$10,000 Juror's First Place Winner: "New Money" by Davis Erickson
There once was a beautiful proposal back in 2013 to pay tribute to Harriet Tubman, her unsurpassed bravery and hard work towards abolition, by featuring her portrait on the US $20 bill. 10 years later, this fabulous concept has yet to come to fruition in the mint. I have been developing a technique for mimicking the look of intaglio etching using spray paint for the purpose of creating a mural of Harriet Tubman featured on the US $20 bill. Every attempt yields better results than the previous.
As Harriet would famously say, "keep going.” We need to continue moving forward. Let us not forget, rewrite or dwell in our past. Let us move forward and create a future where all human kind can thrive! It’s long overdue, Let’s go!
$5,000 Second Place Winner
$5,000 Second Place Winner
$5,000 Second Place Winner
"Changing Worlds Now" by WALSH/BLAZING
Explore the personal impacts of climate change as this looping projection weaves a past-present-future tale incorporating diverse creation narratives, including the Judeo-Christian order. This is a unique story-telling experience embedded with local landmarks and reflections by local residents. The surreal progression takes you on a journey through the industrial age to the present moment, when the climate crisis is recognized not only as the greatest threat to U.S. national security, but as a potential catalyst of mass extinctions and a food chain disruptor. The piece ends with a future that is still unwritten—waiting on the actions, or lack thereof, we take as a society at this pivotal point in time.
$2,500 Third Place Winner
$5,000 Second Place Winner
$5,000 Second Place Winner
"Passage" by Wayne Vaughn
Nature and industry inspire my work. I strive to bring animation, balance, and intrigue to my creations, playing with gravity, but keeping trust between the piece and its landscape. My hope is that my work invites the viewer to play, question, and respond. My greatest satisfaction is bringing a smile, inciting a conversation, or inspiring a new creation.
$500 HONORABLE MENTION
$500 HONORABLE MENTION
$500 HONORABLE MENTION
"Weaver Your Dreams" by Michelle Spaulding
This colossal dream catcher represents the many paths that I took along my artistic path. As the spider weaves her web, I was able to weave the different fibers of my life together to create a physical manifestation of my life’s creative journey. This piece of art brings each unique creative experience of mine together to form a collective bonding of the phases of my artful journey. Each mandala is unique, no two are the same. What unites the circles is the crochet technique and color family that I used to craft each circle. Color and texture is my creative passion. Creating this dream catcher and uniting the different phases of my artistic process together through string brought a full circle moment for me in my journey. The colorful fancy ribbons represent the many different and unique people that have been in my life. Each ribbon a prayer to the Divine.
$500 HONORABLE MENTION
$500 HONORABLE MENTION
$500 HONORABLE MENTION
"SEEING THROUGH THE FOG" by Britt Flood
Painting is an extension of the parts of myself I cannot, or don't know how, to verbalize. I aim to visualize heightened moments of awareness and realization, capturing one's essence rather than physicality, to give inactivated spaces poetry and ephemerality. I feel an urgency to bring moments of tenderness to every day spaces through large scale painting and to activate overlooked areas with visual poetry.
$10,000 Eichholz Foundation People's Choice Award
"Return to Self (Icon #2 of 12 in the Icons of Transformation series—in progress)" by Eryn Donnalley
Mandalas were born from the Eastern traditions, most notably the Tibetan Buddhists, where certain symbols and structures are intentionally used to convey specific teachings. They were later psychologized by Carl Jung and viewed as a sacred art that is both universal and unique. Universal in the sense that they are seen as an archetypal image of wholeness; unique, as each is specific to its creator and symbolic of their personal internal world. A mandala is a container of consciousness. This five-foot mandala signifies Jung’s individuation process, or the return to Self; a process by which the conscious and unconscious aspects of a person become fused together. This is depicted in the maze, where three dis-integrated parts enter the growth path in the phase of disintegration (approximately 5’o’clock position) and exits the maze as one integrated whole in the identity phase (2’ o’clock).
$500 People's Choice Runner-Up
"Moosh's Final Gift" by Sydnee Yates, Jesse Barnes, and Logan Johnson
What was the name of the pet that changed your life? The creature who, irrevocably, altered me was named Meeka (I mostly called her Moosh). I’m not sure who saved who, more, in our connection. Yet, that connection was what made life worth living. She wasn’t the most affectionate cat in the world (not all the time, anyway), and I knew she loved me but, it wasn’t until the last 24-48 hours of her existence that I realized just how much she loved me. The only person she wanted around was me. She gave me a lot of things over the years: laughter, silliness, adventure, companionship, hope but, the biggest gift she ever gave me was an 180 degrees shift in how I saw myself. If that wonderful, little creature felt safe enough with me to want me to be there when she left this world. So, as you look at this painting…I encourage you to remember the animal that changed you and, gently, ask yourself this: How do I see myself? How did my pet see me? Are those two perspectives different? If they are, which would you rather believe in? Lean into the lesson your animal came here to teach you, whatever that may be.
