The event is free, open to the public, and features student works from all JCC campus locations. Professionally juried selections include painting, drawing and prints, photography, sculpture, ceramics, and digital media.

This year featured a new President’s Award for Artistic Excellence in addition to the traditional Best of Show and Artistic Excellence awards in each media category.

Raylynn Digirolamo, an honors student graduating this semester with an A.S. in Fine Arts: Studio Art, received the President’s Award for Artistic Excellence for her work with charcoal. Digirolamo’s art will be framed and displayed at a JCC campus location to be determined throughout the 2023-2024 academic year.

Digirolamo also won the Artistic Excellence in Drawing award during the 2022 Juried Student Art and Design Exhibition and is receiving the Constance E. Casey Scholarship at graduation. Digirolamo’s work highlights the female body through a lens that rejects exploitation and goes against “normal” standards of beauty while focusing on how women have been depicted throughout history.

President Daniel DeMarte poses with Raylynn Digiorlamo, winner of the President’s Award for Artistic Excellence, with Digiorlamo’s charcoal work hanging in the background.

Submissions for the exhibition totaled 135 pieces by 63 students. Eighty-three were selected for display by juror Tim Frerichs.

This year’s Best of Show and Artistic Excellence award winners are:

¯ Best In Show/Concept: JJ Moore

¯ Best In Show/Material Manipulation: Courtney Fox

¯ Artistic Excellence in Drawing: Rena Huntington

¯ Artistic Excellence in Photography: Ezekiel Newcomb

¯ Artistic Excellence in Painting & 2D: Jasmin Rollinger

¯ Artistic Excellence in Digital & New Media: Ali Geirmek

¯ Artistic Excellence in Sculpture: Mikayla Peters

¯ Artistic Excellence in Ceramics: Grem Lee

Frerichs is professor of art at the State University at Fredonia. He has received numerous awards, including the SUNY Fredonia President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, two Fulbright awards to Germany, a Netherland-America Foundation Cultural Grant, a Constance Saltonstall Foundation grant for printmaking, and a Scandinavian-America Foundation fellowship to Sweden.

Frerichs earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa. His drawings, prints, artist books, and installations have been widely exhibited nationally and internationally.

The exhibition provides a valuable learning experience by modeling professionally juried exhibitions and teaching students about preparing, editing, and submitting work for exhibition.

More information and a 3D virtual tour of the exhibition can be found at sunyjcc.edu/galleries.