“The Life of Water” gushes with talent at the Cedarburg Art Museum

Cedarburg – Six awards for artists totaling $1,000 were announced at Cedarburg Art Museum’s tenth annual juried exhibition reception on June 1. This year’s juried exhibition The Life of Water drew entries from 138 Wisconsin artists. Fifty-eight artists’ artworks were admitted to the show based upon assessment of the artists’ digital entries by professional artist Christine Buth-Furness using three criteria. Juror Buth-Furness has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited her works in pastel and watercolor regionally, nationally, and internationally in more than 200 solo, invitational, or group exhibitions.

Waukesha artist Jeanne Cole Panka’s soft pastel painting Pond Reflections and Shadows earned the Best of Show award. A close-up, low-level view of raindrops on a pond reveals ripples and effectively suggests the start of a water journey from a small inlet to eventually flow to the ocean. The Second-place award went to Hal Rammel, Cedarburg, for his pinhole photograph Rocks Water Sky. The prolonged exposure time for a pinhole photograph produces blurred motion and imperfect reflections in Rammel’s black and white watery scene. Children splashing in a water fountain at a July 4 celebration contrast with hard-edge architectural forms in a downtown plaza in a colorful wood relief print by Justine Pawelski of Stevens Point. Pawelski earned a Third-place award for her Fountain on the Square print.

Three Honorable Mention awards in The Life of Water were given to Lois Buley-Wirth, Mequon, Reilly McClellan, Cedarburg and Tom Smith, Wauwatosa. Buley-Wirth’s Sustenance has a double meaning with water providing nourishment for the soul and for the body with her watercolor that has a dual abstract and realist quality. McClellan aptly depicts the strength and movement of water in his Cedar Creek Rush acrylic painting, and Smith also captures the movement of water in springtime in his oil painting Sauk Creek Sings with an abstract quality to it.

While many of the artists in the exhibition were inspired by the various forms of water outdoors (waterfalls, rivers, sea smoke, fog, and ice), two Cedarburg artists focused on water indoors. Christine Christon’s watercolor Bavarian Bathroom focuses on a running faucet in a quaint, international setting and Patrick Doughman’s egg tempera painting Saturday Night Meditation reveals a favorite place to meditate on life–the bathtub.

The Life of Water exhibition is on display through August 18 on the second floor. The Museum also currently displays its complete collection of Best of Show plein air paintings from the annual Paint Cedarburg events since 2001 on its first floor. The prize-winning paintings in the Museum’s permanent collection were made possible by gifts from the Ozaukee Bank Collection, the Ozaukee Bank’s Gift to the Future Fund, and private donors. The Cedarburg Art Museum is located at W63N675 Washington Avenue in the Wittenberg-Jochem mansion and is open to the public on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 10am – 4pm and Sunday noon to 4pm. Works that can be enjoyed outdoors anytime are six sculptural pieces in aluminum, Corten steel, or rusticated steel by Milwaukee sculptor Richard Taylor. Taylor’s outdoor sculpture in the museum’s front and back yard spaces are on display through October 6.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.