Submittted
The annual Adjudicated Arts Exhibition 2019 was held in Biggar at the Biggar Museum and Gallery, where West Central artists were welcome to enter their art. The show was hosted by the Biggar and District Arts Council along with the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Council and was on exhibit from May 1 to May 25
Rolf Krohn was the adjudicator for the public critique, which was held May 25.
Selected artists can now go on to submit exhibition proposals to OSAC to be considered for a touring exhibition across the province.
Forty-one pieces of art were submitted this year in total
Best in Show winner was Lynn Strendin of North Battleford.
Honorable Mentions went to Rosemarie Stadnyk of North Battleford and Linda Hoult of Saskatoon.
The People’s Choice Award went to Joyce Wirachowsky of Biggar.
The winning piece was a charcoal and pencil drawing of a girl named Talissa. Each of Strendin’s five drawings had a corresponding QR code below it, and exhibition viewers were able to scan the code with the reader provided, and could read a story and watch a video about the people in her drawings. Many viewers participated in the interactive QR component. Strendin’s drawings and corresponding stories can be seen on her webpage (under Exhibitions) https://lynnstrendin.ca/
Artists could enter up to five pieces. Strendin entered five drawings, and her theme was “one drawing per week.” Strendin has been completing one drawing per week since January and she is documenting her progress on a weekly blog, which can also be accessed through her webpage. Strendin gets her subject matter largely from the people she knows around the community. The winning drawing of Talissa is the granddaughter of another local artist.
She has entered the Biggar adjudication once before, in 2016. At that time, three top artists were selected from the show, of which Strendin was one. That time, she entered five drawings from her “one drawing per week for a year” that she completed in 2015.
Adjudicator Rolf Krohn was born in 1939 in Consort, Alta. He studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design (then the Alberta Provincial Institute of Technology and Art) in the late 1950s. After moving to Saskatoon, Krohn spent 20 years as an instructor with Saskatoon Bridge City Painters. He has also led painting workshops and given lectures in both Alberta and Saskatchewan, and continues to act as a mentor for other artists. Krohn’s work in watercolour, acrylic and oil features a variety of subject matter, including the human figure, portraits, wildlife and Saskatchewan’s northern landscape. Drawn to colour and shape, Krohn enjoys experimentation in his work. He has exhibited in solo and group shows including, in 2010 and 2011, at the Canadian Federation of Artists’ Juried Art Show in Vancouver, B.C. Krohn is a member of the Canadian Society of Painters of Watercolour and the Canadian Institute of Portrait Artists and works full-time as an artist and lives in Saskatoon.
