The medium of imagination

Handcart Days arts and crafts exhibit shows the many pathways to beauty

by Jenniffer Wardell

Source: Davis County Clipper

Annie Henrie and Mayor Joe Johnson stand in front of Annie’s best of show winning painting, “Go Big."

BOUNTIFUL — In the hands of an artist, everything from paint to fabric and metal can transform into something spectacular.

The 2010 Bountiful Handcart Days Arts and Crafts exhibit, which is running now through July 24 at the Bountiful/Davis Art Center, celebrates the artistic beauty found in everything from photographs, paintings, sculptures, quilts and gowns. The first place awards in particular display the very best each medium has to offer, the highlights of several different roads to creative expression.

The Best in Show award went to Annie Henrie’s “Go Big,” a magical, golden-washed painting of three children in pajamas who seem to be flying upward. It’s an ode to imagination in all its forms, whether it be the chance to soar in a dream or to stretch farther in building those dreams that keep us going through life.

Beth Ashdown took tops in her category with a stone-and-metal bird named “Bubbles.” The overall effect is extremely playful, with a long spring for a neck and a tail made of overlapping gears that seem like the bird’s namesake rising up out of a children’s blower. However, there’s also a real sense of gracefulness to the piece, with the dark patina of the metal and the combination of curves and open space.

In photography, Mike Kamanski got noticed with his “By the Great Salt Lake.” The picture is simple, elegant and deeply meaningful, with the seemingly eternal shoreline and abandoned ball serving as a sad reminder of the lake’s rapidly disappearing water. As someone who lived by the Great Salt Lake for several years, I found it almost haunting.

In the youth division, Saffron Perov won with “The Eye of God,” which uses tiny scraps of paper to create a sun and an all-seeing eye that looks almost primal. The color choices – cool instead of hot – add to the sense of otherness, and the subtle variegation throughout the entire work gives it depth.

The theme award winner, which the judges felt best emphasized the 2010 Handcart Days theme of “Traditions: Then and Now,” was Gloria Barraclough’s untitled painting of a pioneer woman creating her own work of art by lamplight.

Though lovely in its own right, the piece gains an enormous amount of context surrounded by the rest of the exhibit. Seeing them together, there’s an almost-palpable connection between today’s artists and the artists of the past, both filled with desire to create beauty with whatever they could find.

Read Source: Davis County Clipper – The medium of imagination Handcart Days arts and crafts exhibit shows the many pathways to beauty.