BmoreArt

2010 Bethesda Painting Awards Finalists Opening Reception, Exhibition of Finalists and Awards Ceremony Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 7 p.m.
Fraser Gallery
7700 Wisconsin Avenue / Bethesda, MD

Sheila Blake earned her Master of Arts in Painting from Goddard College. She is a recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award for Excellence in Painting in 2010 and an Images of Washington Purchase Award from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities in 2003. Blake has had recent solo exhibitions at the Sam Abbott Gallery in Takoma Park, MD and at the Glenview Mansion Art Gallery in Rockville, MD. Additionally, Blake’s work has been featured in group exhibitions throughout the East Coast since 1970.

Deborah Addison Coburn received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Cornell University. After post-graduate study in painting, graphic design and illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art, she studied at the Corcoran School of Art. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at the Foundry Gallery and MOCA DC in Washington, D.C., and was featured in juried solo shows at the McLean Project for the Arts, The Art League Gallery in Alexandria, VA and the Montpelier Art Center in Laurel, MD. Coburn has been invited to be a Seed Artist for the registry of the September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York, NY.

Deborah Ellis’s work stems from “the edge where dark and light touch, land and water merge or are tangent, the meeting of branch with sky and water where light can both dissolve and intensify form.” She received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Radcliffe College and was an Artist/Resident at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Ellis has been an instructor at The Art League in Alexandria, VA since 1989. Her work has recently been featured in solo exhibitions at Island Heritage Institute in Deer Isle, Maine, Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA and The Athenaeum in Alexandria, VA.

James Halloran received his Bachelor of Fine Arts, with a Concentration in Painting, at the University of Buffalo. Halloran has been the recipient of two Francis Morrison Memorial Art Scholarships, a Sentz Memorial Award for the Visual Arts, an Allentown Village Society Two-Year Art Scholarship and a Buffalo Board of Education Award of Excellence for Accomplishment in the Visual Arts. His work has recently been exhibited at Barcroft Community House in Arlington, VA; Artomatic in Washington, D.C.; Edison Place Gallery in Washington, D.C.; and The Art League Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

Katherine Mann received her Bachelor of Arts from Brown University, RI, and Master of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has had solo exhibits at Scott Center Gallery, Caroll Community College in Westminster, MD; Pressiton Gallery in Miami, FL; Red Brick Gallery in Yilan, Taiwan; Guandu National Park in Taipei, Taiwan and Bell Gallery in Providence, RI. She recently received Artist in Residence grants from Salzburg Kunstlerhaus in Salzburg, Austria and Vermont Studio Center in Johnston, VT. Mann has been a finalist in the Bethesda Painting Awards in 2008 and 2009, and a semi-finalist in the Janet and Walter Sondheim Award. She describes her work as a fantasy world where Buddhist symbols, blood clots, rainforests and coral reefs collide.

Lindsay McCulloch holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts from the University of Virginia and received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Boston University. She holds numerous awards, most recently including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Full Fellowship for Painting Residency at Vermont Studio Center, and an Art New England Award at the Boston Printmakers North American Print Biennial. McCulloch’s work is included in public collections at the Contemporary Women Artists Files at the Margery Somers Foster Center at Rutgers University, the Special Collections at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and the College of Fine Arts at Boston University, among others.

Michele Montalbano received her Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of California at Long Beach and earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from George Washington University. Montalbano was recently featured in a solo exhibition at the McLean Project for the Arts, and Gallery Plan B in Washington, D.C. She is a 2009 recipient of a Strauss Fellowship and was a semi-finalist in the 2009 Bethesda Painting Awards. Her Traces series “explores the themes of time and memory as they relate to the environments we live in.”

Carol Phifer earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Maryland. Her art “expresses [her] desire to evoke an emotional response from the viewer using color and form.” Phifer returned to painting after exploring fiber art, which provided the opportunity to work on color and composition in a different medium. She is represented by Glave Kocen Gallery in Richmond, VA and Wide River Gallery in Colonial Beach, VA.

Nora Sturges is an Associate Professor of Art and Head of Painting and Drawing at Towson University in Towson, MD. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Ohio University in Athens, OH. Sturges’ art has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions, most recently at Bachelier Cardonsky Gallery in Kent, CT. She has been published in New American Paintings, number 88, provided the cover painting for History Matters: Contemporary Pottery on the Margins of Contemporary Culture and The Glass House, New Poems by Daniel Mark Epstein. Sturges is a twice recipient of the Individual Artist Award, Maryland State Arts Council.