Second, I must thank the generousity of all those who donated prizes for the contest. If it would be possible to have a showcase where people wouldn't need the incentive of prizes to submit work of good calibre, we'd be all for it. As things are, your contribution has made this showcase what it is.

I must finally acknowledge Micah's hard work in getting this all off the ground. HE is the one who has done all the work, the organization, the sorting, the creation of the pages, etc... My function is essentially to bug him every now and then through harrassing e-mails filled with crazy ideas. It's the old fashioned, "You work/I'll SUPERVISE" scenario...

When we started the first art showcase last year, we wanted to give another challenge to people out there, but -- rather than the trivia contests of old -- with the main objective of creativity. There are a lot of budding artists out there, and if you're like me, you probably have done one or two portraits of your movie hero throughout your childhood. This showcase was designed to exhibit such accomplishments that would otherwise never be seen by the public.

And now to the controversial point: the prizes. Art cannot -- should not, must not -- be reduced to a numeric scale of quality, like a mathematical problem. Art is subjective. Opinions vary. As such, Micah and I had some difficulty in sorting out which of the entries were deserving of a prize. We disagreed more than we did last year, and in making our selections, we had to make the painful choice of excluding some works that were otherwise very worthy. The prize winning selections did NOT necessarily represent our personal favorite choices. In selecting the prize winners, we had to take some things into careful consideration: 1.) The overall execution and effectiveness of the work, 2.) Originality, 3.) Determine which of the entries adhered to the rules, and 4.) Determine which of the entries adhered to the theme of the contest: celebrating "RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK". These last two points, in particular, caused us some problems, in that we could not award some selections due to guidelines we had previously dictated. We had to be judges first, and try our best to demonstrate fairness and an adherence to the rules. Should we sponsor a similar contest in the future, we will very likely reconsider these guidelines, making certain things either more specific or more flexible.

And so, here is my basic commentary on the prize winning entries, as well as some other pieces that I felt deserved special recognition. Rather than taking the usual path of "this is great, that is great, everything's great" formality, I've opted to be a bit frank and forthcoming in my commentary, addressing what I felt were some weaknesses as well as strengths, and why I favored some pieces over others. This is certainly not intended to offend anyone -- after all, I'm providing commentary to only those pieces that we felt were the strongest of the submissions.