Artist's Choice

Our first Art competition “Aritst's choice” started in August 2020 and concluded on September 24, 2020. Art Room Gallery received entries from many countries around the world: Croatia, Argentina, Spain, France, USA, Taiwan, Germany, Canada, Italy, United Kingdom, Indonesia, Sweden, Netherlands, China, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Austria, Iran, Poland,Finland and Bulgaria. The Artist's Choice theme in this competition included a diversity in types, styles and mediums (oil on canvas, acrylic, photography, pastel, mixed media, digital, watercolor, crayon, gouache, collage, charcoal, graphit and installation). The following evaluation criteria has been used for judging the artwork: creativity, interpretation of the theme, originality and quality of art, overall design, demonstration of artistic ability, and usage of medium. Jury decided to select 132 artworks for inclusion in the exhibition. Aside from First, Second, and Third place Jury also presented Merit awards and Honorable Mention awards.

Thank you, and enjoy the exhibition!

First place

Statement:

As a San Francisco Artist, Miss Ortiz takes pride in residing in a community that embraces cultural and expressive diversity, and in doing so seeks to create an artistic language as both an graphic designer and sculptural artist. Miss Ortiz playfully indulges her imagination with curious inspiration. This journey of "colorful discovery" continued to flourish throughout her school years with "artistic competition recognition." Seeking to refine her talents, she pursued a design degree from the San Francisco City College to the Los Angels of School of Design. Ready to start her career, Miss Ortiz received design assignments from both the corporate and entertainment industries. After building her own design firm, she decided to return to her "youthful desire" of being a sculptural artist. As I entered my senior years, I began to discover the "other me" as a sculptural and mix-media visual artist. The allure of building and shaping acrylic plastic elements with recycle materials drew great pleasure, thus allowing me to create a collection of fine art works while my "whimsical side" and love of fine art captured my true heart. Each stage was filled with anticipation from notebook sketches to full- size mock-ups while the production process of creating "laser cuts" took form as 3D sculptures and two basic themes. One underlying theme included incorporating rainbow colors as a sense of "spiritual empowerment." As a fan of pop artists like Andy Warhol, I also wanted to tap into my "whimsical side" by creating as well fun and entertaining sculpture statements.

Statement:

Janne Peltokangas (1979) combines his knowledge as a traditional blacksmith, with his background as a Sámi growing up in Lapland. Past ten years Peltokangas has worked as an independent artist around Europe and North-America. He has exhibited his art together with Eva Hild, Clay Ketter and Rick Smith, to name a few. Peltokangas has shown his work in art museums, galleries and Biennales. At the moment, Peltokangas lives in Finnish Lapland on his family farm on a remote island surrounded by mountains and spirits of ancestors. There he works in a smithy that has passed on in his family for generations, together with the age old knowledge of forging. In my artistic practice, I listen and follow the material. It is important for me to understand how the iron moves, so I can collaborate with it to create artwork. Inspiration comes from Lapland’s nature, spirits of ancestors and from death. I explore forms of complexity through traditional blacksmith techniques. In this I combine traditional Sámi aesthetics with contemporary art forms. I work with nature and mythological aspects. To express these forms it is necessary to get the characteristics of primitive and organic into my work. To show that rough and fragile beauty of the arctic wilds. With my work, I am paying homage to my Sámi roots and culture and tell stories of my forefathers. I breathe life into my sculptures by working the intuitive way and listening to the material. I don’t force my medium into something it doesn’t want to be, but summon its proper form and give it its existence in this realm of ours. These forms I create speak of my cultural mythology, one which holds a spirit and body of life within the form. The concept that the material has life is vital.

Statement:

Shawna Hinkel is an award-winning photographer from Dallas, Texas. She received her Certification from Professional Photographers of America (PPA) in 2014 and her Master of Photography degree in 2019. Her work has been accepted in the PPA International Photographic Competition Annual Exhibition every year since 2016, with images published in the annual Showcase Collection and Loan Collection books as well. She was the Dallas Professional Photographers Association Photographer of the Year in 2017 and 2018, and was named as one of the Top 10 photographers in Texas in 2020.