ArtPrize - Andrea Kowch - An open art contest based in Grand Rapids Michigan, the world's largest Art Prize.

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Artist information:
Andrea Kowch
Sterling Heights, MI

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Andrea Kowch is showing at:
	Stache Gallery 120 South Division Ave Studio 124 Grand Rapids, MI 49503 View profile

Andrea Kowch
Artist bio: Andrea Kowch was born in Detroit, Michigan, where she earned her BFA at the College for Creative Studies. Throughout the past few years, Andrea has won numerous regional, national, and international honors for her art, placing her on the stages of Washington D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center and New York City’s Carnegie Hall. As a result, she has had work exhibited in places such as Washington D.C.’s Capitol Hill and Corcoran Gallery of Art, New York City’s Diane von Furstenberg Gallery, and Miami’s Margulies Collection, to name a few. As a 2005 award winner and alumnus of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, Andrea ranks in America’s top 2% of young American talent. Her work has been featured in CMYK Magazine and Spectrum’s Best of the Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art Annual 15 and 16, and many of her works hang in collections across the United States and Canada. She credits life as her muse, where experiences old and new, give her the power to speak visually.
Artist statement: The stories and inspiration behind my paintings stem from life’s emotions and experiences, resulting in narrative, allegorical imagery that illustrates the parallels between human experience and the mysteries of the natural world. The lonely, desolate American landscape encompassing the paintings’ subjects serves as an exploration of nature’s sacredness and a reflection of the human soul, symbolizing all things powerful, fragile, and eternal. The real yet dreamlike scenarios I create serve as metaphors for the human condition, all retaining a sense of vagueness because I wish to encourage viewers to form their own conclusions, despite the fact that my main idea will always be present. It is my belief that as a people, we share a common thread. As active participants in an ever-changing modern world, the purpose of my work is to remind viewers of these places that we feel no longer exist, and to recognize and honor them as a part of our history that is worth preserving.

Andrea Kowch

Artist bio: Andrea Kowch was born in Detroit, Michigan, where she earned her BFA at the College for Creative Studies.

Throughout the past few years, Andrea has won numerous regional, national, and international honors for her art, placing her on the stages of Washington D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center and New York City’s Carnegie Hall. As a result, she has had work exhibited in places such as Washington D.C.’s Capitol Hill and Corcoran Gallery of Art, New York City’s Diane von Furstenberg Gallery, and Miami’s Margulies Collection, to name a few. As a 2005 award winner and alumnus of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, Andrea ranks in America’s top 2% of young American talent.

Her work has been featured in CMYK Magazine and Spectrum’s Best of the Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art Annual 15 and 16, and many of her works hang in collections across the United States and Canada. She credits life as her muse, where experiences old and new, give her the power to speak visually.

Artist statement: The stories and inspiration behind my paintings stem from life’s emotions and experiences, resulting in narrative, allegorical imagery that illustrates the parallels between human experience and the mysteries of the natural world. The lonely, desolate American landscape encompassing the paintings’ subjects serves as an exploration of nature’s sacredness and a reflection of the human soul, symbolizing all things powerful, fragile, and eternal.

The real yet dreamlike scenarios I create serve as metaphors for the human condition, all retaining a sense of vagueness because I wish to encourage viewers to form their own conclusions, despite the fact that my main idea will always be present.

It is my belief that as a people, we share a common thread. As active participants in an ever-changing modern world, the purpose of my work is to remind viewers of these places that we feel no longer exist, and to recognize and honor them as a part of our history that is worth preserving.

About the work:
Title: "Apple of My Eye"
Art form: 2-D
Medium: painting/acrylic on canvas
Year created: 2009
Description of work: The top image on this list of samples of my work is my entry into ArtPrize, a 30" x 40" acrylic painting on canvas. The rural midwestern landscape that I so often portray in my work is also present here in one of its many changing moods. All the desolate, lost corners of my homestate of Michigan never cease to fill me with inspiration, and this painting is yet another statement containing its familiar presence as the stage for human emotion. I love nothing more than driving and walking backroads, smelling the sweet air, feeling the wind, watching the dust it kicks up in summer, and the crackling leaves it blows across my path in autumn. The everchanging state of the earth moves me in ways that compel me to paint, as its changes and transformations parallel the moods and experiences of our own human nature. This painting is yet another symbolic exploration of the soul, where I use animals and other elements of the natural world to transform personal ideas into universal metaphors.
Work statement: Serving as a response to the hidden world of emotions we possess as human beings, "Apple of My Eye" illustrates the metaphor for that which is most precious to us, and how it is often the object of our affection that causes us the most pain. It is between the stings and the swarms when we realize that things were not what they once seemed. Like the unpredictability of the wasps represented in this work, people and events come and go without apparent order or meaning, bringing chaos to our “hive,” only to leave us wondering why.
Technical details:
Work width:	40 inches
Work height:	30 inches
Work depth:	1 inches
Required venue ceiling:	n/a
Required venue door height:	n/a
Required venue door width:	n/a
Required wall linear footage:	n/a
Required venue square footage:	n/a
Additional considerations:
Audio/video needed:	No
Electrical needed:	No
Lighting needed:	Yes
Internet access needed:	No
Ground floor access needed:	No
Indoor space needed:	Yes
Outdoor space needed:	No

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ArtPrize
A radically open art competition, giving away the world's largest art prize. Part arts festival, part social experiment - this international art contest is decided solely on a public vote. Art festival runs Sept. 22 through October 10, 2010. Come and see.