Five Finalists for the 2015 AJF Artist Award

Finalists were chosen from the largest group of Artist Award applicants to date - 151 artists representing 35 countries - and judged on originality, depth of concept, continuity of design, and quality of craftsmanship. This year's jurors were Philip Clarke of New Zealand, inaugural director of Objectspace; 2014 Artist Award winner Seulgi Kwon, from South Korea; and AJF board member and collector Susan Kempin, who is from the United States. 

The unrestricted cash prize of $7500, generously funded by Susan Beech and Karen and Michael Rotenberg, will be awarded to one of the five finalists. The winner will be announced in February 2016. 

The five finalists for AJF's 2016 Artist Award are: Lynn Batchelder, Carina Chitsaz-Shoshtary, Seth Papac, Aric Verrastro, and Timothy Veske-McMahon.


Finalist Credentials, Artist Statement Excerpts, and Juror Statements:

Lynn Batchelder, MFA, Metal, State University of New York at New Paltz, New York, USA, 2013
My studio practice relies on a drawing process where forms and ideas develop intuitively through the initial exploration of a line on paper. In these works industrial steel becomes transparent and delicate as cuts made with the jeweler's saw reflect the quality of a line drawn by hand ... I am constantly trying to capture small moments of contrast where control and imperfection collide.
/ Lynn Batchelder

The artist's jewelry pieces, which have a unique shape, are works with exceptional structural and sculptural beauty. They are designed to deliver strong feeling and a simple message through the natural color of the metal itself.
/ Seulgi Kwon

Carina Chitsaz-Shoshtary, MA, Academy of Fine Arts Munich, Germany, 2012
My work starts with an intuitive experimental play with found materials, which usually come from my immediate surroundings. In the process of experimenting, the materials are being thoroughly transformed; the original source cannot be identified anymore ... My jewelry pieces may appear like artifacts of a past civilization, fossils from another planet, or the ornaments of fabled beings.
/ Carina Chitsaz-Shoshtary

The concept of layering, in a variety of senses, works very well with the organic forms employed. These works convey a sense of growth, nurturing, and preciousness.
/ Philip Clarke

Seth Papac, MFA, Metals/Jewelry, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA, 2009
Life in Southern California, with its unreal sunsets, light-bleached buildings, and vestiges of 70s style, brought my memory to a saturation point, forming crystals of experience ... These merged into objects with varying physical relationships to the body--at the scale of architecture, at the scale of jewelry, and in between. Utilizing the vocabulary of jewelry and architecture, space and place are explored--from the past to the present, from the personal to the cliché, from the obvious to the mysterious.
/ Seth Papac

The artist's experience in Southern California becomes the motif for his object. The work has an unrivaled force to it that creates a strong bond between the artist and the audience, and delivers a unique presence.
/ Seulgi Kwon

Aric Verrastro, MFA, Metalsmithing/Jewelry, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, 2015
I have recently been displaced from living in a city, which has left an sulek-burcu-emptiness-2015 in my life. The creation of each piece has become a method to fill the void. The forms are architectural, modular, constructed from steel, becoming allegorical representations of the energy of a thriving, vibrant environment ... As jewelry, the body completes the piece as people fill and give life to architectural spaces, expressing the vitality and connection I feel toward the urban human experience.
/ Aric Verrastro

I like the contrast of materials, steel and thread, and that the thread represents people wandering through the city. One normally thinks of city colors as dark or metallic, but I love the use of color to represent the vibrancy of the city.
/ Susan Kempin

Timothy Veske-McMahon, MFA, Metalsmithing, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA, 2013
We seek out and delve into mirrors for clarifying affirmation but, in truth, are met with a foreign body ... This perceived closeness of similarity and familiarity is a deception--fictitious shorthand we use in identifying within society and relationships. If the act of definition is a loss of information, is it possible to create a loss-less object?
/ Timothy Veske-McMahon

I'm always looking for work that looks like nothing I have seen before. These works offer some complex social observations from the maker but at the same time are visually arresting, surprising, and very wearable. This is a rare achievement.
/ Philip Clarke