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Rio Grande Announces Saul Bell Award Finalists
The comprehensive jewelry design competitive has picked five finalists across eight categories.
New York—Rio Grande has announced the designers who have made it through the first round of the manufacturer’s annual jewelry design competition.
The annual competition, now in its twentieth year, is a platform for independent jewelry artists to demonstrate their creativity, originality and technical prowess.
The first round of judging by five industry players and designers narrows the entry pool down from hundreds to five per category: Gold/Platinum, Silver/Argentium Silver, Enamel, Hollowware/Art Objects, Alternative Metals/Materials, Jewelry Collections, and two categories of Emerging Jewelry Artist.
The first-round judges were Keri Ataumbi, Nancy Attaway, Alex Boyd, Scott Bradford and Ronda Coryell.
A separate group of five additional judges—David Freda, Claudia Kretchmer, Jeff Mathews, So Young Park and Shelly Sergent—will choose one winner per category, to be announced at an awards dinner currently scheduled for May 17, 2020 in Rio Grande’s native Albuquerque, NM.
The finalists for each category are as follows.
Gold/Platinum
“Aberration” by Thomas Dailing (Stevens Point, WI, USA)
“The River of Life” by Evgenii Fedko (Rutherford, NJ, USA)
“Lomalagi” by Rosario Garcia (Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA)
“Coral Ring” by Pavit Gujral (Chandigarh, India)
“Untitled” by Robin Waynee (Chimayo, NM, USA)
Silver/Argentium Silver
“Samsara Pendant” by Katelyn Butler (Charlottesville, VA, USA)
“Silver Scale Necklace” by Ryan Gardner (Pueblo, CO, USA)
“Kaleidoscope” by Sophia Hu (Las Vegas, NV, USA)
“Lunares Eclipsim” by Kirk Lang (Seattle, WA, USA)
“Semper Anticus” by Miles McDonald (Boulder, CO, USA)
Enamel
“Frozen” by Anna Betley (Aleksandrówka, Kozienice, Poland)
“Green Melody” by Lillian Jones (Raleigh, NC, USA)
“Flat Fish" by Jeanie Pratt (Nipomo, CA, USA)
“The Secret Garden” by Merry-Lee Rae (Freedom, CA, USA)
“Planets and Moons #1” by Amy Roper-Lyons (Summit, NJ, USA)
Hollowware/Art Objects
“Palace of the Western Sky” by Elichai Fowler (Billings, MO, USA)
“Shining Light” by Donald Johnston (Klamath Falls, OR, USA)
“Greeting From Holland” by Gabri Schumacher (Schoonhoven, Netherlands)
“Surprise Box” by Henry Spencer (Effingham, NH, USA)
“Kampai” by Susan Coddon (Atlanta, GA, USA)
Alternative Metals/Materials
“Titanium Leaves, Everlasting Nature” by Adam Bartl (Munich, Germany)
“Nest” by Stanislavv Drokin (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
“Beetle” by Evgenii Fedko (Rutherford, NJ, USA)
“Primavera” by Linda MacNeil (Kensington, NH, USA)
“Cosmic Winds” by
Jewelry Collection
“Gold Bubble Collection” by Ryan Gardner (Pueblo, CO, USA)
“Dancing Fish Collection” by Pavit Gujral (Chandigarh, India)
“Trusses Collection” by Sophia Hu (Las Vegas, NV, USA)
“Meeting Series” by Deborah Vivas (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
“Broken Shards, Mending Scars” by Melanie Morgan (Athens, GA, USA)
Emerging Jewelry Artist 18 Years of Age or Younger
“Branches” by Evan-Carlo Fowler (Corte Madera, CA, USA)
“Yellow Mergeurite” by Peyton Rogers (Fort Worth, TX, USA)
“Blooming” by Ruby Santamaria Murillo (Fort Worth, TX, USA)
“Serenity” by Brianna Strange (Allen, TX, USA)
“The Woods of Imperfect Beauty” by Zoe Wright-Riley (Villanova, PA, USA)
Emerging Jewelry Artist 22 Years of Age or Younger
“Dilate” by Louis Kutyla (Washington, DC, USA)
“Zephyr” by Christopher Liu (Allen, TX, USA)
“Sliding Jigsaw Brooch” by Qianwen Lu (Brooklyn, NY, USA)
“Chimera” by Abbi Tucker (Savannah, GA, USA)
“Free Your Mind” by Maikel Ye (Brooklyn, NY, USA)
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