Newporter Among Top Winners at Arts Fest

Seventy-four artists from throughout the United States came to Newport last weekend to showcase their work at the Newport Arts Festival. One local artist walked away with a top prize.

Jessica Pisano of Newport placed third in the arts competition overall, for her use of mixed media to create many-layered poetic landscapes, seascapes and floral images, according to organizers.

Looking Upwards, a Middletown-based service provider for children and adults with developmental disabilities, produces the arts and music festival annually at the Newport Yachting Center as a cornerstone to its fundraising activities. The festival also included music, food and family-friendly entertainment designed to spark young imaginations.

Featuring both fine and functional art, the festival launched its inaugural artist awards at this year's event. The results of the competition, judged by Newport artist Chris Wyllie, highlight the wide range and style of work that is the festival's hallmark. Wyllie is the owner of Where The Laundromat Used To Be studio on Thames Street in Newport. He has been a featured artist at the 2008, 2009 and 2010 Whitney Annual Art Party and in December 2008, Gibson Guitar commissioned Wyllie to paint a 10-foot replica of a Les Paul guitar for installation in the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame Annex in New York City.

The festival featured work in 12 categories: sculpture, ceramics, painting, works on paper, mixed media, digital art, photography, ceramics, jewelry, fiber, glass and metalwork. Artists are selected to participate in the show by a jury based on the caliber of their work. 

Winners from the 2010 Newport Arts Festival were announced as follows:

BEST IN SHOW - Sculptor John Cheer, from Allentown, PA, won Best in Show for his creations in clay. The artist is an avid scuba diver and finds his inspiration for the colors and forms of his work in water and sea life and the experiences of everyday life. Cheer has studied with Renzo Faggioli, a Master Craftsman in Ceramics from Florence, Italy, and has formulated a technique, combining both glass and clay, giving texture, depth of color and sheen to his work. Among the pieces Cheer exhibited at the festival were wall-mounted sculptures of aquatic life such as stringrays, pearlfish and mythical mermaids.

2^ND PLACE – Adam Carriuolo, an artist from Rehoboth, garnered 2^nd Place for his hand-printed serigraphs of historic architecture. Drawn to the architecture of McKim, Mead and White, as well as that of other great architects, Carriuolo works to present beautiful historic buildings in a fresh way. Carriuolo studied illustration and visual design at the University of Massachusetts. Among the serigraphs he exhibited at the Newport Arts Festival were The Providence Turk's Head Building illuminated during WaterFire, the Block Island Southeast Lighthouse and The Elms mansion of Newport.

3^rd PLACE – Taking 3rd Place was Jessica Pisano, from Newport, for her use of mixed media to create many-layered poetic landscapes, seascapes and floral images. Pisano believes there is a dance in every tree, a song in every field and a story behind each ocean wave and this is what she aims to capture in her painting. Pisano earned a bachelor's of fine art in photography and painting from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR, and studied studio art at Lorenzo De Medici School in Florence, Italy. She uses her black and white photographs of scenes from nature as the canvas on which she paints with a variety of materials such as acrylic paint, oil pastel and gold leaf.

Newport Arts Festival Award of Merit - Pablo Alvarez, from Providence, received the Newport Arts Festival Award of Merit for his recycled pop-art woven from aluminum cans.

Looking Upwards' Board of Director's Award of Merit - Jane Edmonds, from Westmoreland, NH, was selected for honor by the Looking Upwards Board of Directors for her coastal driftwood designs.

Newport Arts Festival Poster Contest –The work of artist Carol Dunn, from Baltic, CT, titled "Starry Night – Pell Bridge, Newport" was selected for the 2010 Newport Arts Festival poster.

Samples of the work of participating artists and their contact information can be seen in the gallery on the Newport Arts Festival website: www.newportartsfestival.com.