This year’s 45th annual Whitewater Valley Art Competition (WVAC) features a collection of new and impressive artworks by talented award-winning artists and entrants.

Originating in 1978 with open judging, the WVAC has hosted prestigious artists and art experts of national acclaim for the jurying.

Jurying for this year’s event was held on September 22. The prerecorded event is available for viewing on IU East Facebook Live.

Artwork was selected by this year’s jurors Erin Holscher Almazan, professor of printmaking and drawing at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio; Dawn Holder, associate professor of studio art at Indiana University Indianapolis’s Herron School of Art and Design; and Jacinda Russell, associate professor of art at Ball State University.

Jurors selected the awards and entries for the WVAC during a reception on October 13.

The 45th Whitewater Valley Art Exhibit is on display now through December 15 in the Tom Thomas Gallery and Meijer Artway, both located in Whitewater Hall. The exhibition is presented by First Bank Richmond.

IU East’s 45th Annual Whitewater Valley Art Competition Top Entrants

First Place: ($2,000 in addition to a 2024 Solo Exhibition Invitation)

• Tracy Longley-Cook, Dayton, Ohio — Timekeeper, digital pigment print

Jurors’ statement: Our first prize choice, Timekeeper, is a simple and clean composition that captures a moment of quiet but utterly engaging action: a hand frozen in time, forever pouring a cascade of black dust onto doily. The image reverberates with the cyclical nature of daily time, its dirty accumulations, and the duties that have long been considered “women’s work.”

Second Place: ($1000)

• Rob Millard-Mendez, Evansville, Indiana — The Sackler Family’s America, repurposed prescription bottles, thread, paint, & wood

Jurors’ statement: The Sackler Family’s America welded familiar prescription bottles into map of the United States as a biting commentary.

Third Place: ($500)

• Collen O’Rourke, Grand Rapids, Michigan — Niamh, seed bead weaving

Jurors’ statement: Niamh stood out for its richly harmonious color and sophisticated composition in an unlikely craft material.

Honorable Mention: ($250)

• Chayton Davidson, Knightstown, Indiana — Stepping Over to Bathe, archival pigment print
• Bert Gilbert, Solsberry, Indiana — My God how she worked to keep him happy, cast iron and steel clips
• Nathan Taves, Columbia City, Indiana — Wheatfield Falls, oil on panel

Jurors’ statement: My God how she worked to keep him happy gives as much information in the title as in the form and draws unlikely connections to other works in the exhibition that emphasize care, connection, and emotional labor. Works such as Wheatfield Falls and Stepping Over to Bathe resonate in their use of space and light, directing our attention to places that might otherwise be overlooked (a bathroom, a field) and facilitating a transmutation of focus that splinters between present and past, here and there.

In addition to the award winners, work from the following artists is included in this exhibition:

Audrey Barcio, Evanston, Illinois; Gregory Bryant, Lafayette, Indiana; Ann Marie Curley, Beverly Hills, Michigan; Hector Del Campo, Westfield, Indiana; Gretchen Durst Jacobs, Dayton, Ohio; Olga Evanusa-Rowland, Richmond, Indiana; Carl Gay, Richmond, Indiana; Jeanette Hammerstein, Bloomington, Indiana; Nicholas Hill, Granville, Ohio; Leslie Hirshfield, Evanston, Illinois; Jungyun Kim, Athens, Ohio; Kathy McGhee, Galloway, Ohio; Kathy A. Moore, Casstown, Ohio; Jose Ochoa, Chicago, Illinois; Nancy Raen-Mendez, Evansville, Indiana; Matthew Schellenberg, Farmington Hills, Michigan; Carol Sexton, Richmond, Indiana; Sara Simonson, Macomb, Illinois; Wendi Smith, Corydon, Indiana; Jenna Suggs, Gordon, Ohio; Joseph Swanson, Richmond, Indiana; Nancy Taylor, Richmond, Indiana; Sara Torgison, Cincinnati, Ohio; Kim Vito, Fairborn, Ohio; Clinton Wood, Cincinnati, Ohio; Cynthia Young, Zionsville, Indiana

About the Jurors

Erin Holscher Almazan is a professor of printmaking and drawing at the University of Dayton in Dayton, OH. She is a native of North Dakota. She received her BFA in Fine Arts from Minnesota State University Moorhead and her MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, New York. She taught as an adjunct instructor in Foundations at Rochester Institute of Technology prior to teaching at the University of Dayton. 

Almazan has completed two printmaking residencies at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been included in exhibitions in connection with the Southern Graphics Printmaking Council and the Mid-America Print Council. She resides in Dayton with her husband and two sons.

Dawn Holder is an associate professor of studio art at Indiana University Indianapolis’s Herron School of Art and Design. She currently resides in Indianapolis. Holder teaches in the ceramics area and currently serves as the graduate director of the MFA in Visual Arts. She earned an MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA in Ceramics from the University of Georgia. 

Holder is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, and she has shown her work in galleries and museums internationally. Her work and her creative practice have been profiled in numerous publications, such as Arkansas Life and E-Squared Magazine, as well as in the book Women Make Arkansas: Conversations with 50 Creatives. 

Jacinda Russell is an associate professor of art at Ball State University. Currently residing in Indianapolis, Russell is a conceptual artist with a longstanding interest in edges, borders, and topographical extremes. Born in Idaho, she received her BFA from Boise State University in Studio Art and her MFA from the University of Arizona. 

Russell has examined the impacts of human-accelerated climate change in the polar regions since 2017. She works primarily in the mediums of photography, sculpture, installation, and bookmaking. Her artwork has been exhibited at numerous locations nationally and internationally including the southernmost place on earth, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Her photobook Salt. Water. Obstruction., exploring pandemic and environmental loss in the Svalbard Archipelago, will be published by Brown Owl Press in fall 2023.