Taking stock of all the plusses and minuses from their first year hosting a massive, statewide juried art show, CVG Show director Alan Newberg says one of the biggest triumphs is that more than 1,200 people came through the gallery during what had traditionally been its slowest month of the year. Tourists and locals alike.
“We probably would’ve been lucky to get 120 people through otherwise,” Newberg noted.
In a way, it also put Bremerton on the map in the statewide arts community. The spectacle of the CVG Show not only packed the gallery on opening night, it also brought people in for artists workshops and lectures and a concert in the gallery throughout the month.
Just a few days after the inaugural CVG Show was cleared from the walls last year, the Collective Visions crew was meeting to plan cultivation, promotion and execution of the next year’s statewide juried art show. And they’ve been working on it ever since.
“That’s what it takes to run an operation like this,” CVG artist/CVG Show volunteer Deanna Pindell noted, as she finished un-boxing one of the first rounds of entries in the storage room of Collective Visions last week.
The packages have come in, once again, in all shapes and sizes from all over the state. “The Ronald McReagan” from Seattle, a “vineyard truck” from Clinton, “Turquoise Woman” from Lopez Island, “A Hole in the Sky” from Mount Vernon and a “Jackson Pollack Chair” from Port Townsend, just to name a few.
Out of 260 artists submitting more than 800 entries, 131 pieces from 122 different artists were accepted altogether, in the fields of 2D, 3D and photographic arts, competing for more than $8000 in overall prize money.
CVG Show volunteers then worked with a blank canvas of a gallery to hang the pieces of art throughout all 2,400 square feet of Collective Visions’ downtown Bremerton space.
This year’s juror — Gary Faigin, co-founder and artistic director of the nationally recognized Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, also a distinguished painter in his own right as well as author of the classic drawing text “The Artists’ Complete Guide to Facial Expression” — will be selecting the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizewinners from each category — $1,000, $300 and $100 respectively —in addition to a $1500 Best in Show Award, all of which will be posted when the show opens at noon Feb. 1.
Audience submissions for the People’s Choice Award, a $300 prize, will be accepted through Feb. 6 and presented that night at the First Friday Art Walk festivities.
The show will hang through Feb. 27.
In addition, several CVG artists will be giving lectures throughout the month while the father/daughter duo of Patrick and Sophia Stoyanovich will give a concert at 7 p.m. Feb. 20, $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
The free artists’ workshops include: “Visual Arts in Washington—an overview” 3 p.m. Feb. 1 by painter Ken Van der Does, “Fine Art Photography” at 7 p.m. Feb. 12 by photographer Kit Sims Taylor, “Expression and Idea in 3 Dimensions” by sculptor Michael Kilgore and “Invention and Innovation in Art” by research artist Ron Harper.
For more information on those events or the CVG show, click here.