Town Awards
Town of Hillsborough Purchase Award
"Perpetual Bond" by TJ Christiansen
It is truly amazing the bond that forms between a mother and child right from the start, a relationship of love that lasts forever. I became inspired to create a mother giraffe with a teenage calf standing together and showing that no matter how much time passes by, the love between a mother and child will always exist. This piece focuses on the Western African Giraffe, who is now on the endangered species list due to intensive farming that is taking away from these animals’ habitats.
Town of Chapel Hill Commission Award
Nyssa Collins, creator of "Ambassador of the Eons Mammoth"
The land we call North Carolina is undergoing constant change - change that is rather hard to notice at the scale of a human life. In just the last 2.58 million (2,580,000) years that modern humans have existed (the most miniscule speck of time when compared to the 4,500 million (4,500,000,000) years since the earth formed), eastern North Carolina has repeatedly been submerged under the ocean during warmer eras, and thrust back above the sea during global ice ages. The first humans to arrive in North America around .013 million (13,000) years ago, near the end of the last ice age, found a land filled with megafauna like woolly mammoths, saber toothed cats, and enormous sloths the size of cows. Fossil records show both mammoths and mastodons lived in eastern North Carolina, their population slowly dwindling off with the arrival of humans. This mammoth, built from local bamboo and hemp twine, won't leave a fossil record, though. Like countless other fantastic and extinct creatures through the millennia, it will eventually decompose without leaving a trace.
Sponsor's Choice Awards
Eno River Mill
Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation
Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation
"Seeing through the Fog" by Britt Flood
Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation
Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation
Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation
"Moosh's Final Gift" by Sydnee Yates, Jesse Barnes, and Logan Johnson
Chapel Hill Magazine
Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation
Application Architects
"Totem of Potter's Creed" by ClayWorks Pottery Guild
Pinnacle Financial Partners
Pinnacle Financial Partners
Pinnacle Financial Partners
"Eastern Swallowtail" by Cricket Forge
Whitehall Antiques
Pinnacle Financial Partners
Anita Mills and Andrea Selch
"Blue Lotus Goddess" by Theresa Arico
Anita Mills and Andrea Selch
Anita Mills and Andrea Selch
"Don't Tell Me To Get A Grip" by Julie Slattery
Gail & Phillip Cooley
Gail & Phillip Cooley
Gail & Phillip Cooley
"What's Up, Homage to Verne" by Tim Werrell
Bluestem Cemetery
Gail & Phillip Cooley
Bluestem Cemetery
"Flo" by Leroi DeRubertis
2023 Jurors
Larry Wheeler
Larry Wheeler was the director of the North Carolina Museum of Art from 1994 until he retired in 2018. As director, Wheeler helped bring national recognition to the museum through his efforts to grow the museum’s collection and offer the people of North Carolina more, in his words, than “mute art” on the wall. Wheeler’s legacy includes the acquiring of 29 Auguste Rodin sculptures and the construction of the museum’s West Building, sculpture garden and reflecting pools. Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s governor, states, “North Carolinians of all walks of life have access to one of the most renowned art museums in the country thanks to Larry Wheeler’s visionary leadership.”
Stacey L. Kirby
Stacey Kirby is a queer, white-bodied, self-appointed civil servant from North Carolina who creates socially-engaged interactive performance art. Her work has been featured at Greensboro Project Space, 21c Museum Hotel, Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill, Gibbes Museum of Art, Appalachian State University, ArtPrize, Meredith College, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Nasher Museum of Art and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Mint Museum of Craft and Design. Kirby is a recipient of the ArtPrize 8 Juried Grand Prize, a NC Arts Council Artist Fellowship for Visual Artists and nominated for the United States Artist Award, Anonymous Was A Woman Award and a finalist for the 1858 Prize. She has been awarded artist residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA), Barton College (NC), the Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, FL) the Gibbes Museum of Art (Charleston, SC) as well as a visiting artist at UNC Wilmington. Her work is represented in the Ackland Art Museum at the UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University Rare Book Collection and other private collections. Kirby has a dual degree from the UNC-Chapel Hill in Studio Art and Journalism and Mass Communications.
Antoine Williams
Antoine Williams is an interdisciplinary artist who is heavily influenced by speculative fiction, critical Black studies and his working-class upbringing in Red Springs, North Carolina. Antoine received his BFA from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and his MFA from UNC Chapel Hill. He is a recipient of the 2017 Joan Mitchell Award for Painters and Sculptors, 2018 Harpo Foundation Grant Award, and the 2022 National Academy of Art Abbey Mural Prize. His work is in the permanent collection of the Nasher Museum of Art and the North Carolina Museum of Art; exhibits include Smack Mellon Brooklyn, Columbia Museum of Art, 21c Museum, Elsewhere Museum, Prizm Art Fair, The McColl Center of Art and Innovation, and the California Museum of Photography. His residencies include The Center for Afrofuturist Studies, The Hambidge Center, and the Joan Mitchel Residency in New Orleans. Williams was also a part of the 2021 Drawing Center viewing program and is an assistant professor of Drawing in the Expanded Field at the University of Florida.