Society of Contemporary Craft Call for Artists Emerging Artist Program

from the Society of Contemporary Craft:

We are pleased to announce a Call for Entries for the 2011 Lydon Emerging Artist Program (LEAP) Award. Established in the fall of 2007, the LEAP Award provides early career artists who show exceptional promise the opportunity to showcase a body of their work to regional, national, and international audiences. The winner of this juried award receives a $1,000 cash prize to develop a line of work to be shown exclusively through the Store at the Society for Contemporary Craft (SCC).

The guest juror for the 2011 competition is Sharon Massey. An internationally recognized jeweler, Massey received a BFA from Winthrop University in 1999, and an MFA in Metal Design from East Carolina University in 2006. She received the Art Jewelry Forum Emerging Artist Award in 2009 and was recently chosen to participate in Lucca Preziosa Young, an exhibition of eight jewelers under 35, which was exhibited in Lucca, Italy, Munich, Germany, and at the JOYA Festival of Contemporary Jewellery in Barcelona, Spain. Her work is included in the collections of the Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.

In the early 1970s, SCC's founder, Pittsburgh arts patron Elizabeth Rockwell Raphael recognized that artists working in craft media were exploring new directions in contemporary art, and she opened The Store for Arts and Crafts and People-Made Things in Verona, Pennsylvania. Known locally as The Store, Raphael sold artwork by young and emerging craft artists such as Wendell Castle, Lenore Tawney, Josh Simpson, Howard Kottler, and Robert Lee Morris among many others that needed wider opportunities to exhibit and sell their work. Building on this early history, it is our hope that the LEAP Award will facilitate young artists move into a career in contemporary craft.

We appreciate your assistance in announcing this opportunity to interested artists, colleagues, students, and alumni. A printable prospectus is available on our website at our website. For more information, email thestore@contemporarycraft.org or call 412.261.7003 x16.


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pittsburgh galleries is reborn anew as The Pittsburgh Art Blog. the blog features selected pittsburgh artists and upcoming exhibits with photos from the artists and galleries. since the major press outlets do not go beyond a directory listing of exhibits, blogs are needed to promote pittsburgh artists and their work. the blog also calls attention to the inferiority complex of pittsburgh art and how it's perpetuated by the major players in town. Started on August 20, 2007.pittsburgh area galleries and art venues are listed at the sister site www.PghGalleries.com.the blog and website are volunteer projects from fine art photographer and pittsburgh art advocate rick byerly, www.RickByerly.com.