Top image:
Stan Diel
Preening Swan
Photography
Florence, SC
Stan Diel
Preening Swan
Photography
Florence, SC
About the Competition
The Florence County Museum is proud to present the 2023 Pee Dee Regional Art Competition sponsored by Chick-fil-A of Florence. The competition highlights the best contemporary art in the Pee Dee region. One of the state's oldest juried art competitions, the first Pee Dee Regional dates back to 1954 where the competition was held at the former Florence Museum on Spruce Street in Florence, South Carolina.
This year's exhibit is now open to the public and will remain on display through Thursday, April 6, 2023 in the FCM Waters Gallery. Visitors are invited to inspect this year's selection and cast their vote for the Jo Ann Fender Scarborough People's Choice Award. Voting for the People's Choice Award will be open through Friday, March 24 with the winner being announced on Monday, March 27 via the museum's social media.
FCM Waters Gallery
135 South Dargan Street
Florence, South Carolina
Gallery Hours:
Monday - Friday
10:00am - 5:00pm
The Selection Process & Awards
This year’s competition juror overseeing the selection of works and awards was Georgia artist Alice Stone-Collins. First place in this year’s competition was awarded to Sophia Shumakes of Florence for her sculpture Symbiosis. The other award winners include second place woodcut by Myrtle Beach resident Treelee MacAnn titled Resilience, To and Fro and third place oil on canvas The Crows by Florence artist, Kevin Spaulding. The honorable mention was awarded to Memento Morididdle Movement #600 by Charles Clary of Conway.
The exhibit this year is composed of 29 works of art selected from 146 online submissions by 73 artists representing northeastern South Carolina. This year’s exhibit is comprised from a balanced variety of paintings, mixed media, prints, drawings, photography and three-dimensional works.
1st Place
Sophia Shumaker
Symbiosis
Woven fabric, polymer clay, thread, embroidery floss, felt
Florence, SC
2nd Place
Treelee MacAnn
Resilience, To and Fro
Woodcut
Myrtle Beach, SC
3rd Place
Kevin Spaulding
The Crows
Oil on canvas
Florence, SC
Honorable Mention
Charles Clary
Memento Morididdle Movement #600
Hand cut paper and wallpaper on found frame
Conway, SC
People’s Choice
Sophia Shumaker
Symbiosis
Woven fabric, polymer clay, thread, embroidery floss, felt
Florence, SC
Juror’s Statement
To make work is to expose a side of yourself that otherwise would remain hidden. To make work is to reveal. To make work is to communicate a part of you that is impossible to express any other way.
I admire all the artists who submitted to the 2023 Pee Dee Regional Art Competition for allowing me to take in these pieces. To admire the technical skill, thoughtful compositions, and overall quality and care that went into each of these works.
It is not easy to make work in any circumstance. But coming out of the weariness of pandemic fatigue, I return to a few common themes within the works. One idea that shines through is the signaling of rebirth and the necessary act of communication. After living in so much isolation, (and no, FaceTime and Zoom don’t count), we need to come back to connection and back to each other.
How have we learned to be better listeners, to ourselves and our community? Does this ability to know how to be quiet allow ideas to surface in the space of stillness? What spaces are we creating for what is new to be born?
Shumaker’s Symbioses is asking us to contemplate communication between two different organisms through the painstakingly ornate detail allowing us to become comfortable with different parts of ourselves and one another. McCann’s Resilience, To and Fro speaks of the idea of growth and re-emergence even within the hardest times. Spaulding’s The Crows insinuates transformation and change through interaction and connection. Clary’s Memento Moriddle Movement #600 allows us to contemplate the unearthed side of something previously overlooked.
“Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them,” Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, “the least we can do is try to be there.”
These pieces reawaken our capacity to be there. It has been an honor to be here with these pieces. To really sit and see how they could speak to a viewer based on what the artist might have intended and my own viewpoint. To sit on the opposite side of the artwork is such a poignant and sharp pleasure.
I would like to thank Stephen Motte and the Florence County Museum for the opportunity to be a part of this process.
Alice Stone-Collins
January 2023
List of Works
Carlo Balistrieri
Everyone Stopped To Watch Martha Dance…
Photography
Lake City, SC
Jim Boden
Slava Ukraini, Heroiam Slava
Oil on canvas
Hartsville, SC
Thomas Bosse
Watering Hole
Bronze, Pewter
Cayce, SC
Jan Chenoweth
SOS33
Various pigments and graphite on wood panel
Lake City, SC
Charles Clary
Memento Morididdle Movement #600
Hand cut paper and wallpaper on found frame
Conway, SC
Colleen Critcher
The Value of Nothing and Everything
Acrylic on panel and oil on panel
Florence, SC
Stan Diel
Preening Swan
Photography
Florence, SC
Greg Fry
The Passing
Relief/Letterpress
Florence, SC
Robert Garey
Offering Thanks
Oil on linen
Florence, SC
Douglas Gray
Between Against: Urn Set
Ceramic stoneware
Florence, SC
Denise L. Greer
Open Window
Mixed media
Rembert, SC
Victoria Hagner
Nebula
Mixed media mosaic
Sumter, SC
Brandon Harrington
Uninvited
Acrylic on canvas
Florence, SC
Clay Johnson
Shallow Water
Oil on linen
Conway, SC
Mary Judge
Auto Correct and Its Lover
Acrylic on canvas
Florence, SC
Treelee MacAnn
Resilience, To and Fro
Woodcut
Myrtle Beach, SC
Julie Mixon
Iluminar
Cyanotype
Florence, SC
Jo-Ann Morgan
Foto Estudio
Stitched fabric
Surfside, SC
Sarah Paschal
Captured
Graphic design
Dillon, SC
Barbara Dunn Rowe
Ascending Soulmates
Ceramic
Lugoff, SC
Sandrine Schaefer
Holda’s Gander
Mixed media (goose decoy, broomcorn, steel, decoy cord, sound of human fetal heartbeat)
Myrtle Beach, SC
Samantha Senig
Weird Thing
Ceramic
Myrtle Beach, SC
Sophia Shumaker
Symbiosis
Woven fabric, polymer clay, thread, embroidery floss, felt
Florence, SC
Ada Smolen-Morton
A Shark Slipping Through My Arms
Raku fired ceramics
Florence, SC
Ada Smolen-Morton
A Wash In Color
Oil on board
Florence, SC
Kevin Spaulding
The Crows
Oil on canvas
Florence, SC
Polly Turner
On the Inlet
Charcoal, PanPastel and graphite on Rives BFK paper
North Myrtle Beach, SC
Dale Weatherford
Thao
Chalk and charcoal on toned paper
Darlington, SC
Emily Weaver
Anemoia
35mm film photography
Olanta, SC
