CATS asked participants to design art to be displayed on a CATS monthly pass promoting public transit in Charlotte.
We asked that their art incorporate the theme of "What Does Charlotte Mean To You" based on their own interpretation.
The winners' designs will be used on the 2022 monthly passes as followed: First Place – Local Monthly Pass; Second Place – Express Monthly Pass; and Third Place– Express Plus Monthly Pass.
We're happy to announce our winners:
First Place – Eva Crawford
Bio: I am native Charlottean and full-time artist with a studio and gallery space at Dilworth Artisan Station in Southend Charlotte, NC. Art began at age three and hurdled its way through a BFA from UNC-Chapel Hill, a side trip designing furniture, then an unexpected season teaching high school art. After 35+ years of marriage and raising 5 children, I am a prolific full-time artist. Narrative is a key element in my art, and as a visual storyteller I use color, texture and often text to enhance the subject matter which is either painted or reimagined from found images. My choice of artistic tools to paint or collage these stories are realism, with a dalliance in surrealism and expressionism.
About the Piece "Uptown": I created this artwork last summer while working as an instructor at Lorien Academy for the Arts in West Charlotte. In order to best convey the concept of a stylized cityscape using watercolor and collage, I made a sample to show my class. The inspiration for my piece was the energy, support and love I witnessed during the painting of the Black Lives Matter mural on Tryon Street in Uptown Charlotte. That moment represented an important and positive shift in our city's desire to embrace necessary change for growth on many levels.
Second Place – Maria Senkel
Bio: I am an artist who loves to illustrate and sculpt. My artwork aims to create room for more fantasy in our lives and highlight its many moral metaphors. With it, I hope to offer my audience an additional lens to help examine their realities.
About the Piece: A look in the side view mirror will show you that Charlotte is a city on the move. A growing city with artistic flair, plenty of places to explore, communities to reach, and people to connect. The idea for this painting came to me during a bus ride in the Ballantyne area. I noticed the side view mirror on the bus and being a fantasy artist, my mind went places. The mirror became a window to a story.
Third Place – Leandro Manzo
Bio:
Here
About the Piece:
Angel en North Tryon is a work that began in Charlotte, but I ended it in Buenos Aires Argentina, since I had to travel there to make a series of exhibitions. Among the amount of finished and unfinished works that I took with me, Angel was in North Tryon. I think the biggest motivation to finish it was that I was terribly missing Chatlotte in that time I spent in Buenos Aires. I first came to Charlotte in 2001 to make an exhibition, so I met, toured, walked and experienced the city for firts time. And from the first moment began to emerge, along a love for her, a series of oil paintings of Charlotte landscapes. I had never painted landscapes before, and I started to do it, inspired by this city!