Springfield Museum of Art celebrates watercolor in new exhibition

A number of participating artists attended the show’s opening on Saturday. They included Sharon Stolzenberger and Jim Gerkin, among several others.

Nancy Notarianni received the gold medal prize for painting titled, “Westside Market Meat Man.” The stoic yet warm depiction of a butcher earned the Berea-based art teacher her first award in a juried show.

“I was shocked. I’d not won any award at any of the juried exhibitions I’ve been in,” Notarianni said. “It’s just such validation to know that my work is appreciated and that there was something there that the juror saw. That just gives me chills.”

Inspiration for the piece came one day while driving pass a butcher’s shop. The appearance of a man at the front of his store spoke to Notarianni, who stopped and asked for his picture.

“My work was as a graphic designer, and my hobby was watercolor. I just love watercolor, and now I have a studio where I teach watercolor and drawing,” the artist said.

Among the dozens of works that pushed boundaries in both style and material, Jennifer Sowders’ piece titled “Life’s Work” was a standout as it earned second place in the competition.

It was an accomplishment the artist said left her feeling “on top of the world.”

“I started painting when I was in junior high. I didn’t know I had talent until then. I had a really good art teacher that kind of fueled the passion, and I found out I had a knack for portraiture,” Sowders said.

Sowders shared that while inspiration for the piece came during a period of artistic self-doubt, discovering its title helped her reframe it as something positive.

“I kind of was depressed when I came up with the idea. It seems like every three months I self-doubt as an artist, like ‘why am I doing all this?’ But once I got the title for the piece, it totally changed my viewpoint,” Sowders’ said. “The title ‘Life’s Work’ suddenly gave me an uplifting feeling, that it was a good thing, that I’m pouring out the best. It went from a downer idea to a very good one.”

Chandana Mozumdar won the Ohio Watercolor Society’s Marilyn H Phillis Memorial award for a portrait of a fisherman.

“It is an amazing experience for me,” Mozumdar said about her piece and participation. “Here’s a guy, he’s probably coming back home in the morning, he probably hasn’t gotten any fish, so the shoulders are a little dejected. I like that solitariness. A lot of my pictures are of solitary human figures probably from the working class. I find it attractive.”

A walk down the gallery offers numerous views of what the watercolor medium is capable of. For these artists, watercolor allows them to harness light and color that might not otherwise be possible.

“Watercolor is so fresh and also a little unforgiving, but it’s just a perfect medium if you want light and that luminosity to come through,” Aileen Cave, treasurer and recording secretary at the Ohio Watercolor Society said.

Museum Curator Jennifer Wenker detailed how finding interconnecting themes allowed her to group them aesthetically.

“My favorite part of the job as a curator is looking for connections between things that might seem disparate. I’m looking for themes, trying to understand what the currents are, what rises up,” she said.

“I feel like curation is about elevating their voices and celebrating everybody’s different perspectives, because with a show like this, we have 64 different people from across the state from all walks of life. I like to see what they’re interested in, what their styles are like. All shows are like that for me.“

With the exhibition ending Nov. 16, it will, in the meantime, serve as a starting point for museum visitors.

For Wenker, she feels like this exhibition is approachable for many people.

“It’s less intimidating to people that maybe don’t have a lot of experience with art,” Wenker said. “But if you come in, look at this art and get excited, I hope you walk across the hall to look at the other galleries because there is a lot of joy in art that is not representational as well.”