Selma Art Guild to hold Summer Juried Art Show June 23

The Selma Art Guild will host its Summer Juried Art Show on June 23.

It will be judged by Melissa B. Tubbs, an architectural portraitist.

The show will be held at the SAG Gallery located at 508 Selma Ave. from 2-4 p.m.

Taken-in for art will be June 14 and 15 from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. at the gallery. 

Categories include Transparent - paint media which are transparent in nature and use; Opaque - paint media which are opaque in nature and use; Photography - image created by the capturing of light with a lens; 3-D - works which have length, breadth, and height; and Dry - drawing, pastel, printing, mixed media, and collage techniques.

All work included in the SAG Summer Juried Art Show will be available for sale unless designated “Not For Sale” by the artist. Work that does not include a price will automatically be listed as “Not For Sale.” A 20 percent commission will be taken on all sales by the Selma Art Guild.

Prizes include Best of Show $500, Best in Category $200, Second in Category $100 and Third in Category $50.

Participating artists must pay the SAG membership fee of $35 and the show entry fee of $15 for two pieces. Up to two additional pieces may be entered for $10 each, three pieces $60 and four pieces $70.

All fees are non-refundable, and checks should be made payable to the Selma Art Guild.

Jurist Tubbs said she, “Does not create architectural renderings but uses architecture as a subject, capturing the solidity, strength, textures, surface finishes and character of her subject with the stroke of a pen.”

Tubbs grew up in an Air Force family that required lots of moving. Eventually, her father retired to Montgomery, where Tubbs settled. She earned a bachelor’s degree in visual design from Auburn University and began a career in commercial design and raised a family.

After 25 years of designing magazines and creating drawings and pastels on her own time, she said she was offered a commission that would dramatically alter her career and her approach toward art. She was asked to create an original drawing of a house as a Christmas gift. 

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As a result, several friends ordered similar renditions of their homes. And a local gift shop displayed other drawings of historic homes. Then a local law firm commissioned Tubbs to document every courthouse in Montgomery and surrounding counties. 

Tubbs soon realized that this new subject “engaged her interest and passion for architecture and made better use of her technical abilities.”

In addition to commissions, Tubbs used her pen to document significant works of architecture and the decorative ornaments on those structures. Some of her finest works, she said, are “building details, focusing on architectural embellishments, different textures of building materials and the dramatic patterns of light and shadow cascading across the surfaces of the structure.”

Tubbs said, “Pen and ink drawings require careful preparation, concentration, intensity, and error free execution.” She said the process begins with several photographs of the overall subject, and detail photographs at different exposures to document sunlight and shadow.

The basic design is sketched with a graphite pencil. Then, she said, she builds up layers of ink and depth until the subject is adequately defined and reinforces overall shadow patterns to pull all the individual areas together into a unified drawing.

“For the last two dozen years,” Tubbs said, she has been “a full-time artist, architectural preservationist and community arts enthusiast.”

She was commissioned by the Montgomery Area Business Committee for the Arts to create drawings as awards. The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts commissioned a series of eight drawings, and a few years later asked her to document a new building addition. 

Strathmore Artist Papers commissioned drawings for their Series 400 Smooth Surface drawing pad and Series 500 Bristol Board covers. 

In addition, she used her pen-and-ink skills to create a three-dimensional Christmas ornament for the official White House Christmas tree in 2011. 

Tubbs has been recognized through numerous commissions, publications and inclusion in a variety of exhibitions from Montgomery to New York. She received a prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant for 2019-2020 in support of her traveling exhibition Andrea Palladio: Shaping American Architecture.

Cam Walker Guarino, president of SAG, said, “The Summer Juried Art Show will be a great opportunity to see and purchase the works of local artists from Selma and the state of Alabama.”

The Selma Art Guild was founded in 1972 to promote art and encourage artists.