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Tom Nakashima
Juror
Greetings. I would like to thank all of you from the Florida Artist Group for inviting me to jury your 2012 exhibition. In looking at all of the work in the exhibition, I was immediately impressed by the stylistic variation of the pieces in the show. This told me immediately that there is no attempt on the part of the group to restrict its members to any specific style. I think that this is a rare quality for any exhibiting artist organization.
How do I go about selecting prize winners from such a wide variety of submissions? I first take a fair amount of time (an hour or so) to look at all the work without any attempt at judging or using any
critical analysis. I do this because I firmly believe that looking at work and absorbing its initial impact, is the best way to approach a work of art. Using this procedure I try not to use my own aesthetic, philosophy, or stylistic leanings to color my view of the piece. Of course I will inevitably see certain work that is in direct opposition to my taste - but even then I make it a point not to eliminate anything exclusively on this basis. On my following rounds of judging I try to look at work that either seems strong or actually offends my sensibilities. I then try to understand some reason why each piece has been done in a certain manner. I want to try to comprehend what the artist was trying to do, and see if it was done successfully - that is, was it executed in a manner appropriate to the artist’s objectives, subject and style? If it seems obvious that the work was involved in an attempt at creating an illusion, I expect a technical competence appropriate to that endeavor. Conversely, if a painting or sculpture evidences a strong attempt at violating pictorial illusion and craft, I expect to see a piece that abandons and even strikes out against that norm - even to the extent that it refutes what many would consider a contemporary trend. When I see a painting that presents itself as a formal composition, I look for logic within the work that allows me to work backwards and deconstruct the painting itself. However, if it looks formal but contains little or no use of formal analysis - I suspect that it is a decorative painting without reason - or a shallow piece that is simply a rendering of some “stereotype” using the artist’s concept of the “look” of formal composition.
This show consisted mostly of work within the mainstreams of either abstraction or realism. Only a few pieces seemed stylistically postmodern. I would have liked to have seen a few more pieces in that category - pieces
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