RAL Juried Members' Spring Show 2024

The Rockville Art League hosts two large juried member shows a year in a variety of mediums and styles. This spring we are honored to have artist and educator Mariana Kastrinakis as juror who juried the six categories of work: oils and acrylics; watercolors; mixed media; pastels, drawings, hand-pulled prints; sculpture and photography.

The Rockville Art League was founded in 1957 by a collective of artists in Rockville, Maryland, and the surrounding area to promote the development of the fine arts within its membership and the community. We are a group of over 150 artists. For more information, please visit RockvilleArtLeague.org.

This large multimedia show is on exhibit at the Glenview Mansion Art Gallery, Sunday, May 19 through Friday, June 21. Glenview Mansion is located at the Rockville Civic Center Park, 603 Edmonston Dr.
The exhibit is free and open to the public.

The gallery is open to the public weekdays, Monday – Friday, 9:00am-4:30pm with plenty of parking. The art gallery is wheelchair accessible.*
*SPECIAL NOTE: the elevator is currently Out of Order and in repair. Please call 240-314-8681 or 240-314-8660 prior to visiting the gallery.
SPECIAL CLOSURES: Wed. June 5, Friday, June 14, Wed., June 19, and Monday, June 24. Pick up of artwork and purchases is on Tuesday, June 25.

Mariana Kastrinakis' JUROR REMARKS:
It was a great honor and pleasure to be asked to jury the RAL Spring Show! I approached this task with great humility and admiration for the group's membership, who come together year after year to present wonderful exhibits for the public.

As was mentioned at the show opening, the artwork was selected "blindly" (i.e., I did not know who authored any of the pieces in any of the categories). A later in-person review after the pieces were submitted helped me make the final selection of the prize-winning art.

As I mentioned in my comments during the show opening, I believe that every person who has the courage to create and present an art piece for consideration and public viewing is a winner. Whether their piece makes it into the show or not, we have all seen or heard of artworks (sometimes our own) that were excluded from one show but went on to win awards at subsequent shows.

This demonstrates that judging an art show is a subjective endeavor. Judges strive to consider principles of composition and good design, technical handling of the medium (paint, collage, sculpture, photography), color harmony, and presentation. However, there is often another element in their consideration that is less definable: the emotional message conveyed by the work and the resultant emotion elicited from the viewer.

I admit that this latter element, which I can call "je ne sais quoi," carried a lot of weight in my choices, always in the presence of good technical handling within the work.

Among the different winning pieces, I chose some that felt transcendent to me. These included representations of human interactions in contexts of music or love, which conjured joy or rhythm; a pet observing its home with a gleam in its eye, inspiring goodwill for all creatures; and abstract pieces that referenced possible days at the beach, memories from other worlds, or even dark emotions, all of which were transporting. Impressive still lifes and landscapes that went beyond mere depiction invited me into their environments, and photos of gorgeous landscapes or close-ups of nature reminded me of the beauty in the mundane. Notable ceramics and sculptures highlighted the intricacies of the three-dimensional world and reminded me of the plight of humanity.

Thus, appreciating and identifying good art is not a precise science but involves a deep recognition of its inherent humanity. As such, it is not and cannot be perfect; as we say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I believe this to be true.
This, perhaps, is why we like (and make) art: it reflects so much of our universal humanity. We are looking for our own transcendence in making art, which may lead us to make peace, first within ourselves and then with the world. I hope and pray this is true.

I hope everyone at RAL continues to make art and persists in showing the world how beautiful it is to be human and to live on our planet. Please continue to spread the word! Many thanks!