South Brunswick Senior Artists Honored

Several talented South Brunswick senior artists were recently recognized with awards for their work at the annual Middlesex County Senior Citizen Art Contest.

The first-place winners of the contest, sponsored by the Middlesex County Office of Aging and Disabled Services, will have their art displayed in the state Senior Citizen Art Contest, which will be on display at the retirement community in East Windsor.  

"This is very exciting and it's always wonderful to be awarded for your work," said first-place award winner and chair of the South Brunswick Arts Commission Sandy Behrend. "This is particularly special for me, because my painting, 'Turnpike South,' was something I always wanted to do. I think it came out really well and stood up with the other first prize winners."

Behrend said she was inspired in her work on numerous car rides traveling down the Turnpike.

"It's like this playground for giants, with the huge tanks and sprial ladders," she said. "I just get a sense of this otherworldly place. It was nice to see it awarded, though all these paintings deserved awards, they were wonderful."

Out of 118 submitted works of art, the following South Brunswick artists were honored:

First Place Professional awards were given to:

• Fran Nimeck in the Drawing category.
• Sandy Behrend in the Pastel Category.

 Second Place winners were:

• Stephanie Barbetti in the Mixed Media Category.
• Maxwell Nimeck in the Acrylic Category.

Recipient of an Honorable Mention:

• Grace Chiarella in the Non-Professional Water Color Category.

"We had some very lovely, fine art submitted and for the first prize winners it was particularly nice," Behrend said. "The whole exhibit, in my opinion was better than last year. We had artwork, in general, that I think was better than we had last year, and we had higher quality, particularly from the non-professionals. For the non-professionals in an exhibit for the first time it was particularly exciting. The South Brunswick artists are all wonderful."

The Statewide senior art show will be open to the public Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Sept. 26 until Oct. 27 at