Fayetteville artist wins Delta Award

Exhibition of 52 works opens at Arts Center in Little Rock

Lisa Krannichfeld of Little Rock has won the Grand Award at the 60th annual Delta Exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center.

The announcement was made Thursday evening at the Arts Center.

The exhibition opened to the public Friday.

Krannichfeld won the $2,500 prize for New Skin, a work made from Chinese ink, watercolor, acrylic, paper collage and toned cyanotype on paper mounted on board covered with resin. She won a Delta Award in 2015 for Shirt (in gold) dressed series.

This year’s Delta Awards, with a prize of $750 each, were won by Anais Dasse of Little Rock for Sticks and Stones, her oil painting with ink, charcoal and pencil on gessoed paper, and by Louis Watts of Burlington, N.C., for his graphite on paper Carbon Alphabets (The Ship Minerva Series).

Ray Allen Parker of Fayetteville won the $250 Contemporaries Award for his oil on canvas Post Punk.

Honorable mentions were awarded to Aaron Calvert of Arkadelphia for his glazed stoneware piece Always Facing South Bear; Tim Hursley of Little Rock for his chromogenic color print Pine Bluff Mortuary; and James Matthews of Little Rock for Eviction Quilt #3 (Green Medallion), a hand-tied quilt made from jeans and dresses recovered from an eviction.

The works were selected by a panel of guest jurors — Les Christensen, director of the Bradbury Art Museum at Arkansas State University; conceptual artist Shea Hembrey; and Brian K. Young, director of the University of Central Arkansas’ Baum Gallery.

The exhibition has 52 works by 46 artists. Some 1,424 entries were submitted by 618 artists.

“We selected work with faux fur, coffee, cold wax, ziatype, video, yucca, fluorescent tubing, resin, found objects, copper point, and of course the traditional materials,” Young said in press materials provided by the Arts Center.

“Despite this seemingly endless list of media, there is a thoughtfulness and subtlety in nearly all the works. These traits come in the manner in which these Delta artists have captured the essence of the region.”

The exhibition was founded in 1958 as a showcase for contemporary works by artists born in or currently living in Arkansas and bordering states and features work in all media.

Sponsors include Isabel and John Ed Anthony; the Brown Foundation Inc. of Houston; Lisenne Rockefeller; Terri and Chuck Erwin; Friday, Eldredge & Clark; the AAC Contemporaries; East Harding Construction; and Barbara House. The Grand Award is supported by the John William Linn Endowment Fund. The exhibition is supported by the Andre Simon Memorial Trust in memory of everyone who has died of AIDS.

The Delta Exhibition runs through Aug. 26 at the Arts Center, Ninth and Commerce streets, Little Rock. Information is available at arkansasartscenter.org or at (501) 372-4000.