Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
April 10, 2008 issue
22nd Rosen Outdoor Sculpture Competition & Exhibition April 17 to 19
Story by Corinne Saunders
Every year, artists ages 18 and up from across the nation enter the Rosen Outdoor Sculpture Competition & Exhibition. “The competition normally averages entries from at least 25 different states each year,” said Brook Greene, assistant curator for the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University. Ten artists are selected as finalists in early March, and their sculptures are exhibited in outdoor locations on the west side of the ASU campus.
This year marks the 22nd competition, and the sculpture installation festivities take place from Thursday, April 17, to Saturday, April 19.
The installation celebration will kick off when the artists present their work to the public at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 17, in the Turchin Center’s Lecture Hall. A reception for the artists and attendees will be held afterward in the Carroll and Mayer Galleries. The Installation celebration provides a unique opportunity for the 2008 artists to connect with each other and create a network for future endeavors, Green said.
Nine of the ten sculptors will install their work Friday and Saturday, April 18 and 19, with the assistance of Turchin Center staff and university students. The public is invited to watch the installations and chat with artists and the installation team.
The sculptures will be partially viewable from Rivers Street and will be located from Walker Hall to the Duck Pond.
This year’s ten finalists are Shawn Skabelund, Glenn Zweygardt, Peter Frantz, John Northington, Jon Mehlferber, Bill Vielehr, Hannah Jubran, Sharon Collings Licata, Catherine Hoskinson and Duke Oursler.
Established in 1987, the Rosen Outdoor Sculpture Competition & Exhibition—a national, juried competition—showcases the best large-scale contemporary American sculpture and was made possible by the generosity of Martin and Doris Rosen.
The competition has become an integral part of An Appalachian Summer Festival, the university’s annual multi-arts celebration. The winner of the Martin and Doris Rosen Award is announced during the festival’s annual sculpture walk with that year’s juror. This year’s walk will be held Saturday, July 26.
The Rosen Award is a cash prize of $5,000, plus a weeklong residency with a stipend in ASU’s Department of Art during the academic year. The ten finalists receive an honorarium to offset travel expenses, and the costs of the installation and de-installation are covered.
“Awards and honoraria total $15,500,” Greene said.
The juror is different each year, but is always a well-known person within the art community with a background in outdoor sculpture. The Turchin Center chooses jurors from artists, curators and directors of prestigious universities or nonprofit organizations, Greene said.
The judging process is a “blind jury,” meaning the juror does not know who the artist is.
The juror chooses the 10 finalists and 10 alternates, as well as the Rosen Award winner. He or she must write a juror’s statement for the catalog and lead the summer sculpture walk with the Turchin Center director, Greene said.
Greene serves on the Downtown Boone Development Association’s Public Art Committee and has added a new facet to this year’s competition.
Some details are still in the works, but the Turchin Center has partnered with the DBDA to install two additional sculptures from the Rosen Competition in the downtown area. The two sculptures are community choice pieces, selected by the Public Art Committee, said DBDA’s Mary Baker.
The artists who entered the competition indicated if they were interested in participating in this additional competition when they sent in their entries, Baker said.
One sculpture will be situated on Turchin property “in a new sculpture ground they’ll be doing,” and the other will grace the new Gateway Park, near the health department on Poplar Grove Connector, Baker said.
The community choice winners will receive honorariums, and the pieces will be installed in late summer, ensuring that “we’ll always have new pieces, staggered throughout the year,” Baker said.
Like the Rosen sculptures, the community choice pieces will be changed out every year.
“The Turchin Center has been working with Downtown Boone for a while,” Baker said. “We’re very appreciative that these two groups have been working together.”
Installing the two outdoor sculptures is “another development to strengthen the arts in the Town of Boone,” Baker said.
For more information about the Rosen Outdoor Sculpture Competition & Exhibition, click to www.rosensculpture.org or call the Turchin Center at 828-262-3017.
Want To Go?
Date: Thursday, April 17
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Turchin Center Lecture Hall
Cost: Free