CPSA Explore This 4! Brea California

Prismacolor Award for Exceptional Merit - Jeff George
"Baggage"
17" x 35" coloured pencil
copyright Jeff George, CPSA - California

The Coloured Pencil Society of America has an “Explore This!” Exhibition, every other year. This show allows other media as long as 75% of the surface is colored pencil as well as three-dimensional, collage, and relief artwork. In 2007, the 4th “Explore This!” exhibition is being held in Brea, CA. and is hosted at the City of Brea Gallery by the Los Angeles District Chapter of CPSA. The show opened on March 24th and finishes on May 4th.

90 artists, from all over the USA, were accepted into the exhibition. The images for the artists who received awards for their work are not yet displayed on the website but should be shortly. You can see one of them above. Jeff George, member of the host chapter, won the Prismacolor Award for Exceptional Merit for his work "Baggage" which you can see above.

Linda Lucas Hardy, CPSA - Texas, won the CPSA Award for Exceptional Merit and EXXPY Trophy for "Tenderly Morning Comes; Night Slips Quietly Away".

My good friend Louise Sackett (remember Louise from the big expedition to the CPSA convention in Albuquerque last year - as in "2000 miles later - Louise drives the desert in style") had one of her pieces accepted into the show and so went to see the exhibition last weekend. The following is a synopsis of some of her comments about the show.

The exhibition is in a very nice modern gallery which is centrally located. Work is lit well. In relation to the prizewinners, Louise was impressed with the work of Linda Lucas Hardy "an amazing tour de force"and Jeff George "technically superb, executed as a master". Louise commented that Jeff's piece (see above) was absolutely huge for a coloured pencil piece - which makes it a complete contrast to his very compact piece which won a prize in the International Exhibition in 2006.

Pat Averill had produced "the most amazing, magical, and beautifully lit shorescape I have ever seen". Louise also loved Allan Servoss's work "an amazing balancing act of an entire tree and one lone leaf - beautiful".

There are some very interesting pieces which use CP within the context of constructed artwork including what I understand was a 3D staggered wooden cacti with resin. Some people had worked on wood, others had produced collages, while yet others had mixed CP with pastel, watercolour or clay.

Check out also the website of Los Angeles District Chapter 214 which is hosting the exhibition - they have some excellent and prize-winning artists among their members - including Jeff George - and have galleries of their coloured pencil artwork.

Links:

• 'Explore This!' The City of Brea Gallery, Brea Civic & Cultural Center, 1 Civic Center Circle, Brea, CA 92821
  
• CPSA Host for the exhibition: Los Angeles District Chapter 214 - their website
• Artist websites:
• Jeff George
• Linda Lucas Hardy
• Louise Sackett