Deadline for submission is June 14, 2009.
Applications may be submitted at www.callforentry.org.
For 2009 Emerging Artist Award flyer click here.
AJF is accepting applications for its 2009 Emerging Artist Award. The amount of this year’s award is $5,000. This is the 9th year that AJF has awarded a contemporary jewelry artist a cash award.
The purpose of the award is to acknowledge promise, innovation, and individuality in the work of an emerging jewelry artist and to help to advance the artist’s career. The competition is open to makers of wearable art jewelry who: have completed their academic/professional training, have been out of school for one year or more, and have not had a solo artist exhibition in a commercial gallery or museum. Submitted work must have been unsupervised if from an academic setting.
Jurors for the 2009 competition are: Ursula Neuman, jewelry curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Gail Hufjay, long-standing member of AJF and a collector of contemporary jewelry; and Masumi Kataoka, jewelry artist and recipient of the AJF’s 2008 Award.
The award was established in 1999 and its first recipient, Yeon-Mi Keong, received the award at the 2000 Conference of the Society of North American Goldsmiths. The winner of this year’s competition and $5,000 cash award will be announced at SOFA Chicago (International Exposition of Sculpture Objects and Functional Art), November 6-8, where the artist’s work will be exhibited at one of the AJF member galleries. The artist’s work will also be featured in the AJF ad for the SOFA catalogs, in Chicago and New York.
The Art Jewelry Forum is pleased to announce this year’s Emerging Artist Award winner, Masumi Kataoka. Ms. Kataoka received a BFA in Metal/Jewelry at Northern Arizona University and completed a MFA in Metal Jewelry at the University of North Texas in 2003. Ms Kataoka was chosen from among seventy-nine entries, a record number, from the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Australia, Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands, and Iran.
Andrea Janosik 2007 AJF Emerging Artist Winner
Bringing their insight to the decision, the judges’ criteria were originality, quality craftsmanship and continuity of design. Another major consideration was whether the work submitted had been created in a supervised or academic situation. By defining an Emerging Artist as an artist who has been out of school for at least a year and created all eight entries unsupervised, the judges were able to narrow the selection down to the winner.
Formal announcement of this award, with images of the work, will be at SOFA Chicago on Friday, November 2 at 11 a.m. in conjunction with an AJF-sponsored lecture by artist Gerd Rothman. At SOFA, Andrea’s work will be shown by Charon Kransen Arts.
Ms. Brown was joined in judging by Bob Ebendorf, Belk Distinguished Professor of Art at East Carolina University, and collector Judy Bloomfield, a founding AJF member and American Craft Council trustee.
“Presentation of this award marks a milestone for the Art Jewelry Forum,” said Sharon Campbell, President. “This is part of fulfilling our mission to nurture the field of contemporary art jewelry. Awards such as this will help to raise the visibility of the art form and encourage new entrants to the field. We look forward to this being an annual event.”