Christine Alfery’s ‘Creative Contraptions’ Selected for Inclusion in the 32nd Annual Northern National Art Competition

International Award-Winning Contemporary Conceptual Artist, Christine Alfery’s painting, Creative Contraptions was recently selected for inclusion in the 32nd Annual Northern National Art Competition.

The judge for this competition is Scott Stulen, Director/President of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Philbrook Museum of Art. Scott chose 90 works of art from nearly 350 submissions – and those who were involved remarked on how difficult narrowing down those selections were, as all of the art submissions were ‘absolutely stellar!’

The work will be shown at the Nicolet College Art Gallery, Rhinelander, Wisconsin, 54501. There will be an Opening Reception at 5pm on September 26th at the Northwoods Center at Nicolet College.  

Earlier this Spring, Christine posted a blog highlighting Creative Contraptions. Click here

As prolific a writer as she is an artist, Alfery’s blog posts expand on her creativity by putting words, thoughts and concepts to her images.

Following is what she wrote about Creative Contraptions in her blog:

Science and technology share many surprising connections to art: they were parallel fields of experiment and invention, creativity and construction, matter and energy. -MOMA Curator, Michelle Kuo.

I am looking forward to examining the new exhibition at the MOMA with my daughter Holly in June called ‘New Order: Art and Technology in the Twenty-First Century.’ When I listen to the short video about the exhibition one sentence stood out for me,“Art is always a form of experimentation. By experimentation artists don’t know what the result is going to be.” MOMA Curator Michelle Kuo.

Art like science and technology is about discovery and experimentation. And I believe, like Kuo, that experimentation does mean not knowing what the end result will be. One thing to think about is what the experiment is about? For artists it should be somewhere in the whole order of things, about the idea the concept? And that idea, that concept should be the artists. It should be a different way to see and look at an object a concept. It should be fluid. The same applies to the scientist.

The question becomes when technology enters the playground of art does the artist lose the self? Where is the self in this machine? Wasn’t the machine created by another self? What happens to the self, the soul of the artist? I look forward to the exhibition.

To purchase originals and/or prints of Christine’s work, go to her e-commerce site: christinealfery.com