Sunday, May 1, 2011

UWA Open Art Challenge placing

At the beginning of this year Jayjay hassled me to enter the UWA Open Art Challenge so I pieced together 6 items and sent him them in 3 folders to cover the next 3 months of the competition.

I hardly visit SL much anymore, other than for social events with close friends who are yet to make the move away. I have no gallery there and do no promotion of my art within SL. I dropped in each month to see how my pieces had been set up and occasionally added some info and took a quick look around whatever was up on the UWA art platform... my pieces missed that certain something that the best works on display show. Consequently I never expected to place in any of the rounds.

So I was genuinely surprised on Sunday May 1 (in the early SLT morning) when Jayjay had announced all the prizes but the UWA judge's and my name had still to come up even though he had told me I had to be there for this month's announcements (a sure sign of having won _something_)... I was starting to think he had something else in store for me, what, I had no idea.... and then he announced the 2nd place winners:


Now for the top 3 Prizes. All of these works will go straight to the Grand Finale round. Honestly, for the judges it was extremely hard, and emotions flew high, with almost blood being splilt on the judging floor. Never were there more diverse opinions. It was wafer thin among the panel among the 10 pieces everyone liked best, and somehow those margins allowed for a single 1st Prize winner. And so....
3rd Prize for the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge for APRIL goes to: NOBODY
I know there have been numerous ties in the past. I need to explain this a bit. The RL panel meets twice for an hour each and in that time have to come to agreement. So in the end when there is heated argument, we compromise by putting up joint winners. The important thing is that all of these go to the Grand Finale, where there is a larger panel of people across the grid, and about one month to decide instead of a few days.
and so...
Joint 2nd Prize (L$5,000) for the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge for APRIL goes to: ULTRA VIOLET by quadrapop Lane, a long time supporter of the challenge, quadrapop breaks through for the first time :)
Joint 2nd Prize (L$5,000) for the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge for APRIL, ALSO goes to: THEATRE OF WAR by Miso Susanowa

Thank you to Jayjay, Freewee, the UWA partners and the UWA judges, and to all the artists who have ever entered the UWA art challenges... this project is one of the most useful in SL to promote the possibility of this medium as an art form.

I wont be entering any more rounds @ UWA as I am not creating any new works in SL (you have to go to Inworldz to see my current works) and have exhausted the best of my archive of SL works.



But you can still see some of my work on display in SL till the end of July as part of Relay For Life as I have 10 works available (including some of the ones I entered in UWA's Challenge) in RFL vendors. Works are displayed here, my RFL Vendor is here and here.