Coburn Goes Small

The Coburn Gallery at Ashland University would like to announce the awards for the 2013 national juried exhibition titled “Coburn Goes Small,” which features 33 artworks that are 20” x 20 “ or less including the frame. This year, 86 artists entered the Coburn Goes Small competition, with a total of 168 works considered for inclusion in the show. The juror for the exhibition was Jessica Somers and she was responsible for selecting the artworks and the awards for the exhibition.

Best of Show award went to Manuela Holban’s oil painting on panel entitled Mirror Reflections receiving a $600.00 award.

Romanian born Manuela Holban went on to study art and art history at the Fine Art High School and Fine Art Institute in Bucharest, Romania. Her studies were followed by extensive travels. Manuela Holban immigrated to United States and presently lives in Maryland. She is represented by Gallery Chiz in Pittsburgh, Pierogi 2000 in Brooklyn, New York, Muse Gallery in Columbus and Maria Pestana, Madrid, Spain. Her work can be found in many private collections in United States, France, England and Australia. Central to her work is the human figure as voyager and explorer of time and space. Brought back in time, as from a magic lantern are figures, invented or real who invite the viewer to unravel a never ending story.

The following artists received $125.00 honorable mention awards: Justin Playl’s sculpture entitled Table Adaptation of Printing Press ( Exploring Incompleteness Between Original and Copy ) , Sigrid Zahner ceramics work entitled Family and Dog and Keith Wilde’s acrylic on panel entitled Hostage to a Divine Cascade.

of Fine Arts in sculpture from Bowling Green State University in 2011.  Justin currently lives in Cleveland.  By day, he poses unconvincingly as a sculptor in order to keep his super-powered alter-ego secret from his enemies, and at night he fights evil and saves the innocent.

Justin Playl is a time-traveling superhero, here from the future to save the world.  He earned his Bachelor 

Sigrid Zahner was born and raised in London, England, and is the head of the ceramics department at Purdue University. She raised two boys to adulthood, and it nearly killed her. Being an artist and a mother diverted her abilities to work in a fully-focused way in either arena, and as a result she made work with fragments of both material and time.  Zahner now sees this as a metaphor for the structure of life, full of seemingly disjointed and unrelated pieces that together actually make up a cohesive whole.

Clay is not only the most transmutable of all materials for Zahner, she  also uses  it as a political statement: a material that is often relegated to the 'craft only' arena, it seems to carry the same sort of stigma that is assigned to the lower echelons of society. This dismissal of such a prosaic yet multi-faceted material, that is often so easily dismissed in the world of fine art, is a reminder of our sometimes unequal treatment of each other according to our origins, and to what is fashionable within or toward a certain demographic at the time.

Her goal as an artist is to supply the audience with a source for thought and personal speculation rather than present a didactic point of view; an attempt on her part to allow the audience (and herself) to experience the poetics of ambiguity.

Keith Wilde is an artist and art educator living in Athens, OH.  He holds degrees in Studio Art from Kenyon College and Art Education from the University of Minnesota - Duluth.  This summer he will be teaching printmaking and video production at Circle Round the Square, a youth art camp in Nelsonville, OH.  At the same time his work can also be seen at the Mansfield Art Center, Mansfield, OH and at the Paper Circle, Nelsonville, OH.

“When sensation becomes meaning, that is the art I most admire.”

“My paintings use the language of realism but also allow the media to make its own statement.  Within the intersection of subject and media I strive to convey inescapable sensations.  Sensation is a language that we tend to understand quite naturally.  It is the language of dreams, faith, and love.  Dreams can speak volumes with just a few half-realized impressions.  That is the art I wish to pursue.” Keith Wilde

The Coburn Gallery is open Monday-Friday from 10am-5pm and 12noon-4pm on Saturday/ Sunday.   The Coburn Goes Small exhibition closes on Sunday June 16, 2013. For more about the Coburn Goes Small exhibition  at Coburn Gallery, visit www.ashland.edu/coburngallery or find us on FaceBook.