DETROIT ARTISTS MARKET WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY
ANNUAL SCHOLARSHIP AND EXHIBITION PROGRAM
March 1 – April 6, 2013
The Detroit Artist's Market, which last year celebrated its 80th anniversary, proudly presents its 2013 Annual Detroit Artists Market Scholarship and Exhibition Program that includes the presentation of the scholarship awards to outstanding Wayne State University art students. The Detroit Artists Market (DAM) exhibition will present works of art by the ten student scholarship finalists as well as many distinguished alumni and faculty members. The DAM exhibition will open on March 1, 2013 with a reception: Members' preview from 6 – 7pm, and the public opening from 7 – 10pm. The exhibition will run through April 6, 2013.
This year's Exhibition and Scholarship Program also commemorates the many years of collaboration and support of the arts and scholarship programs by DAM and Wayne State University.
The student finalists of the John F. Korachis Scholarship Awards were chosen by the DAM Scholarship and Exhibition Committee. The selection process began with an open invitation to Wayne State University art students and was concluded with individual studio visits and interviews with the finalists. After lengthy deliberations, the recipients of the awards and scholarships were finally chosen for their originality, dedication and exceptional art work.
"This annual show is a special opportunity for DAM to connect directly with students," noted Nancy Sizer, Director of the Detroit Artists Market. "It echoes back to our original mission of highlighting young emerging artists, and also celebrates our long-standing relationships with our Detroit area's quality school programs."
John F. Korachis, who is the Chairman of the Scholarship and Exhibition Committee, made this comment concerning the show:
"This exhibition is extraordinary in many ways. In addition to celebrating and recognizing the contributions of two important institutions in our community, it also brings together many generations of fine artists, all of whom have been affiliated with Wayne State University. Most importantly, it allows us to experience the eclectic creativity of the ten student scholarship finalists of Wayne State University. This year's individual studio visits with all the scholarship finalists allowed the Scholarship Committee to engage in meaningful dialogue and to discover extraordinary quality of work by young artists with each expressing a unique, intelligent and creative perspective. More specifically: During the studio visit of a scholarship finalist who is a printmaker, sculpture, photographer and painter, the Committee discovered that the artist uses these combined talents to create art focusing on the vision of the American dream ironically portrayed through advertising icons of the post World War II era. He explores the narrative power of these sacred icons and their language by which they come to define the contemporary culture. We found a student with a bi-cultural background utilizing multimedia, including paper and fibers, to explore the duality of physical objects in order to permit the viewer to come to a better understanding of our presence in a multi-cultural society. In another studio, the student uses her artistic expression to conceptualize how our everyday experiences with other persons (including family members) are often fleeting moments. To translate this, the artist has created an extensive body of work in which she attempts to slow down these fleeting moments. Another student uses large canvas paintings to display her uniquely expressive work through which the viewer enters a mysterious landscape that immediately incites an emotional response. Pursuing a similar theme, another artist's work effectively obscures the most significant details of the art object's environment by creating iconic spaces that are extremely intriguing and well executed but at the same time unsettling as any meaningful narrative has been intentionally omitted. The human figure is the focal point of another artist's work. In order to obscure the identity of the human subject this artist utilizes a variety of methods such as smearing paint, simplifying the shapes, cropping of the figure, or by demonstrating the subject in an extreme zoom position. While visiting the studio of a ceramicist we discovered that his art demonstrates a journey to find the inner as well as the outer beauty of the object, or as stated by the artist: 'I am constantly searching to find the meaning of the real soul through my artistic expression.'"
The exhibition will run through April 6, 2013. The public will find that all the outstanding works of art on display by the generations of talented artists represented in this exhibition are available for purchase. The DAM gallery is open from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Tuesdays through Saturdays.
The Detroit Artists Market is located in the Detroit Cultural Center at 4719 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48201; three blocks south of The Detroit Institute of Arts, and one block east of Wayne State University. This event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in the lot directly behind the DAM Gallery. Visit online at www.detroitartistsmarket.org.
Sponsors of this year's scholarship program include John F. Korachis; National Airport Concessions, LLC; Gyro Creative Group; Raymond James; Ronin Sushi-Royal Oak; Constantine George Pappas, AIA Architecture/Planning; Inc.; Boloven, Tiano & Associates, CPAs; Peter Ruffner; Seaway Painting, LLC; The Kresge Foundation; Erb Family Foundation; Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.