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MFA (Maryland Federation of Art) invites all artists residing in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico to enter its 42nd annual Art on Paper competition. Any original 2-D or 3-D work (excluding digital photography) created on or of paper, including collage, artist book, origami, printmaking, painting, sculpture, and more, will be considered. Works selected will be on exhibit ONLINE in Curve Gallery. The exhibition chair is Candice Bigelow.
Georgetown University Curator of Collections, Washington, DC
LuLen (Lucile Lenore) Walker is Curator of Collections at Georgetown University, where she oversees the University’s fine art holdings displayed around campus as well as the works on paper housed in the Booth Family Center for Special Collections in Lauinger Library. There, Walker has curated twenty-seven exhibitions showcasing the permanent collection, most recently as co-curator on the art of World War I (2018) and color woodcuts (2016). Previously, Walker worked on the curatorial staff of Prints and Drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, where she curated an exhibition on Josephine Baker in 1997. She has contributed articles to the Washington Print Club Quarterly and served on the board of that organization since 1999. Her publications include artist biographies in the American National Biography (Oxford University Press, 1999), in Eye Contact: Modern American Portrait Drawings from the National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution: Washington, D.C., 2002), and Paris in the Jazz Age (Georgetown University Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, 2001). She juried the 32nd Annual Art on Paper exhibition at the MFA’s Circle Gallery in 2009, and the bi-annual Anne Arundel County juried exhibition at the Mitchell Gallery, St. John’s College in 2019. Walker holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from George Washington University and is a member of Print Council of America.
The 42nd annual exhibition of Art on Paper presents an extraordinary array of art forms incorporating paper in new and innovative ways. In a few cases it takes some careful looking to determine how paper was employed. Visitors will find collage, livre d’artiste, digital media, traditional photography, mixed media, found objects, and sculpted constructions that use paper either as a support or as an added element. As this year’s juror, it has been a privilege and a delight to consider the more than 500 submissions. My selections gravitated towards work that conveyed or implied some form of narrative, message, or insight into our shared human experience. Technical mastery was another important criteria. It is clear that the Anne Arundel County has a very rich artistic community that engages with social environmental and philosophical issues we encounter in our daily lives. Part of the chemistry of art appreciation is that it affects each one of us differently. The artist’s gift to create works of aesthetic beauty which comment upon challenging concerns or which reveal psychological content is akin to a calling, and we are fortunate that there are visionaries among us who heed this call. Their singular creations cause us to pause and reflect, first to ponder the artist’s perspective, then to assess our own response. This dialog engages and challenges the viewer. It inspires collecting, preserving, and support of this vital form of human expression.