August 2008 Regional Exhibit
Frederick Gallery of
Fredericksburg Center for the Creative Arts
Matthew Harwood's Juror's Statement:

Juror's Statement of August 1st:

I had never been to Fredericksburg before being invited down to jury this show.  It is a gem!   Beauty and history  work together in the town and it's surrounding landscape, and in its art.  Jurying assignments provide a real opportunity for me to get out of D.C., clear my head, and reconsider my assumptions about the course  of art today.  There is much in the present show that performs this crucial function.

For example, Nancy Brittle's most modest little landscape, Humid Sunday, is both a careful observation of color and light and an expression of feeling that calls to mind one of my favorite artists of the twentieth century, Chaim Soutine.  Richard F Wyvill also turned in a beautiful, loosely painted landscape, Summer Afternoon, that took me all the way back to the nineteenth century of John Constable.  In between, Mary Lou Cramer's Mooned is as creepy and (possibly) decadent as anything done by Odilon Redon.

I was also impressed by the very handsome abstractions of Jane T Woodworth, Lever House, and Barbara Taylor Hall, Interspace, and completely charmed and amused by all the ceramci fantasies of Ashley Goldstein.

Thank you for bringing me to your physical and aesthetic neighborhood.  It was a pleasing and enlightening journey.

Jack Rasmussen, PhD
Director and Curator,
American University Museum
Washington, DC

1st Price Award -- "Humid Sunday" by Nancy Brittle

2nd Price Award -- "Summer Afternoon by Richard F Wyvill

3rd Price Award -- "Mooned" by Mary Lou Cramer

and

Honorable Mentions:

"Lever House" by Jane T WoodWorth

"Interspace" by Barbara Taylor Hall

"Human Emotion" by Ashley Goldstein