Juried Student Art Exhibit Results

The Radford University Art Museum’s annual Juried Student Exhibition features art celebrating the artistic merits of the student community. The show is up until Feb. 13 at the museum’s downtown Radford location.

This year's juror was MFA alumna Jennifer L. Hand '95, instructor of studio art for the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech.

She owned and operated The Gallery in Radford, where she sold the work of local artists, and curated and hung exhibitions for five years. Hand directs the Art Gallery at Mish Mish, selecting and hanging monthly exhibitions

Hand is also a professional artist and has shown her work in 94 exhibitions since 1991 including 34 solo and collaborative exhibitions and 60 juried and group exhibitions ranging in location from New York City to Washington state to Gdańsk, Poland.

“This is a Fantastic body of work,” she said about the juried exhibition during her juror remarks at the Feb. 1 opening reception. “I am very impressed and all of you should be extremely proud of the work you have done. You are getting a good education here at RU.”

Within the juried entries accepted in the show, she selected 19 for awards. During her talk, she defined six qualities represented in the winning pieces.

The first quality was pure technical mastery, which she found particularly evident by Haley Goins’ “Storm,” Kala Marshall’s “Hummingbird Habitat” and Jarrod Wilson’s “Hail to the Foam.”

Nicole Thomas’ “All the Jazz” characterized the notion of well put together art, both in a physical and compositional sense.

Economy is a third quality as seen in Emily Bowman’s “Sanguinity.” Hand cited the artist for taking a risk and finishing the drawing earlier to allow the viewer to fill in the gaps.

Two pieces exemplified the attribute of presence, when Hand said the works breathe with their own life. Keturie Hehn’s “Memories From an Empty Bench” and Clara Heaton’s “In the Beginning” are those two works.

Kevin Kwon’s “The Beginning III“ and Kaitlynn Slaughter’s “Untitled #7” incorporated a fresh composition not following traditional or predictable patterns or standards.

The sixth quality was the narrative or a sense of story, as found in Emily Blunt’s “Nesting,” Kathryn Mattox’s “Forest Spirits," Amber Slusser-Brillhart’s “Noctua” and Layla Dobos’ “Stalked, Scavenged & Consumed.”

Other award winners included Tonya Gardner, Yaritza Pacheco, Langley Anderson, Haley Alexander, Burke Staunton and Cat Baker.

The Radford University Art Museum Downtown is at 1129 E. Main Street in Radford. It is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Saturday’s from 12-4 p.m. For more information, email ruartmuseum@radford.edu.