I am happy to share that my “Hannibal Trolley Tour” received First Place honors in the River City Art Association 15th Annual Juried Exhibition in First Financial Bank in downtown Terre Haute, Indiana.
Exhibition juror and gallery director at Indiana State University Tanmaya Bingham noted that she selected my photograph for its “Hopper palette, great composition, technique.”
All 78 works by 29 artists in the exhibition will remain on display until Aug. 31 with the winning entries to be featured throughout September in the First Financial Bank Springhill location.
The photograph was taken in 2020 from inside the Hannibal trolley during a sightseeing tour of Hannibal, Missouri, boyhood home of Mark Twain (writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer Samuel Clemens). The trolley windows frame the cityscape including a mural of Mark Twain on one of the buildings.
Six of my abstract works of art, created from my original photographic images, are featured throughout August in River City Art Association’s Artist of the Month gallery space in the Vigo County Public Library in Terre Haute, Indiana.
I design representational and abstract art to pique interest and curiosity and challenge the imagination. I have been honored for nature photography in Nature Conservancy competitions for exhibits at Indianapolis International Airport, but find appreciation for my photography-based abstract designs most rewarding.
One of my designs intrigued the juror of the 2022 Abstract April show at Covered Bridge Art Gallery just enough to garner a First Place as well as my second Best of Show at the Rockville, Indiana, gallery. My photography-based abstract “Vegas Elvis 1977” was juried into Swope Art Museum’s 75th Annual Wabash Valley Exhibition in Terre Haute . Other unique designs have been selected for shows in Arts Illiana Gallery in Terre Haute, and the Indiana University-East Whitewater Valley Art Competition in Richmond, Indiana. I also have a photograph in the Permanent Art Collection at Indiana State University and an abstract in the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology collection.
To satisfy my enthusiasm for fantasy/whimsies -anything playful or fanciful, as an artistic creation – I take creative license with my photographic images to design one-of-a-kind abstractions. I combine digital processes with traditional photography techniques to intensify colors and contort form. Brilliant designs in black negative space liken some of my artistic expressions to black light and scratch board art. Like the Rorschach test, the subjectivity of my ‘inkblots’ is open to interpretation. I challenge viewers to study my designs and assign their own meaning before I reveal the photographic image used to create each abstraction. I like to keep them guessing and experience their reactions to the transformation.
To make many of my reimagined art pieces command even more attention, I “think outside the frame.” Stripping away conventional parameters and exposing the image on canvas, leather, hardboard, wood, acrylic or metal, creates a unique presentation and dramatic viewing experience.
The six abstracts in my August display:
Fireworks, a dye sublimation on aluminum, floated off acrylic background. Selected for Arts Illiana Gallery “Red” exhibition (original image of star hole-punched into metal lantern desk light).
Apache, a lustre image face-mounted on 1/4-inch acrylic, dibond backing, selected for Arts Illiana Gallery Second Annual Juried Exhibition (original image of baby shower cake).
Xtraterrestrial, a dye sublimation on aluminum, floated off acrylic background (original image of rooster feathers).
Veil Nebula, a dye sublimation on aluminum, floated off acrylic background (original image of white cactus bloom).
Crow Court, a dye sublimation on aluminum, floated off acrylic background. Selected for Arts Illiana Gallery Crow Show (original image of crown vetch).
Jack In The Box, a dye sublimation on aluminum, floated off acrylic background (original image of an early Dairy Queen Curly the Clown sign).
Sheila T Illustrated© 
You must be logged in to post a comment.