Make The Leap Challenge winners!

We'd like to thank all the artists who were inspired to participate in our Make The Leap Challenge and create new work in the spirit of Black Mountain College. The jurors—Wex Creative Director Erica Anderson, Chet Domitz of Hammond Harkins Galleries, CCAD Fine Arts Chair Kelly Malec-Kosak, artist-Wex preparator Nick Stull, and myself—were really impressed by the quality of work, and the range of materials and techniques used. But there could be only one winner of a year's Wex membership or a $75 gift card to the Wexner Center Store. Well, OK, two winners really. Once the votes were tallied, we decided to create a second prize for student work. Drumroll, please...

Winner: @pjlcardboard, aka Dublin-based artist and writer Paula J. Lambert

Artist's caption: "Much indebted to finally seeing @wexarts #LeapBeforeYouLook exhibition, #BlackMountainCollege, 1933-1957. Was particularly enamored of #FaithMurrayBritton's work, especially her 'Matiere Study' (but really all of the fascinating overlap between textile and other visual arts). It helped me finally to figure out how to finish this piece. Like the BMC artists, I am inspired to use materials one might otherwise throw away, much of the message and purpose of my #cardboardart. I've been moving in a new, more abstract direction with this piece, but have now added the tiny detailed lines I hope might relate to #textiles and #textileart, emphasizing some of the details of snow-capped mountains and cloud-filled skies. I also became determined to use the scraps of text left over from other collages that I couldn't yet bear to throw away; I resolved to use only the these tiny pieces to complete the text and not cut up anything new. Here is the final text I know is too finely detailed to read in the photo. The content is highly personal but I hope might still also hit upon some level of the universal: 'Our thoughts, once held so dear, shrink when pursuing further thought.//Begin your own tradition.//Even the most skillful, cruel relapse coming from the right (wrong, wrong!) is a viable point for much harder, side by side conversation, a complicated bubbling and motivation and resolve, which can then move toward opening our particular, wise, secret years.//'When?' I was asked, day after day, angrily. 'Soon.' It's the attitude we have. Time is not something that happens to us; the end, routine. See her? She was a paraplegic and bedridden. But now, even she would survive.' #MakeTheLeap, y'all.  Visit #WexnerCenter to see the show, or just take a (second?) look at the history of Black Mountain College for renewed inspiration in your own work."

Student prize: Cesar Jurado, Hilliard-Davidson High School

Caption from teacher (and portrait subject) Dan Gerdeman: "Matiere photo with my AP kids. Super fun project inspired by 'Leap Before You Look' at the Wexner Center. #wexnercenterforthearts #leapbeforeyoulook #matière #foundobjects #apstudioart @wexarts #maketheleap