JOHNSON CITY – The results are in for a competitive effort to build a collection of artwork focused on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Reece Museum and Mary B. Martin School of the Arts at East Tennessee State University, community supporters Bravissima! Women Sponsoring the Arts!, and others joined in an initiative to purchase artwork created in 2019 or 2020 for a “Local Art in the Age of the 2020 Global Pandemic” special collection which will be housed in the Reece Museum’s Permanent Collection.
The idea for the initiative began when Reece Museum staff discussed how to capture a sense of collective experiences during the 2020 novel coronavirus pandemic. They decided to build a special collection comprised of recent artwork purchased from Tennessee’s First Congressional District artists that reflect an emotive snapshot of the times of COVID-19.
To build the new collection, $2,000 from the Reece Museum Foundation account was committed to establish a restricted fund agreement administered by the ETSU Foundation. The Martin School of the Arts matched those funds with $2,000, andBravissima! Women Sponsoring the Arts! contributed $6,000. When fundraising efforts concluded on June 30, 2020, the restricted fund account had $10,200.
All artists juried into the “Local Art in the Age of the 2020 Global Pandemic” special collection will receive an equal dollar amount of $255 after their artwork is delivered to the Reece Museum. That dollar amount was arrived at by dividing the number artists juried into the special collection into the funds in the ETSU Foundation restricted fund account on June 30.
A jurying committee comprised of one representative each from the Reece Museum and the Martin School of the Arts and two representatives from the arts community selected the artwork. To ensure unbiased fairness, artists’ names and addresses were redacted for jurying purposes. The artist prospectus required artists to be at least 18 years of age, and to live and/or work in Tennessee’s First Congressional District. There was no entry fee to participate, and each artist could submit only one entry for consideration.
From the 106 artists who submitted entries, the jurors selected 40 artworks for the Reece Museum’s“Local Art in the Age of the 2020 Global Pandemic” special collection.
Listed in alphabetical order, those artists are Kailyn Beitzel, Sam Boven, Laken Bridges, Danielle Byington, Joel Carillet, Teresa Crowe, Mary de Wit, Cristy Dunn, Richard Dwyer, Joan Elliott, Jay Flack, Brian Fletcher, Ron Fondaw, Lyn Govette, Mike Helbing, John Hilton, Storm Ketron, Val Lyle, Gregory Marlow, Jocelyn Mathewes, Joy Messimer, Shannon Mettler, Katie Murphy, Mary Nees, Emily Parris, Charles Peters, Marie Porterfield, Rick Ramsey, James Rathschmidt, Mark Ray, Anne Reid, Garry Renfro, Jonathan Reynolds, Thomas Root, Mike Rose, Martha Rubenstein, Debra Savell Stewart, Beverly Thomas Jenkins, Christy Ward and Lauren Whipple.
