Artist Barbara Simcoe serves as judge for annual drawing, sculpture show
The Art and Drama Department kicked off its 57th annual National Drawing and Small Sculpture Show on Feb. 17, with a lecture given the previous day.
This year’s guest juror for the show, Barbara Simcoe, an artist and professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, gave insight into her life and vision for art using multiple mediums such as oil paintings and graphite. A lot of her paintings are based on photos that she has taken on her travels around the world.
The department picked Simcoe to be this year’s juror after she won an award last year at the National Drawing and Small Sculpture Show. The juror’s job is to send out a nationwide call for artists and select the featured artwork sent by the artists. She also decided the award winners when she visited the Cain Art Gallery for the opening reception
“My goal was to pick out the best work in whatever genre, intentionality and content that I could glean from the work,” Simcoe said. “What I’m aways looking for is excellence, work that’s thought through and has a conceptual foundation that emerges to the viewer.”
Simcoe also answered the question about how she overcomes creative blocks.
“I went through a dry phase where I wasn’t feeling engaged, but I still felt like I had to continue my practice,” she said. “In a sense I was making myself work because I’m an artist and I feel compelled to make art. I didn’t choose to be an artist; art sort of chose me.”
The exhibit is free and open to the public. It will remain on display in the Joseph A. Cain Memorial Art Gallery through May 3. For more information, contact 361-698-1216 or art@delmar.edu.
