiling everything is dangerous and damp dampening all desire for the repair work needed or for arguments claimed as art. It’s time for you to go. But she keeps responding the only thing she thinks she knows is not to be the one that gives up first let the conversation end when there is a possibility that it isn’t finished.

Dimensions: 18 x 18 x 1
Artist statement: I feel helpless witnessing public discourse reduced to the lowest denominator. Humour may be our only weapon so here is a toilet mat to soak up the bile of such offensive people.

Dimensions: 12.5 x 16 x 1
Artist statement: As I zoomed in more with each capture, I began to notice not just the crocodile itself, but the lights, shadows and shapes that made up it's texture. I became fascinated by the beauty in the previously deemed repulsive subject.

Dimensions: 14 x 17 x 1.5
Artist statement: Standing on a riverbank photographing this massive Nile Crocodile (at least 20 feet long), my roommate complained that the piece of yellow plastic litter was ruining her shot whereas I thought of my capture as an environmental statement piece. I did offer to hold her camera if she wished to try to remove the plastic to make the photo she wanted, but she declined. I discovered afterward that a croc can move at up to 30km/hour on land and leap up to 30 feet upward. Luckily our group didn't interest him that day as we were all within range.

Dimensions: 12.5 x 16 x 1
Artist statement: Along a rugged shoreline in Svalbard in early June, we discovered a massive number, likely millions, of skeletal whale remains had been pushed onto the 5 km long beach by the ice, waves and storms of the just past winter. It was a hauntingly silent graveyard along the entire length of the waterline, almost 10 feet wide in places, a natural memorial to the whales almost hunted to extinction in the past. Mother Nature had arranged the skulls in my image which to me look like jesters, the whales making a comeback despite mankind and having the last laugh. The man made structures there, long ago abandoned, were now just decaying ruins. Our expedition was the first in the area that year, so no human had rearranged those bones prior to our arrival.