The Martin Museum of Art is displaying the work of art students completed within the past year. The show opened at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday with a reception in the Martin Museum, and it will run through April 17. Guest juror Clint Willour, curator of the Galveston Art Center, presented awards and monetary prizes to the selected students.
Willour chose about 80 pieces of the 200 works submitted, with top prize winners from eight categories. Since many submitted pieces were projects for the same courses and could look similar, Willour said choosing the winner of each category could be difficult. Upon revealing his choices, Willour divulged the secrets of his selection process.
“It was like choosing which of your babies is the best,” Willour said. “But it was about the quality of the work, the inventiveness of the work, the craft in the work and the way it was presented.”
There were eight categories, with one winner for each medium of studio art. The winners were Cypress junior Kayleigh McKenzie’s fiber arts piece “I Don’t Eat Sushi”; Coppell sophomore Joshua Martin’s drawing “No Body Nose”; Plano senior Sheridan Ellis’s painting “Once at Sea”; Tomball junior Kyle Stewart’s photograph “Through”; Leander senior Jillian Shaw’s woodcut “Celebration of the Mundane” and graphic design piece “Black Glasses”; Waco senior Alice Fry’s ceramics piece “Looking Glass”; and Austin sophomore Reid Sullivan’s sculpture “Temple.”
Students were encouraged to submit up to four pieces to enter into the art show. Although Shaw only hoped to have one of her pieces in the exhibit, all four of her submissions were selected.Two of them, “Black Glasses” and “Celebration of the Mundane,” won the top prizes in their categories.
“I really wasn’t expecting it at all,” Shaw said. “It was so overwhelming. I had to go and sit down.”
Willour had a very special bucket list item: to judge art shows at all four Big 12 schools in Texas. The Baylor Student Art Exhibition was the final stop. Having achieved this goal at the end of an illustrious career as an art curator and frequent exhibition jurist, Willour has wrapped up his work in the field with the Baylor Art Department.
“It was a great way to end a career in the art world and with a great result,” Willour said.
A variety of student artwork is available for purchase but can be viewed free of charge in the Martin Museum of Art, located in the Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Building, until April 17.
