2017 Whitewater Valley Art Competition

David Michael Slonim

Born in Miami and raised in New Jersey, David Michael Slonim received his bachelor’s degree in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988. For ten years thereafter, he illustrated for clients including Wrigley’s Gum, Reader’s Digest, IBM and T.G.I.Fridays. Nineteen years ago, he turned to painting full time. His early paintings of figures and landscapes morphed into abstraction as he began focusing on the structure beneath the image. Extensive study of art history over two decades led Slonim from Cezanne's transposition of form into chunks of color, to Wyeth’s watercolor studies, to Diebenkorn’s abstractions, to the playfulness of Picasso's synthetic cubism, to the childlike boldness of Miro, all of which served as exemplars.

Slonim's abstract works have been profiled by American Art Collector, Western Art & Architecture and Southwest Art. His works are shown by galleries in New York, Chicago, Boston, Scottsdale, Jackson Hole and, now, Indianapolis. Slonim’s paintings hang in the permanent collections of several museums, and in important private and corporate collections. The artist and his wife Bonnie have four adult children, and live in Anderson, Indiana with a dog, according to Slonim "that matches the carpet."

Mark Chepp

From 1970 to 74, Chepp attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and completed two graduate degrees, first in art (M.S., 1972), and then in art history (M.A., 1974). Upon graduating, he worked at UW-M in a variety of positions, from 1974 to 1991, eventually becoming Curator of the UW-M Art Museum. He left UW-M in 1991 to become Executive Director of the Springfield (Ohio) Museum of Art, retiring from that position in 2006 to pursue a teaching career at Wittenberg University (in Springfield) and Urbana University, as well as to devote time to his own studio painting. His paintings have been exhibited at the Canton Museum of Art, the Southern Ohio Museum, Columbus’ Keny Galleries, the Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery, the Ohio State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition, and at the Springfield Museum of Art. His 2010 dual exhibition in Columbus (with Elsie Sanchez) was named one of the year’s top ten by the Columbus Dispatch. In 2013, the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, in Portsmouth, invited him back into the museum field to fill their vacant position of Executive Director. He has been there since then, along with his wife, Charlotte Gordon, who serves as Artistic Director.

Charlotte Gordon

Charlotte Gordon is the Artistic Director of the Southern Ohio Museum in Portsmouth, Ohio, overseeing the visual, musical, and performing arts and educational programs as well as Museum collections. She is a native of New Orleans, LA, and received a BFA from Newcomb College of Art of Tulane University and a Masters degree in Museum Studies from the Southern University of New Orleans.

Ohio has been home since 1986, first in Columbus as a studio artist, and then in Springfield as first an educator then serving as Museum Curator. Through the years as an arts administrator, Charlotte always retained a studio. “I am an artist, and that helps me to be an effective arts administrator. I love materials, meeting artists, and exploring what is being created in studios today. Growing up in the South and next to the water still informs my work today.”