Marsha Kirk Receives International Sculpture Center's 2010 Outstanding Student Achievement In Contemporary Sculpture Award

Marsha Kirk, originally uploaded by afsart.

Marsha Kirk of Savannah, GA has been awarded the prestigious International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award for 2010. Marsha is a MFA student at Savannah College of Art and Design. She was nominated for the award by her faculty sponsor Professor Christopher Nitsche.

The International Sculpture Center (ISC) established the annual “Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award” program in 1994 to recognize young sculptors and to encourage their continued commitment to the field. It was also designed to draw attention to the sculpture programs of the participating universities, colleges and art schools. The award program’s growing publicity resulted in a record number of participating institutions; including over 176 universities, colleges and art school sculpture programs from sixteen countries for a nominated total of 445 students.

A distinguished panel made up of artist and educator Creighton Michael, curator Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, and artist Oliver Herring selected twenty winners and fifteen honorable mentions through a competitive viewing process of the works submitted. The selection of the winners from a large pool of applicants, including international students, is a great accomplishment and testament to the artistic promise of the students’ work.

The twenty award recipients will participate in the Grounds For Sculpture’s Fall/Winter Exhibition, which will be on view from October 10, 2010-January 2, 2011 in Hamilton, New Jersey, adjacent to the ISC headquarters. The artist’s work will be included in Grounds For Sculpture’s 2010 Fall/Winter Exhibitions Catalogue and featured in the October 2010 issue of the International Sculpture Center’s award winning publication, Sculpture magazine as well as on the ISC award winning website at www.sculpture.org.

JuYeon Kim: The In Between

JuYeon Kim: The In Between, originally uploaded by afsart.

During the spring quarter 2010 10 students and one graduate assistant from the Savannah campus worked with visiting artist JuYeon Kim to create the Cave Installation for the "In-Between" exhibit.

Inspired by the artist's and students' interpretation of the eighth-century Buddhist text "The Tibetan Book of the Dead," these ambitious works signify the range of human experience, reminding us of the volatility of the physical world and our illusory perception of it.

Seeking to bridge the gap between divergent cultural traditions, Kim began studying the bardo—the "in-between" space in Tibetan Buddhist practice. From this study she set forth on the journey of creating two sculptural installations for "The In-Between."

The cave installation consists of six hardwood panels (representing the Six Realms of rebirth) arranged to form a hexagonally shaped interior space. The walls of the cave-like interior are covered with sculpted figures in both high and low relief. Kim developed the smoothly polished wood exterior of Untitled_ci10 to contrast with the encrusted interior in order to provoke a sense of disorientation. She notes: "I try to create unusual environments that bring out viewers' primitive inner feelings and draw them back to the basic question of who we are."

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