The Port Townsend Wearable Art Show contest has concluded after drawing 231 entries from around the world, for whom 10,246 votes were cast on the PTWearableArt.com website.
The art-mask competition took shape in March after cancelation of the 10th anniversary of the Port Townsend Wearable Art Show, a benefit for the Jefferson Community Foundation’s Fund for Women and Girls. Entries poured in, and public voting ran from April 25 through May 9, allowing one vote per day per viewer.
Painter and sculptor AJ Hawkins poured her passion into her contest entry, entitled “Pandemia.” It was a used N-95 mask transformed enough to take third place and $250 cash, along with 1,047 votes cast by viewers of the contest online.
Hawkins joined Sallie Nau of Port Orchard, who took the $1,000 first-place prize, and Donna Renea Lind, a.k.a. Renea Le Roux of Picayune, Mississippi, winner of the $500 second-place prize in the competition.
“I imagined the character of Pandemia to be a mythological titan with powers of plague and illness,” Hawkins said. “The gods have no choice but to muzzle her and lock her away in the bowels of the earth, lest she destroy everything. But they know nothing of the power of loneliness and the pangs of isolation. She longs to feel the sunshine on her face, to breathe in the scent of a fresh flower, to hold the hand of another. Once every hundred years or so, she finds a way to break free and roam the surface of the earth, until she can be contained once more.”
Something else Hawkins likes about her piece is that “Pandemia” is us, she said.
“Within us is the power to unintentionally and unknowingly spread death and destruction among those we love,” she said. “We too must cover our faces to protect those around us. We too must be locked away for the greater good. We too are lonesome, and long to once again be free.”
While Hawkins used epoxy clay flowers and leaves, metal spikes, faux pearls, gold hardware and silk tassels, Nau made her mask of porcelain clay, scrap wool and lichen. Lind, who lives near New Orleans, named her entry “Marie Antoinette Apocalypto,” and designed with purple and gold brocade, crystals and hand-ruffled satin ribbon.
“This has truly been an honor and great fun in this difficult time,” Le Roux wrote after being informed of her win. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Tina Flores-McCleese, head of the Wearable Art Show steering committee, announced the winners and noted the contest was a way to give artists a way to express themselves at this bizarre point in history.
The Port Townsend Wearable Art Show has been rescheduled for Mother’s Day weekend in 2021. As for the people who already bought tickets to the 2020 show, more than 80% donated the purchase amount to the Fund for Women and Girls. On May 1, the Fund made a $25,000 contribution to the Jefferson Community Foundation’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund, which is providing grants to local nonprofit organizations that offer services to people suffering from job loss and other hardships in the wake of the pandemic. For more information, see JCFgives.org.
