The 45th annual Lancaster Summer Arts Festival is kicking into high gear this weekend and one of its biggest events, the Open Art Award Show, will open Friday at the Lancaster Museum of Art.

We've never had a Summer Arts Festival without the Open Art Awards, which is celebrating its 46th year.

And it is still going strong.

The 145 entries in this year's show offer a terrific eclectic look at the Lancaster art scene, from the strange  (G.C. Buggoon's "Fingernail/Toenail Clippings — 8 years of my Life," which is exactly what it sounds like ) to the serene (Mary Habecker's semi-abstract oil painting of the river, "Susquehanna Series II").

While the show was open to anyone who lives or studies in Lancaster County, a juror does award prizes.

This year Stamatina Gregory, the Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania's Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, served as the juror and she liked what she saw.

"Given the diversity of this year's submissions, choosing only a handful for awards was a challenge, if a pleasant one," she wrote in her statement.

The first place award went to Carol J. Piersol for "Uzazi wa Rangi," a lovely two dimensional diamond of folded fabric.

"Its straightforward, yet sophisticated composition and rich material evokes the pleasures of craft and of consumption," Gregory wrote.

Cambria Bailey's  untitled photoshop creation took second place. The other-wordly piece shows a man in the thinker's pose with an animal's skeleton over its head and tubes and plugs in its body. Gregory thought the piece was striking and spoke "to the nature of our relationship to a rapidly changing world."

Third place went to Carol Toner Shane for her diptych "The Dream, The Nightmare," The acrylic and mixed media piece offers up 1950s iconic images from Marilyn Monroe to Harry Truman, a white picket fence and the atom bomb.

The Purchase Award, sponsored by Gerald Lestz in memory of his wife, Margaret, was won by Jean Sharf for her oil "Looking for Long Pants," a mysterious but somehow whimsical portrait of a chicken. The piece will be purchased by the museum for its permanent collection.

Honorable mentions were awarded to Buggoon for his mixed media "Fingernail/Toenail Clippings 8 Years of My Life," featuring little jars filled with what we can assume are the artist's own cast off nails. 

Alicia Byler's "Bewitched," is a salvo to feminine ideals, from peaches to galloping horses. Carol Galligan's "Red # 5," is an intense blend of colors in an evocative abstract.

"Tumble Wood," by Judy Beck Lobos, is a great big tumbleweed, made from tree branches. "Ernie," is a striking oil on canvas portrait by Richard Ressell, and "Victorian Couple," is a mixed media collage of  household items surrounding a black and white photograph of a Victorian-era couple.

Much more fills the walls of the Lancaster Museum of Art. One trend this year is the large number of works done with pencil or colored pencil, from Magrit Schmidte's airy portrait of a rutabaga to Terrie Eshelman's pop-art explosion of shapes that are actually fruits and vegetables in "You Are What You Eat."

Other highlights include Reed Dixon's mixed media work "Scissors" is an utterly charming and simple portrait of a pair of half-opened scissors, while KK DePaul's mixed media "The Illusion of Memory," offers two portraits of women, one looking down, lost in thought, the other just beginning to face the camera.

Susan Bloomfield worked her magic in the inviting, misty "Harley Man #7," a loving urban portrait. Janette Toth's "One Hundred Birds" is an utterly charming pen and ink drawing of, well, 100 birds.

And Debi Watson's water color, "Early Morning Neffsville," a gorgeous celebration of the ordinary, showing a school bus chugging down the road.


LSAF Open Art Awards Show
Opening reception, Fri. 5-8 p.m.

Cont. through July 27
Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Sun. noon-4 p.m.
Lancaster Museum of Art
135 N. Lime St., 394-3497
www.lmapa.org

Staff writer Jane Holahan can be reached at jholahan@LNPnews.com or 481-6016.