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

The Portland Museum of Artwork on Friday declared 6 winners of the new Tidal Shift Award, designed to acknowledge teenagers and youthful older people exploring climate transform by way of their art.

About 70 artists from all over New England submitted operates, including sculpture, illustration, style structure, metalsmithing and music, the museum said. 4 of the six winners are from Maine. Besides currently being identified by the museum for their operate, the winners in the 19-22 age group each get a $5,000 cash prize, whilst the winners in the 14-18 age division get $2,500.

The awards ended up designed as a collaboration among the museum and The Local climate Initiative, a Kennebunkport-primarily based firm concentrated on educating and empowering youth as they work toward weather adjust solutions. In describing the award on the PMA’s web page, the two companies mentioned they “believe art’s ability to encourage social improve can be harnessed to fight local weather change.”

Winners in the younger age classification provided Ellie Bouman of Freeport, Benjamin Pochurek of Freeport and Hannah Slone of Kennebunkport. Bouman’s function, “The Colorless Sea,” is a watercolor and pencil depiction of an underwater scene without having colourful coral reefs. The only shade to be located on the ocean floor in the operate is from a book that has been missing at sea.

“The message of this piece is that if drastic motion is not taken speedily, most coral reefs will die off and healthy, colorful corals will only be found in publications and photos,” Bouman wrote in the artist’s assertion. “The reserve also signifies schooling, since individuals are most most likely to choose action versus local weather modify if they are educated on the subject matter.”

Pochurek’s operate, “Flora Lung,” is a sculpture of a personal loan figure sitting down in some upcoming wasteland carrying elaborate equipment built to assist people today endure in a planet with no trees and no refreshing air. Resources consist of oak, cedar, pine, metallic, washers, bolts, wire, plastic tubing, air plants and rocks.

“My sculpture is motivated by early diving equipment, ‘Aqua Lung.’ Just as human beings formulated technologies to endure underwater, this futurist figure has been pressured to invent new engineering, Flora Lung to endure on land,” Pochurek wrote about the function.

Slone’s operate, “A Gown Created from Squander,” is a costume designed from plastic delivery and storage elements in excess of a single thirty day period at the keep where Slone worked. The skirt of the gown is designed of plastic held with each other with grommets and sashes. By pulling the sash, the packing components fall from the gown, “littering the floor with plastic,” Slone wrote.

The winners in the older division were being Katherine Concannon of Middlebury, Vermont, for a sculpture called  “What We Left Behind” Carolina Bragg of Brookline, Massachusetts, for a recorded piece of songs named “If Bees Are Few” and Nicky Howard Rogers of Yarmouth for a dwelling display screen of ecosystems termed “Microcosms.”

All of the art operate submitted for the awards can be found on the internet at tidalshiftaward.com.