Portland Museum of Art announces winners in first sustainability art prize — Portland Museum of Art

The Portland Museum of Artwork on Friday announced 6 winners of the new Tidal Change Award, developed to understand teenagers and young older people discovering weather change as a result of their art.

About 70 artists from all more than New England submitted will work, together with sculpture, illustration, fashion structure, metalsmithing and songs, the museum stated. 4 of the 6 winners are from Maine. In addition to getting identified by the museum for their operate, the winners in the 19-22 age team each individual get a $5,000 dollars prize, even though the winners in the 14-18 age division get $2,500.

The awards ended up made as a collaboration between the museum and The Local climate Initiative, a Kennebunkport-based mostly corporation focused on educating and empowering youth as they get the job done towards weather improve methods. In describing the award on the PMA’s web site, the two companies stated they “believe art’s means to inspire social improve can be harnessed to struggle local weather alter.”

Winners in the young age category included Ellie Bouman of Freeport, Benjamin Pochurek of Freeport and Hannah Slone of Kennebunkport. Bouman’s operate, “The Colorless Sea,” is a watercolor and pencil depiction of an underwater scene without having colorful coral reefs. The only color to be located on the ocean flooring in the perform is from a reserve that has been dropped at sea.

“The information of this piece is that if drastic action is not taken immediately, most coral reefs will die off and wholesome, colourful corals will only be discovered in publications and photos,” Bouman wrote in the artist’s statement. “The ebook also represents education, simply because individuals are most possible to just take motion from climate adjust if they are educated on the topic.”

Pochurek’s perform, “Flora Lung,” is a sculpture of a loan determine sitting down in some future wasteland sporting elaborate equipment developed to support individuals survive in a environment with no trees and no new air. Elements consist of oak, cedar, pine, steel, washers, bolts, wire, plastic tubing, air vegetation and rocks.

“My sculpture is motivated by early diving gear, ‘Aqua Lung.’ Just as humans formulated technological innovation to survive underwater, this futurist figure has been forced to invent new engineering, Flora Lung to survive on land,” Pochurek wrote about the work.

Slone’s work, “A Costume Built from Squander,” is a gown produced from plastic shipping and delivery and storage resources above a single thirty day period at the retailer exactly where Slone worked. The skirt of the costume is created of plastic held alongside one another with grommets and sashes. By pulling the sash, the packing products fall from the costume, “littering the floor with plastic,” Slone wrote.

The winners in the more mature division ended up Katherine Concannon of Middlebury, Vermont, for a sculpture called  “What We Remaining Behind” Carolina Bragg of Brookline, Massachusetts, for a recorded piece of new music known as “If Bees Are Few” and Nicky Howard Rogers of Yarmouth for a dwelling display screen of ecosystems termed “Microcosms.”

All of the artwork operate submitted for the awards can be observed on the net at tidalshiftaward.com.