2014 Hugo Nominees: Artists
Jun. 3rd, 2014 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraThe packet is out! Working on the fiction (the ones I haven't read already), but let's start with the art.
Fan Artist
Brad W. Foster
Mandie Manzano - my #2
Spring Schoenhuth
Steve Stiles
Sarah Webb - my #1
Foster, Schoenhuth, and Stiles were on the ballot last year, and are distinctly weaker nominees than the other two to my eye. Schoenhuth makes jewelry, and it looks like very nifty jewelry, and I'm sure there's a long argument we could have about fine art vs applied art and is jewelry just little wearable sculpture fine art and I'm not going to pretend I have the art history cultural literacy to take a position in that argument. However I find it personally harder to engage with her work in an "this art is saying something to me" way than I do with picture art or bigger/more complex sculpture work. It looks to me like Foster and Stiles get nominated every year because they do a lot of work for convention programs and fanzines and the like, which I suppose is service deserving of some sort of recognition, but I don't think that recognition needs to be a Hugo.
Mandie Manzano didn't include samples in the packet, but I found a bunch of her work online here. I like it - stained-glassy Disney characters and others.
Sarah Webb I nominated, and I absolutely love her work. So much narrative in a single-panel image, so much detail, so gorgeous.
Professional Artist
Galen Dara
Julie Dillon - my #1
Daniel Dos Santos
John Harris - my tentative #2
John Picacio
Fiona Staples
Galen Dara got the Fan Artist Hugo last year, so yay for a successful going pro, but his samples here don't excite me. [Please see comment below - Dara is female, sorry for misgendering, and has some really lovely work in her online portfolio.]
Julie Dillon's work is *gorgeous*, you can see some here and here.
Daniel Dos Santos work feels a little more generic to me, like, it's fine but I don't feel like he's showing me things I haven't seen before.
John Harris is a spaceships-and-edifices artist. But a really good one, a couple of his samples are awesome. Scalzi promoted a book of his art recently; I really like this one in particular, and it is in the packet.
John Picacio has been a ballot stand-by for awhile and won in 2012 and 2013, which I suppose shouldn't affect my opinion, but, I don't know, it probably legitimately makes his work feel a little less fresh. Still good stuff here though.
Fiona Staples didn't include samples in the packet, and her tumblr is unhelpfully full of other people's art, but she turns out to be the artist for Saga, which I should have remembered. (And probably there are samples of that in the Graphic section of the packet once I get there.) Saga is awesome but I really wish she'd chosen some particular images to put in the packet to help me think about her work from a purely artistic angle as opposed to part-of-this-story. I could conceivably bump her up to #2 once I've read this year's Saga volume though.
Fan Artist
Brad W. Foster
Mandie Manzano - my #2
Spring Schoenhuth
Steve Stiles
Sarah Webb - my #1
Foster, Schoenhuth, and Stiles were on the ballot last year, and are distinctly weaker nominees than the other two to my eye. Schoenhuth makes jewelry, and it looks like very nifty jewelry, and I'm sure there's a long argument we could have about fine art vs applied art and is jewelry just little wearable sculpture fine art and I'm not going to pretend I have the art history cultural literacy to take a position in that argument. However I find it personally harder to engage with her work in an "this art is saying something to me" way than I do with picture art or bigger/more complex sculpture work. It looks to me like Foster and Stiles get nominated every year because they do a lot of work for convention programs and fanzines and the like, which I suppose is service deserving of some sort of recognition, but I don't think that recognition needs to be a Hugo.
Mandie Manzano didn't include samples in the packet, but I found a bunch of her work online here. I like it - stained-glassy Disney characters and others.
Sarah Webb I nominated, and I absolutely love her work. So much narrative in a single-panel image, so much detail, so gorgeous.
Professional Artist
Galen Dara
Julie Dillon - my #1
Daniel Dos Santos
John Harris - my tentative #2
John Picacio
Fiona Staples
Galen Dara got the Fan Artist Hugo last year, so yay for a successful going pro, but his samples here don't excite me. [Please see comment below - Dara is female, sorry for misgendering, and has some really lovely work in her online portfolio.]
Julie Dillon's work is *gorgeous*, you can see some here and here.
Daniel Dos Santos work feels a little more generic to me, like, it's fine but I don't feel like he's showing me things I haven't seen before.
John Harris is a spaceships-and-edifices artist. But a really good one, a couple of his samples are awesome. Scalzi promoted a book of his art recently; I really like this one in particular, and it is in the packet.
John Picacio has been a ballot stand-by for awhile and won in 2012 and 2013, which I suppose shouldn't affect my opinion, but, I don't know, it probably legitimately makes his work feel a little less fresh. Still good stuff here though.
Fiona Staples didn't include samples in the packet, and her tumblr is unhelpfully full of other people's art, but she turns out to be the artist for Saga, which I should have remembered. (And probably there are samples of that in the Graphic section of the packet once I get there.) Saga is awesome but I really wish she'd chosen some particular images to put in the packet to help me think about her work from a purely artistic angle as opposed to part-of-this-story. I could conceivably bump her up to #2 once I've read this year's Saga volume though.
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no subject
Date: 2014-06-11 05:09 am (UTC)heshe can get my vote next year, I don't think that changes anything, I just thought it was interesting. Wait, also the internet suggests that Galen Dara a) is a female person and b) does much more interesting work than the samples in the packet, including a bunch of pieces from 2013 as seen in her portfolio here (http://www.galendara.com/portfolio). Wow, some of these are gorgeous, what's up with the awful packet sample choices? I'm not sure what to make of that. But this probably changes my ballot.no subject
Date: 2014-06-12 06:50 pm (UTC)