Four EcoEditions Award Winners!
23Sandy Gallery is pleased to announce our Best of Show and Purchase Prize award winners for EcoEditions, our international juried exhibition of contemporary artist books focusing on the environment. Juried by Cara List from the University of Oregon, artists from around the world reported on the state of our environment, ecology, sustainability, pollution, climate, recycling and our planet in general. The three Best of Show winners are:
Canadian artist Guylaine Couture's movable wheel book, Which side I choose is filled with images and symbols, made with collage, prints, and drawings, inviting viewers to compare various facts and think about which of an issue side they choose.
Dr. Bob Pliny's unique painted book titled For the Disappeared Ones features a Buddhist mantra expressing the wish that all beings find refuge in compassion, and in so doing, experience an end to suffering paired with the names, extinction dates and drawings of creatures who became extinct between 9740 BCE and 2012 AD.
Mary Uthuppuru's Destiny of Choice utilizes the Choose Your Own Adventure format to address the decisions we make that contribute to garbage in our environment today as a way to make readers think more about where refuse goes once it is thrown out.
We also have one Purchase Prize winner, Lisa Onstad. This book will be purchased by the gallery and donated to the artist book collection at the Univeristy of Oregon's Architecture and Allied Arts Library. Lisa's flag book titled Submerged chronicles the 1957 damming of Celilo Falls on the Columbia River with poignant text and hand-painted imagery to illustrate the complex social and ecological impact dams have on individuals, communities and the environment, not to mention ten thousand years of native culture and a thriving river ecosystem.
It's hard to believe that today is the last day EcoEditions will be on view in the gallery. Happily, many important works from this show will stay in gallery inventory. Many thanks to all of the wonderfully talented artists who made this show a fantastic success. Congratulations to all!