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Twelve ribbons had to come out of six buildings' worth of art. The 60th Marblehead Festival of Arts opened Wednesday in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and runs through Sunday, with 11 juried exhibits spread across Abbot Hall, the Old Town House, Old North Church, St. Michael's Episcopal Church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead and the Marblehead Arts Association's King Hooper Mansion. The festival's sales catalog lists 430 works in 10 of those exhibits alone; the Youth & Student Art show at Old North Church adds more.
The Best of Show awards, announced at the festival's opening ceremony outside Abbot Hall, went 12 ways — and two went to the same artist. Todd Zalewski took the top prize in both Painting and Drawing for two views of the same place, the light tower and fractured granite of Chandler Hovey Park, once in acrylic and once in pencil. Photography split its award between black and white, won by Ulrike Welsch's "Peekaboo," and color, won by Glenn Engman's "Puma." The remaining ribbons went to Diane Treadwell in Crafts, Amy Hourihan in Printmaking, Yelena Kanevsky in Mixed Media, Kiki Taron Kinney in Sculpture, Ed Lewis in Digital Art, Leon Drachman in Painting the Town, Dawn Jenkins in Senior Art and, in the Youth & Student Art exhibit, Harper Mooney. Among winners with listed prices, the range runs from $80 to $3,500, and Welsch's photograph is already marked sold in the catalog.
Line the winners up and the water keeps surfacing, less as postcard than as raw material. Rowers cross flat water in Hourihan's monotype, a gull holds the rocks in Zalewski's acrylic, Drachman's kayak sits out the fog, and three pieces are built from what the tide actually delivers — driftwood under Kinney's ceramic ruins and inside Jenkins' fish, shells sealed into the antique pocket watch that won Treadwell her ribbon. The two winners that ignore the harbor altogether, Engman's puma and Lewis' video mirror, took their exhibits anyway.
Here are the Best of Show works, in roughly the order a visitor walking the venues would meet them:
"Because Tomorrow the Sun Will Rise and Who Knows What the Tide May Bring!" Todd Zalewski
At Abbot Hall, the Painting winner is a 20-by-22-inch acrylic on panel: a gull stands on the granite below Marblehead Light, a red-banded lobster buoy wedged in the rocks at its feet. Zalewski works like a draftsman — every fissure in the ledge mapped, every feather separated from its neighbor — and the panel carries the highest price of any winning work, $3,500.
"Open Water," Diane Treadwell
A few steps away, the Crafts award went to a piece the size of a saucer. Treadwell filled an antique gold pocket watch with a ring of small shells surrounding a tiny square-rigged ship under sail, then set the watch on black velvet in a gilt rope-twist frame, 7 by 7.5 inches in all. The catalog's medium line reads "shell work in antique pocket watch."
"Early Morning Rowers," Amy Hourihan
Also at Abbot Hall, the Printmaking winner is a monotype in grays: four rowers silhouetted in a long shell on dead-flat water, a dark treeline behind them, the sky mottled like wet paper. The water returns their reflection almost unbroken — the morning of the title has no wind in it. It is priced at $495.
"Peekaboo," Ulrike Welsch
At the Old Town House, Welsch's black-and-white photograph catches an older woman in a checked apron and head kerchief leaning through a door opened barely past her shoulders, one hand on the latch, grinning past a caged window and a boxy Amana air conditioner. The 16-by-20-inch print was listed at $350 and is marked sold.
"Puma," Glenn Engman
The color award, hanging in the same building, went to a big cat slung over a broad ledge, one forepaw hanging free, head dropped toward the lens, the light catching its whiskers against a near-black background. The 16-by-20-inch print is priced at $225.
"Morning Calm," Leon Drachman
At the King Hooper Mansion, the Painting the Town winner is a 13-by-16-inch watercolor of an orange kayak hauled out on the rocks beside a run of stone harbor steps, the water and far shore dissolving into the same gray. Drachman lets the fog do the composing; the kayak is the only loud thing in the picture. It is priced at $450.
"Ancient Ruins of Atlantis," Kiki Taron Kinney
St. Michael's holds three winners. The Sculpture prize went to a hand-built ceramic vessel, 24 by 32 by 6 inches, its walls pressed with shell and starfish impressions and glazed foggy white over bare clay, its torn rims edged in black Viking-knit wire that flares off the top like ripped sails. The whole ruin rides a slab of driftwood scattered with shells.
"Ikebana," Yelena Kanevsky
The Mixed Media winner is plaster, acrylic paint, a photograph and an actual bare branch, which rises from a dark bowl set on painted stone steps in a niche of late-afternoon gold. From a few feet back it is hard to say where the photograph stops and the plaster begins, which is the point. At $80, it is the least expensive winner with a listed price.
"Time Mirror," Ed Lewis
The Digital Art award went to an interactive video work measuring about 21 by 37 by 10 inches. The piece throws a viewer's movements back in staggered, color-shifted echoes, so that one raised arm fans out across the screen in green, yellow, orange, red and violet against a spiraling backdrop.
"Tinkerbell," Dawn Jenkins
At the Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead, the Senior Art winner is a 17-inch fish assembled from driftwood painted seafoam and pink, with silvered fabric fins, a beaded tail and, at the center of a rhinestone wire rose, one googly eye. It is priced at $90.
"Craggy Rocks of Chandler Hovey Park, Marblehead Lighthouse," Todd Zalewski
Zalewski's second ribbon hangs in the same building. The Drawing winner is pencil on Arches hot-press paper, 22 inches square, priced at $800, and it covers the same ground as his painting across town — Marblehead Light on its iron legs, gulls overhead, the granite stacked and cracking below. The color is gone; the fractures carry the picture on their own. The same rocks, a few blocks apart, now hold the festival's top prize twice.
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