Be Inspired

ANNUAL ART CONTEST

“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.” — Ella Fitzgerald

“I’m not going to continue knocking that old door that doesn’t open for me. I’m going to create my own door and walk through that.”— Ava DuVernay

Artists who registered for the 2022 Open Studio Tour were invited to submit original artwork to SCA’s Annual Art Contest on the theme of “Be Inspired.” The theme was very broad, so that all artists have the opportunity to choose their very best work that incorporates the theme. Where do you find inspiration? What doors will you walk through this year?

This year’s juror was Kathleen Hancock, the director of Griwmshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery at Bristol Community College. See her selections and read some of her comments below.

“I want to thank you for the opportunity to be with you again. I so appreciate organizations like South Coast Arts. Groups like yours take on such an important role in bringing artists and communities together.”

“Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to get to know some of you, and have exhibited work by some of you at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery. And for some of you, it is a pleasure to see your work for the first time.

As I looked over this year’s entries thinking about the theme of Be Inspired– It made me ask the question:

What is artistic inspiration?

Does the impulse to make art differ from, say, being inspired to bake a cake, or to make a career change, or develop a cure for a terrible disease?

I think we can all recognize the moment inspiration arrives. It almost always feels revelatory and magical—periods of clarity that emerge and embody within them all the mysteries, and all the solutions all at once.

Inspiration also feels hopeful and optimistic, two things that have been hard to hold onto in recent times. But I see those things sprinkled through all the works that were submitted for this year’s SCA Annual Art Contest..

Thanks to all of you for inspiring me every day. Congratulations everyone.”

— Kathleen Hancock

ABOUT THE JUROR: Kathleen Hancock is an artist, educator, and curator/director. She holds a BFA in Printmaking from Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY and an MFA in Printmaking from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. She is the director of the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts. She has taught drawing, printmaking, and book arts courses at Roger Williams University, Community College of Rhode Island, Rhode Island School of Design, and Bristol Community College. Before coming to the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery in 2000, she was exhibit coordinator and assistant director of the Bristol Art Museum.

First Prize, Don Cadoret
Bee True

“Cadoret’s carefully composed illuminations are full of decorative mnemonic devices, small puzzles waiting to be solved.”

Second Prize, Janie Kinnane
Copious

“Kinnane’s masterful woodcut reveals a process perfectly matched to her documentary approach to, and study of life, underwater.”

Honorable Mention, Pat Warwick
Reflection

“Warwick’s expressive command of the medium is no less masterful, and the intricacies she captures in her work are emblematic of the fleeting qualities of moments of being, ever shifting, always new.”