2023 Artist Who Teach Awards

Artists Who Teach is an annual juried exhibition that presents the artwork of our talented visual arts educators throughout Coastal Virginia. Artwork in all media was presented by current educators of local schools, colleges, art centers, and institutions. This year, Betsy DiJulio, served as a juror and selected 67 works from 125 submitted works. 

About the Juror, Betsy DiJulio: 

Betsy DiJulio, MA, Eds, a National Board-Certified Art Teacher, has been a full-time teaching artist and curator at Norfolk Academy since 2020 and 2022 respectively.  Her award-winning artwork has been included in one-person, invitational group shows, and national juried shows over the last several years.  Previously, she taught for 16 years at Princess Anne High School in the Virginia Beach City Public Schools, where she was chosen as the 2010 Citywide Teacher of the Year.  She also served a stint as an online adjunct professor of art appreciation and art history for Tidewater Community College.  Prior to her teaching career, DiJulio was an award-winning museum education director with an 11-year tenure at what is now the Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach.  She is also a cookbook author and blogger; a widely published freelance writer/columnist on topics of art and art education, home and garden design, plant-based food, eco-issues, artisanal businesses, and day-hiking; and a recipe developer and food stylist for Tofutti Brands.  This life-long cooking enthusiast, one-time caterer, and occasional cooking instructor is an all-the-time animal lover.  Widowed in 2015, she married Bob Friesen in 2021.  The couple makes their home with two rescued hounds in both Virginia Beach and Southern Shores, NC, where DiJulio works diligently to keep the dog hair out of her paintings.

Judges' Statement: 

As a full-time teaching artist and curator at Norfolk Academy--who joyfully juggles quite a few side hustles—I bow in your direction not only for providing guidance and inspiration for your students but for maintaining your own studio practice.  That is no small accomplishment.  And busy lives often leave little time for entering shows which can sometimes seem like just one more thing on the to do list.  So, I also applaud your commitment to your professional practice. 

Before announcing awards, I should say that selecting pieces for the exhibition was fairly easy; identifying award recipients was not so much.  As a juror, I look for what I hope to achieve in my own work with technical skill and craftsmanship a given; ditto strong composition and sophisticated use of color.  But beyond that, I am in search of content that connects to other aspects of the world, whether it be social, emotional, political, philosophical, literary, scientific, spiritual, or some combination.  And, certainly, I seek artists who do it in a way that is, at least at some level, innovative and fresh, but not just for the sake of being innovative and fresh.  And then, of course, there is the need to avoid showing bias for or against a particular genre or medium.  And all of that is easier said than done, not to mention somewhat subjective, though not as subjective as non-artists might think.

 

To start off, we want to congratulate the eight Honorable Mentions in alphabetical order:

• Ashley Ault, Morning Light, for successfully using shadows on the face and on the wall behind the figure to heighten the psychological tension.
• Anne Bousquet, Walking Around 1 and 3, for her mastery of compositions that create both friction and cohesion.
• Cherilyn Colbert, They Save Me, for making a risky color palette work through skillful control of other design considerations.
• Michael DiBari, Reindeer, for the successful repetition of both the grids and the reindeer in his photograph, and for an unsettling sense of disquiet.
• Holland Etheridge, Five Future Artists, for skillful cropping and figure-ground relationships.
• Tonya Hopson, The Horse Whisperer, for her tightly composed and harmonious image 

  that adopts the Renaissance triangle—take a look at the placement of the white areas—to help establish the deep connection between man and beast.

• James Warwick Jones, Irish Music, for his modern take on Baroque lighting and geometric structure that calls to mind Caravaggio.

• Heather Schnell, Spicy Chicken Sandwich, for apparently learning and applying in her own way one of the lessons of Claes Oldenburg, namely the value of scaling up when working with the quotidian.  Plus, the unity created by her treatment of the sauce, chicken, and lettuce is, if you’ll forgive me, mouthwatering.

Next up are three $100 Awards of Merit:

• Mark Miltz, Entanglement, for being an undisputed master of the painted human figure in unexpected settings and situations.
• Emily Neuner, Will I Ever, for her small quiet piece that is permeated with a believable beneath-the-surface psychological intensity.
• Jorge Saenz, Find Me at Sundown, for his stunning control of the many layers and levels of his non-objective subject matter.

Top 3 Winners: 

• $250 Third Place:

Corinne Lilyard-Mitchell, Peeps A Boo I See You, for her mastery of the contemporary vanitas and in a vertical format no less. Don’t let those pastel colors feel you; you just may discover something delightfully dark lurking beneath the surface.

• $500 Second Place:

Jayson Lowery, Broken Bond, for understanding that if you are going to work minimally, every decision matters, and for knowing how to get it right: material, texture, color, placement, scale…all of it.

• $750 First Place:

Clayton Singleton, Chloé, for being the “father of soul” and, by that, I mean connecting the viewer’s soul to the subject’s through masterful figurative painting that has been elevating the lives of men, women, and children of color before that topic permeated the national dialogue.

 

2023 Artists Who Teach Exhibiting Artists

Nfon Asuquo

Ashley Ault

Liz Bahl-Moore 

Anne Bousquet 

Madeline Brewer 

Tammy Burgett

Sara Clapper

Cherilyn Colbert

Jim Dees

Michael DiBari

Lyle Eesley

Holland Etheridge

Bronwyn Evans

Anne Garland

Carol Gruppe

Chris Hakanson

Tonya Hopson

James Warwick Jones

Maggie Kerrigan

MoonJoo Lee

Corinne Lilyard-Mitchell

Jayson Lowery

Shirley Lu

Sarah Lubert

Ryan Lytle

Rosemarie Martindale

Jackie Merritt

Mark Miltz

Emily Neuner

Pam Oden

Mary Carr Roberts

Jorge Antonio Saenz

Judith Saunders

Heather Schnell

Eloise Shelton-Mayo

Clayton Singleton

Karen Spaulding

Rhonda M DeBeau Wagner 

Jama Watts

 

We want to thank everyone who participated in the exhibition and Betsy DiJulio for being this year's juror! 

Image credits: Chloe, Clayton Singleton, Peeps A Boo I See You, Corrine Liyard-Mithcell, Irish Music, James Wariwck Jones, Find Me At Sundown, Jorge Saenz, Broken Bond, Jayson Lowery