2015
River Tattoo
Adhesive vinyl on glass, 8’ x 85’ overall dimensions, Jim Cogswell, artist. River Tattoo celebrates the Grand River and the Blue Bridge spanning it. It is made from thousands of pieces of adhesive vinyl applied directly to the glass. The vinyl shapes are based on ink drawings of animal-like forms, collages made from adhesive shelf paper, and photographs of ordinary houseplants, digitally hybridized, mirrored, and multiplied. The river flows through it in a pattern of rhythmic lines rising and falling around the bend in the building, with the bridge reflected in them. The mural’s clouds, its flora, its teeming bestiary of creatures both sinister and benign seem to inhabit the world reflected in the glass, suggesting that the space around us is full of possibilities we have not yet begun to imagine.
1st Prize: Julia Gjebic
2nd Prize: Ashlee Busch
3rd Prize: Weston Bernath
Audience Prize: Ashlee Busch
Judges: Christine Chamberlain, Jim Cogswell, Christian Gaines, John Schuster-Craig, Elaine Shay