Southwest High Graduate Wins Best of Show At Uptown Art Fair

Every year over a thousand artists from across the globe apply to present their work at the Uptown Art Fair, and each year an on-site jury selects the Best of Show winners for each of the twelve artistic categories that are presented, one winner for each category, or twelve winners total. To be chosen as one of more than a thousand of artists able to present their work at the Art Fair is an honor in itself. But to be chosen, as local artist Todd Cameron was, as the single best in a particular artistic category of the fair, that is a whole other world of achievement.

Todd Cameron, a graduate of , won the Best of Show award in the Glass category for the 2011 Uptown Art Fair. As a self-proclaimed artist from the age of zero, this is not the first festival where Cameron has had his work displayed.

Cameron said he takes a unique approach to his sculpting.

“I’ve tried to get out of making anything with any sort of function,” he said. “Some of the coolest pieces I’ve made or techniques I’ve come up with on my own. A lot of them have come out of happy accidents.”

“I have never worked with a medium that captivated me and influenced my life the way glass has,” said Cameron.

Cameron studied printmaking, ceramic and metal sculpture, and digital art during his time at the University of Minnesota. But it wasn’t until after graduation that Cameron was introduced to glass blowing, and since then, he said, his aspirations have changed and his energy has been primarily focused on that medium.

“The first time I worked with molten glass, I was overcome by a powerful feeling,” he explained. “[It was] the type of feeling I imagine a bird has the first time it spreads its wings and takes flight, or the type of feeling a cat has the first time it catches a bird.”

And what does the future hold for the talented artist from Southwest Minneapolis?

“Hopefully, I’d like to be in an (episode of) Antiques Road Show one day, you know, when I’m dead and gone. I’d like my grandchildren to see one of my pieces,” said Cameron.