Curated Storefront
Published: June 9, 2020
The MASK-R-AID online exhibition features 38 masks out of the 102 masks that were submitted to Curated Storefront’s Call for Artists. The MASK-R-AID exhibition and awards were juried by Curated Storefront’s Curatorial Committee.
Juror’s Statement The Juror noted a wide range of creative talent in the submissions. The best designs transformed the face into something beyond being a mask and demonstrated a high degree of craft and concept. Stay healthy and safe.
The first through third place winners were announced through Curated Storefront’s Facebook Live event on Friday, June 5, 2020, at 6 PM. Watch the announcement video below.
Third Place Prize - $ 300
Iggy Soliven
BACK 2 WERK
Duck canvas, pencils, screwdrivers, steel spring clamps, measuring tape, parachute clips, thread, glue
9 x .75 x 18 in
IGGY SOLIVEN is a Los Angeles based textural chameleon making clothes that refer to equal parts function and frivolity. His work emphasizes the gray space held between dualities and is especially influenced by the intersection of marginalization and ceremonial adornment. His costume pieces and other custom dinglehops exist as self-contained universes that celebrate the ambiguous and the absurd, exaggerating the performative aspect of fashion.
2nd Place Prize - $1,000
Ron White
How Much is Too Much
Ceramic, paint
27 x 30 x 17 in
Ron White is an Akron artist, who is well known for his figurative work and never shies away from political content. As a visual artist, he experiments in media including working on paper, in clay, and through ice. His work often reflects the human figure as postmodernist documentation of moments in time that mark an event or personal space. He explains that the human form is the connection to any experience.
First Place Prize - $2,500
Melissa Meier
Rice (from the Skins series)
Rice and glue
30 x 30 x 20 in
Melissa Meier is a Brazilian artist and internationally recognized for her evocative 3-dimensional installations, found-object sculptures, collages, and photography. In her current series “SKINS”, Meier has created sculptural clothing hybrids, utilizing natural materials such as leaves, stones, fur, eggshells, wheat, rice, crystals, scales, sticks, feathers, pinecones, and shells.
Inspired by Brazilian Carnival and Native American skin-walkers, her wearable constructions blend female empowerment with self-created mythology, developed around the idea of ancient cultures of female warriors, exemplifying strength, beauty, and unity of life lived in harmony with the elements.
Meier states, “At first I was inspired by the legends of indigenous people and how they used the skins of animals to transform into them, creating a bridge between the human and animal worlds. But as my work matured, I became equally interested in the future of fashion as an extreme form of kinetic sculpture.”