National Outdoor Sculpture Competition & Exhibition Winners Announced

"Bunny" by Jeff Brewer (Best in Show)

Sculpture artists from across the nation applied to the 8th Annual National Outdoor Sculpture Competition and Exhibition, displayed at the picturesque North Charleston Riverfront Park and presented as a component of the 2013 North Charleston Arts Festival. Organized annually by the City of North Charleston Cultural Arts Department, this unique, eleven month exhibition offers established and emerging artists the opportunity to display their thought provoking, extraordinary sculptures, as well as compete for up to $17,250 in honorariums and awards.

Nine out of 47 submissions were pre-juried into the exhibition by the juror, Janet Kagan, a Founding Principal of the Public Art Collaborative with more than three decades of experience in strategic planning with established and emergent art programs and management of projects representing both artists and agencies. Once installed at the exhibition site, Kagan then made her selections for Best in Show, Outstanding Merit, and Honorable Mentions.

“I am honored to jury the 2013 National Outdoor Sculpture Competition and Exhibition at Riverfront Park. It is a privilege to contribute to the appreciation of art in a landscaped, public context,” Kagan stated. She continued, “Each of the 2013 selections eloquently speak to us and elucidate how the artists’ ideas translated into material form, the works’ relationship to both physical and human nature, and our evoked impulses for interaction and surprise. These nine sculptures create surface tensions that play with angled voids and intersections. No two perspectives are the same as we walk toward, around and in the works. There is also a heft associated with these artworks – not just in their material, color, and scale, but in their aesthetic request for connection and dialogue. I hope you will mingle with, touch, and listen to the voices the works articulate.”

The nine sculptures selected for exhibition are by nine artists from six states. Congratulations to the winners of the 2013/4 National Outdoor Sculpture Competition & Exhibition:

Bunny (steel) by Jeff Brewer – Nacogdoches, TX (Best in Show)
Tier II (painted steel) by Anne Melanie – Greenville, NC (Outstanding Merit)
Transponder (steel) by Gary Gresko – Oriental, NC (Hon. Mention)
Life (painted steel) by Adam Walls – Lauvinburg, NC (Hon. Mention)
A Little Less Than Meets the Eye (steel) by Bill Wood – Fairfax, VA (Hon. Mention)
Ender’s Enigma (corten/painted steel) by Davis Whitfield IV – Mountain City, TN
The Burning (carved limestone) by Paris Alexander – Raleigh, NC
Cowl (oiled steel) by Carl Billingsley – Ayden, NC
Daddy Longlegs (steel) by John W. Parker – Glendside, PA

Sculpture sites are located throughout North Charleston Riverfront Park, located at 1001 Everglades Avenue on the former Charleston Naval Base. The park is set on the banks of the beautiful Cooper River. In addition the sculptures visitors may enjoy ten acres of walking paths, a performance pavilion, picnic shelter, a fishing pier and boardwalk, an oversized sandbox, and children’s play fountain. The historic site is centered in the Noisette District, the largest urban redevelopment project ever undertaken in the US.

The 2013/14 National Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition will be on display through March, 2014. For more information or to be added to the application mailing list for the 2014/15 Competition, please call 843-740-5854 or email culturalarts@northcharleston.org.