38th Rosen Sculpture Competition and Exhibition

Lookout, 2023

Walter Early
Plattsburgh, NY

Welded and painted steel
144” x 132” x 60”

Artist statement

Lookout is part of my sparsities series which emphasizes line to describe abstract volumes. Formally, the work draws from the language of fragments: using incomplete forms to allude to a larger whole. Negative space features prominently and the open sculptures frame and accentuate different views of locations in which they are sited. Bright monochrome pigment plays with perceptions of mass, weight, and volume.

About the artist

Walter Early maintains a studio in the Adirondack region of Upstate New York.  His artwork has been exhibited in museums and galleries nationally and internationally and he has taught art in the United States, Canada, England, and Honduras.  In recent years his work has been supported by grants from the Henry Moore Foundation, the City of Chicago, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Red Astral Planes, 2024

Beau Lyday
Valdese, NC

Aged painted tin and wood
82″ x 46″ x 46″

Artist statement

I feel that a piece of art does not have to be shocking to have worth. Instead a work can mesmerize a person, moving one to a place of safety or sanctuary and instilling a sense of peace. In these unfathomably violent times, there is a special need for healing art. I seek through my work to inspire a sense of unity, balance, and wholeness.

The materials I use are aged roofing tin, wood and sometimes copper. After forty years in the furniture business, I lost my job to overseas competition. I started taking down abandon barns for the wood to make my own furniture to sell. I accumulated big stacks of roofing tin, sometimes using it as an element in my furniture. Eventually I turned to metal sculpture.

My work carries one into a different sense of a place and time. I am drawn to ancient symbols and structures, Celtic art, and the foundations of scared geometry. The framework of my pieces centers a person, inviting them to enter in, to follow the lines and intersections that make a symmetrical whole. The pierced /silhouette effect makes the background/negative space as important as the metal work itself. The light streaming though the openings in the piece cast light and shadow enhancing the depth and sense of movement to the eye. This technique also unites the piece with its surroundings, making it belong.

Artist Bio

Beau Lyday was born in Athens, GA and currently lives in  Valdese, NC. His current works is in rusted tin and wood sculpture. He was awarded a regional artist grant from the North Carolina Arts Council in 2013.

• He has been selected to exhibit at Arts Field in Lake City, SC 2013, 2015-2024
• Finalist in North Charleston National Outdoor Competition & Exhibition 2018, 2021,2024. Awarded best in show in 2021
• Was awarded third place in the 33rd Rosen National Outdoor Competition & Exhibition. Finalist   Rosen 2019  and 2023 received Juror’s Merit Award
• He was awarded best in show in 2017 & 2018 at the Lenoir Sculpture Celebration. Judge’s merit award 2019, 2021, third place 2022, Judge’s merit award 2023
• Awarded first place at the Chetola Art Walk 2019
• ASU art corridor finalist 2022 Will the Circle Be Unbroken
• UNCA finalist Art IN the Round School of Art and Art History Everlasting Arms
• Lotus Blossom Chetola Main St Blowing
• Leased works in Goldsboro, NC and Van Wyke, SC, Bascom Museum, Highlands NC, University of North Carolina Ashville School of Art. Rosen Sculpture Competition, ASU Arts corridor
• Southminster Retirement Community Firelight
• Moore Botanical Gardens Quatrefoil & Gothic Portal

Beau’s works are in several private collections. He is represented by Bill Brown owner of Anvil Sculpture Gardens in Linville, NC

Phase #1, 2022

Hanna Jubran
East Grimesland, NC

Cast Aluminum
168” x 24” x 24”

Artist statement

I casted this sculpture from a recycled Aluminum part. The process I utilized for creating these sculptures was done by direct cutting into a block of sand. I cut layers to produce the open lattice patterns. My latticework represents the crystallization of nature’s elements and minerals. It represents the natural process of growth, and distribution-the power of these forms comes from their existence in nature. My concept and development of this sculpture evolved from my interest in the natural science and phenomena. derived from natural formations, natural combinations of geometric and organic forms and shapes, alluding to geometry, math and the physical world harmonic motion, and periodic changes. I hope that my sculpture will inspire people in the arts and science and create a point of interest visiting the park.

“The mission of art is to bring out the unfamiliar from the most familiar.”

