The Sheridan Prize for Art is the first regional art prize in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Prize for Art has accepted artwork from all Bay Area artists and we are pleased to share that 2 artist members of Mercury 20 Gallery have been selected.
The Juror’s Choice For The Winning Image Is “Stealth Reverie” By Charlie Milgrim
“Stealth Reverie”
This is an excerpt of an essay by former art critic for the Bay Guardian Harry Roche on Milgrim’s winning artwork.
“Seen from a different perspective, viewers may feel like they’re gazing down upon the tops of oddly-shaped caskets. The interplay of light and shadow contributes to a decidedly sepulchral aura. These faceless ghosts in turn become powerful metaphors for un-wo/manned drones that drop bombs remotely from some distant hermetically sealed think tank. Similarly, high-tech surgical strikes that do find bombardiers dropping their payloads from actual Stealth B-2 Bombers are well insulated from the horrors unleashed below. Death and destruction are reduced to a button-pushing video game. Nobody gets their hair mussed. This technologic-aided detachment and multiple degrees of separation throws Milgrim’s childlike tar paper airplanes into even sharper relief. Despite there not being a hint of blood anywhere, Stealth Reverie’s earthy, elegant conceptual minimalism soars as the polar opposite of Hollywood’s whitewashing the horrors of war on the silver screen.
~Harry Roche”
To read the full review on the Sheridan Prize website visit here
In addition, Chris Komater, a photographer based in San Francisco won a Sheridan Prize under the LGBTQ+ category.
“Sepals, Petals, Lip & Pouch (Dean)”
The Artist Statement:
“My work “Sepals, Petals, Lip and Pouch (Dean)” looks like a flower, but is made up of close-ups of a large, hairy body—a kind of body not given much attention except in a very small segment of the gay community, and not eroticized or given any aesthetic attention at all by the larger art world. Everybody loves looking at flowers, so I’ve transformed what are essentially erotic images (if you look closely at the images, they are of kneecaps, spread apart, and a big hairy butt) into a benign likeness of a flower. The idea here is to provide a kind of access that people wouldn’t ordinarily have, to give the viewer an intimate encounter with this big hairy gay male body, inviting them in for a closer look
Chris”
To learn more about The Sheridan Prize and view the incredible Bay Area talent, go here