Festival Of The Miner’s Ghost Arts Council Exhibition.
The Festival of the Miner’s Ghost Arts Exhibition held its official opening night last Tuesday with 2016 Miss Teen Showgirl runner-up Summer-Rose Stingemore having the honour of opening the event.
Summer-Rose graciously stepped in to carry out the opening duties role at short notice and did so with confidence and aplomb.
There was an amazing display of artworks from local artists and students that filled the walls with their colour and creativity based around the theme of the International Year of the Pulses.
The painting section this year had the most entries.
The judges reported that with the very high quality of work submitted and also a very varied style of art, it had been a very difficult section to judge.
Cobar Arts Council president, Bev Anderson said next year they plan to create more painting categories to divide the work up to help the judges.
She said it would also enable more artists to win prizes and hopefully encourage more artists to submit their work.
The winner of the landscape painting category was Toni Wells (also the People’s Choice) with Thelma Wade second and Tricia Vagg was Highly Commended in this section.
The Open category had by far the most submissions of work and it was Sue Cox’s decoupage of three gardens that took out first place.
Maria Kerby’s entry placed second and both Kylie Harvey and Tonette Martin walked away with Highly Commended awards.
In the Still Life category it was Bev Anderson’s ‘kitchen stuff’ that won first place; Luke Grey won second; and Kylie Harvey’s and Rachel Davis-Banks’ entries were Highly Commended.
The judges would have liked to have seen a few more photography entries but they were however very pleased with the quality of the work that was submitted.
Klae McGuiness walked away with a multitude of awards winning both first and second in the Landscape category and first, second and Highly Commended awards in the Open category.
Nadine Land also won a Highly Commended award in the Open category.
Jo Brown won both first and second in the Portrait category with photographs of her sons playing in the snow.
Sue Cox received a Highly Commended award for her Portrait entry.
In the ‘Other’ art section, Barry Simes won first place for his outback goanna created with chain links welded individually together.
Angela Dimond won second place with her woollen rainbow fractal and Jo Brown was Highly Commended for her candles created from paper and glue.
During the school holidays, Arts Council member Issie Pretty ran a workshop for children at the Cobar Youth & Fitness centre where they decorated old miners hard hats and this was given its own section at the exhibition.
The winners of this section were Abigale Theakston; Isabella Lowe; Nate Griffiths; and Phoebe Pursehouse.
Adding to the exhibition were some arts for display only, including group work created at Flourish Australia workshops together with patchwork quilts with a creative history.