Gibran Khalil Gibran

About the artist

Hanna’s work addresses the concepts of time, movement, balance and space. Each sculpture occupies and creates its own reality influenced by its immediate surroundings. The work does not rely on one media to evoke the intended response, but takes advantage of compatible materials such as wood, granite, steel, stainless steel, iron, aluminum and bronze. One of many decisions I have made is maintaining and preserving the natural quality of the materials I work with.

True Blue, 2024

Richard Pitts
New Albandy, PA

Powder coated aluminum
90” x 30” x 36”

Artist statement

My recent sculptures are made with the idea that a positive dialog with the outdoor surroundings is established. My sculptures
made of fabricated powder coated aluminum are of an unnatural
and inorganic material but have the integrity of a thing grown rather than assembled.
Growth is the prime symbol of each sculpture. Curved metal like elegant
curves of cloth like forms echo this theme transforming the material.
Sculpture in the landscape, like a way finder for the human sprit, is meant to enrich and stimulate imagination in a positive way. The subsequent style of
these works are meant to stimulate Feelings for the past, the present and the future.
The idea that a sculpture can make a place important until that place makes the sculpture important coincides with the idea that a sculpture creates its environment
as much as the environment creates the sculpture. This is the important dialog I am aiming for in my sculpture.

About the artist

Richard Pitts was born in Fort Monmouth NJ. to a military family, they traveled throughout the United States later settling in Clifton NJ. After graduating Clifton High School Richard attended Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts, there he met the Painter/ Sculptor Reuben Kadish. In 1960 he moved to New York City, set up a studio and in 1961 attended Pratt Institute where he met his second mentor, painter Ernie Briggs. Both Kadish and Briggs remained lasting friends and inspirations. In the late 1980’s Richard was chairman of the board of artist at the Artist Choice Museum in SOHO.

After a tour in the US Army and graduating Pratt Institute Richard taught at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Fashion Institute of Technology and attended New York Studio School in Paris. Richard has his studio in rural Pa. and continues to exhibit his paintings and sculpture nation wide. He retired from the Fine arts Dept. of Fashion Institute of Tech. as a full professor . Richard was President of NOHO/M55 Gallery in Chelsea, NY. one of the oldest Artist Run Galleries in NYC. He is also founder of Urban Studio Unbound which is a 4 time grant recipient from the City of Yonkers NY. where his contemporaries run a gallery and public art program.
Richard Is represented by AMArt House, Bantam Ct.

Verde Trilogy, 2023

Glenn Zweygardt
Alfred Station, NY

Verde antique, granite, cast bronze and cast glass
84″ x 42” x 16″

Artist statement

About the artist

Unfurling With Seeds, 2015

David Boyajian
New Fairfield, CT

Steel sculpture
120” x 72” x 60”

Artist statement

Regardless of what materials I use or what form my sculptures take – be they volumetric, concave / convex, linear or plainer, forged, fabricated, or carved – I deal with the same poetic perceptions.My work centers around images that relate to man/woman’s relationship to their physical environment. I often begin with an architectural element such as a gate, column or window symbolizing passage and transformation as it relates to the journey of life. My shapes often define a narrative or metaphor by juxtaposing images from nature against the use of industrial materials within the architectural environment. My themes are based on observations of nurturing, regeneration, and growth, as well as poetic concepts relating to community, tolerance, and acceptance.

About the artist

David Boyajian is an artist, art instructor, and the owner of David Boyajian Sculpture Studio in New Fairfield, Connecticut. In the early 1980s, Boyajian studied at Alfred University, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and earned his MFA from the Maryland Institute Rinehart School of Sculpture. Following his fine art education, Boyajian continued his studies while assisting figurative sculptors Wolfgang Behl, Elbert Weinberg, and Andrew Coppola. Over the course of his thirty-plus-year career, Boyajian has shown his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including SculptureNow on The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Massachusetts, Bull City Sculpture Show in Durham, North Carolina, and ‘Genesis,’ an outdoor solo show at the Robert Moses Sculpture Garden at Fordham University.

Boyajian’s numerous public commissions include “The Weaving Shuttle” and “The Eye of the Needle” at the Mansfield Town Square in Mansfield, Connecticut, “Lift,” a memorial to a former student at the Canterbury School in New Milford, and “Sanctuary” at the 9/11 Living Memorial at Sherwood Island for the state of Connecticut. His teaching career has spanned over twenty years at institutions such as Western Connecticut State University, Silvermine School of Art, and Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford.

