Bath County Art Show brings range of talents and treasures

Cathy Singleton, and Becky Wilson are the Co-Chairs of the Bath County Art Association, and they, along with many other volunteers, are bringing together the annual Bath County Art Show.   The Art Show is the Association’s only fundraiser, and what this group is able to do with the proceeds is impressive. Cathy Singleton explained.

“All of our revenues are put back into the county, predominantly in Art Education for children of the county. We also support Garth Newel, and bring in Children’s Art Network from Staunton, Virginia. We sponsor a trip to the Blackfriar’s Theater for high school seniors. The art teacher organizes a tour of the Taubman Gallery in Roanoke. And then we have supplemental instruments for the band if they request that. We have a number of scholarships every year. We offer two scholarships to graduating seniors who offer to major in the arts in some way in college. We award one to three scholarships, by application, for children that want to attend a summer camp, arts-related outside the county. And we also offer five Band Camp summer scholarships for the local high school, among other projects.”

In exchange for their notable efforts to bring artwork to Bath County, artists can hope for some prize money anywhere from fifty to one-thousand dollars.

“There’s first, second, third and honorable mention in each category. We also have twenty-five Judge’s choice honorable mention, and that can be any category. And then we have approximately fourteen I believe, Special Awards. And those are awards that community members have chosen to sponsor, and they pick the explanation of the prize that they want to present, and they pick the amount that they want to donate for that. For example, the Warm Springs Gallery picked Best Virginia Landscape.”

Some other examples of the Special prizes are the Bill and Prudence Fields award for the best animal or bird in oil, watercolor or pastel, and the Dancing Lady Design Award for the Best Figure as the Focus of the Work in any medium, or the Reuse- Recycle Award for the use of recycled materials to create artwork in any medium. The list of special prizes goes on, and so do all the works qualifying for prizes.

The judge, this year’s is Nancy Dahlstrom, has her work cut out for her. She is, as Singleton continued “instructor emeritus in Fine Art at Hollins University”.   Dahlstrom’s concentration is in pottery and sculpture.   When an increase in entries in those areas over the past few years was noted, Singleton replied.

“We have had much larger participation with that as well as photography, has become an enormous segment of the show.

The categories that we include are oil and acrylic, watercolor, mixed media, photography, sculpture, and then we have a category for drawings, pastels, and graphics, or printmaking.”

For a little bit more on the history of the Art Show, and specifics on when to see it beginning Saturday please tune in for the second part of this pair of stories tomorrow.