Award winners at the Naples National - February 20

As they like to say at the big art fairs, "you are a winner just to be accepted to this show." Right. Anyway, here are the winners in Naples today:

Judith Wood of West Palm Beach won Best in Show for her woven leather jewelry . “Her work was exquisite, honest and sincere,” judge Douglas
David is quoted in a press release. “It was incredible in design
philosophy and spirit. And, it was her first time in the Naples
National."

Now that is a very interesting award, don't you think? Rarely do jewelers win Best of Show, but woven leather? This must really be something! So I had to go looking for her. Here is a sample of her work, still it doesn't look like woven leather, although undoubtedly, Judith really knows her jewelry making. Here is a link for more of her work: http://www.absolutearts.com/judithwood/

Looking through the list of winners I see that ArtFairInsiders.com member C.L. Cunningham won an Honorable mention for printmaking. Good job, Cynthia!

Read the rest of the article here: Winners of 31st Annual Naples National

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  • Actually the Reston, VA show did do it that way. The award winners were announced before the show.
  • I'll be posting a positive review sometime this week.
  • Here is another article about the Naples show with more information about Judy Wood and the event: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/feb/20/art-sales-were-strong-hi...
  • After the judge made her requisite nanosecond in my booth putting the sticker on my sign, I cracked that the judges should be required to spend at least 15 seconds in the booth, even if they stared off into space. The judge turned to me and said they had judged the show by slides and that they had spent many hours looking at the digital images. My thought was why go through the act of pretending to judge the show? They could have just handed out the awards at the beginning of the event. Hey, they could have given out the awards with the check-in packets.

    I don't want this to sound like sour grapes. The winners were very good. I didn't see them all, but, the two that stood out to me were Greg Barnes 2D work and Scott Amrheim's glass. Both are outstanding artists.

    Shows have the right to judge any way they want. Gasparilla, and other shows pick pieces and then judge from the pieces, always in a room without proper lighting. If a show chose to do it that way, I wish they would at least view the work in a gallery setting with full spectrum lighting. My preferred way of judging is for the judges to spend a minute or two in each booth viewing the entire presentation. I don't see how a judge can come to a proper conclusion based on 1 piece or digital images. But, that's just my opinion.
  • Wow, her work is exquisite although most of it did seem to be made of beads and she says she is a bead artist.

    Hope it was a good festival. The weather should have been gorgeous and it is definitely the tourist season around here. Hopefully Nels and others will let us know.
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