Skyward, 2016

Benjamin Pierce
Cape Girardeau, MO

Stainless steel
156” x 60” x 48”

Artist statement

Ben Pierce is a veteran and Missouri native who found an outlet for his internal struggle by creating sculpture.

     “ I Have been living with depression for many years (way before I began      making art). Only recently have I begun to speak openly about it with friends and family.  A lot of mental illness is suffered in silence- I am choosing to use my art as a way to help others speak up. Maybe someone will hear about this or read this and feel HOPE. You are not alone!

   Or through my openness about depression it will allow others to not suffer alone by giving them courage to seek help or confide in someone.  Maybe this can open that conversation for them.

   My art/sculptures possibly would not have been created if it weren’t for my need to externalize what I go through inside. I hope you find your own  voice and can endure any obstacle that comes your way”.

About the artist

Flight, date unknown

Bob Doster
Lancaster, SC

Corten steel
168” x 84” x 84”

Artist statement

My creative process begins with a shape I see in my environment. It might be a leaf that reminds me of the  childhood experience of jumping in a pile of leaves or a curved piece of paper which makes me think about riding the waves at the beach. I then build on the shapes to create a sculpture. Some pieces are whimsical and others have a profound meaning about the society we live in.

If I were a tree each limb would represent a series I am working on as my ideas grow so does the the tree of my life.

About the artist

Bob Doster was born and grew up in Lancaster SC.  Oldest of six children himself and five younger sisters into a family of high achievers. Bob had his first exposure to art from his grandmother who was a Sunday afternoon painter. Then in his father’s sculptural steel shop where he let Bob  play with a blow torch at the age of 8. When he was 12 he sold his first sculpture to a local bank president, from then on he was hooked with the sculpture bug.  After graduation from high school he married and had two children by the age of 19, then opened a grocery store. For the next five years he worked 16 hrs. a day 7 days a week to make a success of the business. He then sold the store and went back to school. Where he earned his MFA from Clemson and a BFA from the University of South Carolina. Bob’s career spans forty three years as a working sculptor with art work placed world wide and he has taught more than 150,000 students aged 4 to 80 as a visiting teaching artist with the SCAC helping students create sculptures for themselves or as a legacy gift for their schools in the two Carolina’s and Illinois.

The Ecstatic, 2023

Andrew Light
Lexington, KY

Steel
60″ x 72″ x 84″

Artist statement

My studio practice is informed by explorations of body morphologies, industrial design and architectural history. Frequent in my design ecology is the inclusion of industrially produced shapes. Merging these elements with free form fabrication widens the opportunities in my formal language, creating a nexus between my academic and trade backgrounds. Architectural and structural design sensibilities are often present throughout my studio practice, continuously informing the interaction of available commercial products and my aesthetic impulses. The recontexturalization of found materials and ideas into open paradigms, brings regular moments of marvel into my studio practice. The context of works vary, frequently extant as anomalous cohorts that reflect my diverse interests, my sculptures exist as epiphanous gestures. Finished projects are the result of determined, contemplative practice, that expound upon their origins and coalesce with discoveries made through the labors of creation.

About the artist

Andrew Light is a sculptor based in central Kentucky. Academically trained and in private practice for over 20 years, he maintains a prolific studio practice. In addition to his formal training he has worked for two masters of sculptural practice, John Henry and Richard Hunt, eventually serving as head of fabrication for both. Having exhibited internationally and in over 15 states, Mr. Light has developed a reputation for professionalism and high aesthetic standards.

Core Revisited, 2018

Adam Walls
Tryon, NC

Steel and auto body paint
72” x 48” x 48”

About the Artist 

Adam Walls has been creating art for public exhibition since 2004. He received his BA in Art Education in 1996 from Limestone College and taught art in art centers, public schools, and out of his own studio until receiving his MFA in sculpture from Winthrop University in 2005. Since receiving his MFA, Adam’s work has appeared in Sculpture Magazine, been the topic of discussion on NPR and ETV, and has been exhibited in over one hundred outdoor sculpture exhibitions. Adam Walls currently resides in Tryon NC and serves as the head of the sculpture program at UNC-Pembroke.