Winning $25,000 is great. But winning $25,000 for black velvet paintings is even better.
A panel of jurors recently awarded Tony Shore, an unassuming South Baltimore native, the 2007 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize for his acrylics on black velvet ? an unforgiving medium with a reputation.
Shore?s paintings are on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art beside photographs, films and sculptures from six Sondheim finalists, including Maryland Institute College of Art grads Richard Cleaver, Eric Dyer and Geoff Grace.
The Sondheim award was created in 2006 in honor of the late Baltimore civic leader Walter Sondheim and his late wife, Janet, a educator and former member of the Denishawn Dancers.
“I first started painting on black velvet my junior year at MICA,” said Shore, 35. “Originally, the idea was to do black velvet [portraits] of people who owned black velvets ? my family and friends.”
Shore?s interpretations progressed from over-the-top, cartoonish portraits based on blue-collar stereotypes to more realistic portrayals of Baltimoreans “with a lot more dignity,” he said.
Shore?s large, dark paintings arevery focused and controlled, said Gary Kachadourian, visual arts coordinator with the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, which organizes Artscape. “Tony is very well-respected in the community and for a good reason.”
It?s important to Shore to create paintings that are accessible to a variety of people with the same intensity, he said.
The MICA graduate and professor founded and directs Access Art, an after-school arts program in Baltimore. The center is housed in a former Enoch Pratt Library branch in Morrell Park, where Shore drew all the time as a kid, he said.
“It?s nice to come full circle and maintain a reciprocal relationship with the community that I paint.”
Shore?s most recent paintings, on display at C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, are classical still lifes of down-market, dead fish.
IF YOU GO
Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize
Through Aug. 5
» Where: Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore
» Info: Free. 443-573-1700, www.artbma.org
» Where: C. Grimaldis Gallery, 523 N. Charles St., Baltimore.
» When: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday
» Info: Free. 410-539-1080, www.cgrimaldisgallery.com
