The votes have been tallied and double and triple-checked, and this year’s Wabash Valley People’s Choice winner is Christy Brinkman-Robertson’s hot glue sculpture, Diaphanous Formation!
Diaphanous Formation clinched the first place spot with 11% of the 375 votes cast, followed closely by David Cunningham’s If A Man Lives A Pure Life, Nothing Can Destroy Him in second place, and Courtland Blade’s The Cubicles in third. In fact, it was such a close race this year that multiple artists were keeping the spot tallies exciting!
Brinkman-Robertson received a BFA in interdisciplinary studio art with a minor in art history from Indiana State University in 2008. She is currently the assistant art curator at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and has exhibited throughout the Midwest. When asked about her process and what went into creating her piece, she had this to share:
Diaphanous Formation is the result of over a year of experimentation with hot glue, and it involved meticulous work. The overall circular shape of the sculpture is an assemblage of several smaller hot glue forms, each one created by extruding hot glue and molding the man-made material into a reversed cone shape. It is impossible to make any two identical forms, which makes each one as unique as a thumb print. The sculpture bears resemblance to marine life due to its blue tint and coral-like clustered formation.
I have been inspired in many ways by our natural world as it offers the basic building structures for all animal and plant life. Certainly the patterns that we see in nature will always be an inspiration for artists. I enjoy working with the hot glue medium in particular because of its translucency and etherial quality, something that I think drew so much interest to this artwork!
I feel very honored to receive the People’s Choice Award this year at the Swope Art Museum! I want to thank everyone who voted for my artwork and the juror, Jeffrey Grove, for choosing my artwork among the many great works submitted for this show.
The Museum would like to congratulate all of the 2012 Wabash Valley Juried Exhibition artists on their achievements, and we look forward to seeing next year’s entries.
The top ten People’s Choice selections were as follows:
| Ranking | Artist’s Name | Title | Percent of Votes |
| 1st | Christy Brinkman-Robertson | Diaphanous Formation | 10.9% |
| 2nd | David Cunningham | If A Man Lives A Pure Life, Nothing Can Destroy Him | 9.9% |
| 3rd | Courtland Blade | The Cubicles | 8.3% |
| 4th | Christopher Troutman | Upward | 6.1% |
| 5th | Cheryle Lowe | Cat and the Hat | 5.9% |
| 6th | Daniel Tice | Mark I Mnemonic Containment Vessel/Series 12-002 | 5.1% |
| 7th | Julia Sermersheim | Earth Strata | 4.3% |
| Tie for 8th | Terri Duncan | Breakthrough | 3.7% |
| Tie for 8th | Jackie Tice | Rebecca | 3.7% |
| 9th | Karen Bekkering | Off to Grandma’s House (Red Riding Hood, Grandma’s House, Wolf) | 3.2% |
| 10th | Gary L. Morris | A New Day | 2.4% |