The Kingsley Art Club has a Merit award program that searches for the next original art from six local colleges which is Sacramento city, Yuba, Folsom Lake, Sierra, American River and Cosumnes. Each college selects one winner to receive the monetary award.
Glen Husted, Professor in the Fine Arts department at Yuba College says, “ Here at Yuba we’ve partnered with the Crocker Museum to select the best art student here in the college. And in that the Crocker gives not only a merit award for their art but they also get a scholarship, a free membership at the crocker and the Crocker Museum (Located in Sacramento CA.) shows the work of the student and five other students from different colleges for a month at a special show. I want people to know that art is an important discipline in academics and that anyone can succeed. Original art is hard to manifest. In using your own voice in the arts you must put yourself out there.” which is what the Yuba college student winner Sarah Vanevenhoven did.
Husted describes Vanevenhoven’s work. “She did some very wonderful photography, beautiful self portraits. She used herself as a model.” As soon as he said that the very first artist that came to mind was Frida Kahlo which was a famous self portrait artist as well. The professor describes how the winner was chosen, “We select an independent artist that is not part of our faculty. That way we can have an anonymous judge for our merit award. The name of that judge was Alexandra Sprowls.
Sarah Vanevenhoven, the winning artist at Yuba College shares information about herself when she started school at Yuba which was 2014 then went to Oregon 2016 then came back 2017 which is when her winning art piece was created.
“I actually loved living in Oregon but I had a lot of anxiety during that time so doing this was a therapy. I’ve always liked photography. This project was the first serious project for photography, not just for fun.” then says she came back to California 2017. She explains going back in forth into her art developing more ideas for it and using her skills she had learned at school to have the masterpiece complete.“At first I wasn’t sure how I felt showing people a very vulnerable photo. I didn’t know how I felt about showing pictures of myself for people to see. I was worried at first on who was going to see it.”
Vanevenhoven describes her winning art work and what it means. “It’s an hourglass. Time takes control. You don’t really have control of what’s happening.” then describing another favorite project she brought with her was called Freedom, which was art work featured in flumes 2017. “ Sometimes the pictures that are done so effortless are usually the best.”
The winning artist says how she felt when she found out she had won the award. ” I was super excited and felt like people started noticing my work more, and it showed me I have the potential to go farther in art.”
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