NSS News

Jurors judging this week's competition are Neil Estern, a portrait, figure, and monument sculptor ; Nina Akamu, a figurative sculptor who specializes in animal and equine sculpture; and Carter Jones, who has worked for Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and the Sesame Street Workshop, and has extensive prototype sculpting and model making experience.

The week-long competition was established in 1978 to reassert the importance and value of figure study in contemporary sculpture.

At the ceremony, three prizes will be awarded to winners of the Figure Modeling Competition: Competitors must successfully model a full-length figure from life, 30 to 36 inches tall, in 28 hours over a five-day period at the College. Four prizes will also be handed out for the Young Sculptors' Awards Competition, in which sculptors are judged based on submitted images of their work.

Winners of the Young Sculptors' Awards Competition, begun in 1959 and sponsored by the National Sculpture Society, will also be honored. The Dexter Jones Award for $1,000 is given to a young sculptor for the best work of sculpture in bas relief; the Roger T. Williams Prize for $750 is awarded to a young sculptor who reaches excellence in representational sculpture; the Edward Fenno Hoffman Prize of $350 is awarded to a young sculptor who strives to uplift the human spirit through the medium of his or her art; and the Gloria Medal is given in memory of C. Paul Jennewein for a meritorious body of work.

The competition is co-sponsored by Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, The National Sculpture Society and the New York Academy of Art. Individuals directly connected with any of the host institutions are ineligible to serve as jurors.

Estern's work is among the most celebrated in the country. Some of his more notable commissions are The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (Washington, DC), Fiorello H. LaGuardia (New York, NY), John F. Kennedy (Brooklyn, NY), George Merrick (Coral Gables, FL) and Irving Berlin (New York, NY). His work is included in the museum collections of the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, DC); The Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY); and the Pepper Museum (Tallahassee, FL). Estern’s portraits of famous politicians and other newsmakers have graced the covers of major magazines including Time and Life, bringing further recognition to Estern's talents.

In addition to the Medal of Honor, Estern has won several awards at NSS Annual Exhibitions, including the Lindsey Morris Prize (‘84) and the Mildred Vincent Prize ('88 & '92). Estern earned the Dessie Greer Prize (‘90); The Daniel Chester French Gold Medal ('97); and the Maynard Award ('99) from the National Academy. In 1996, Estern was presented with the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation Award for his Fiorello LaGuardia statue.

Fox has received two NEA grants and earned residencies at Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony as well as a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Fox’s work can be found in private and public collections including: California Center for the Arts (Escondido, CA); Speed Art Museum (Louisville, KY); Mint Museum, (Charlotte, NC); Sammlung Essl (Klostermeuberg, Austria); and City College of New York, (New York, NY). She has been the subject of several magazine profiles in the New York Times, Le Monde, Village Voice and Black Book. Fox is represented by PPOW gallery in New York and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Europe.

The Alex J. Ettl Grant is a certificate and an unrestricted cash prize of $4,000 which is awarded to a sculptor for a meritorious body of work. The recipient may not be an elected sculptor member of the National Sculpture Society. The jury is always composed of three prominent sculptors who are Fellows of the National Sculpture Society. This year they were Richard Blake, FNSS; Jill Burkee, FNSS; and Michelle Langlais, FNSS.