Gold Medal Show 2025

 

Julia Sulzen, Evening

Every so often, a really accomplished artist joins our quaint organization- and I feel it’s my duty to vote that person our Gold Medal.  Not to mention that this is a wonderful cityscape— so luminous solid, and brooding. I so much want to enter it.

Sondra Pfeffer ,  Bad Hair Day

I don’t collect sculpture - I make it.  Every shelf and pedestal  in our house is  already taken.

But if I did collect - this is one I’d like to live with.

The bad-hair lady has a joyful presence - and that's what a sculpture will not have unless the sculptor welcomes it into the surrounding space.

Andrew Conklin,  Three Pairs of Shoes  (second place)

Such sharp, elegant , lucid 17th C. Dutch figurative painting is so rare in contemporary art.

Kinky?   Perhaps.

Those tootsies sure look delicious.  No wear and tear on either the feet or shoes.

Helen Oh, Debra Balchen,  Muriel Christensen, Lenin Del Sol

Misha Livshulz

So sweet and peaceful.

Maurise  Thomas,  Chill

Another new member?

Quite distant from the refined technique and ambiance usually found on our walls,

Maybe that’s why I like it.

Hope to see more of his work in future shows.

…though we might note that the wall space  above the radiator is often given to pieces in questionable taste.

Thomas Zamiar,  Letting Go

Imagism remains Chicago’s home team 80 years after the Hairy Who - and, frankly, I wish we would move on.

For many, it's a career choice.

But it came as naturally to Tom as it did to H. C. Westermann.

Tobin Richter, Estate Bar Roof

A strange sense of spatial depth - I like it.

And I’d like to have cocktails up on that airy terrace.

If all the people were black, this would likely have gallery representation.

Jessica Smit Mattingly, Nocturne

Vienna, 1900.

A good place to be.

Errol Jacobson,  Urban Rain

Two things about Errol’s world;

1. It rains every day

2. Everyone is serious about getting to where they’re going 

It’s a tough world out there.  We’ve just got to plug away at it.

Debra Balchen

Related to the cone heads?

Todd Britton, Self Portrait #1

Can’t figure it out.

I suppose that’s the point.

***********

..after the awards were given:

Don Di Santi,  George. (Honorable mention)

I didn’t notice this first time around, but it’s a strong portrait of the strange fellow who often comes to our shows and book sales.

Lenin Del Sol. — Gold Medal Winner

Lenin is in the long line of  distinguished illustrators who joined the Palette and Chisel over the past 120 years.  Hats off to them all - but I look for something else.

Apparently I am in the minority here.