Award Winners
2025 SDMA Artists Guild Membership Exhibition
First Place Award
Michele Benzamin-Miki, Warner Springs, CA
Offering - Year: 2020
Pencil on Paper - 34 x 28”
Price: $3,500.
Congratulations to our
First Place Award of Excellence Winner
Michele Benzamin-Miki
Michele was awarded the first place for her
34” x 28” Pencil on Paper Drawing Offering.
Michele is a self- taught artist, coming from a family of self-taught artists. At an early age she was drawing. She was commissioned to do portraits at the early age of nine. At the age of sixteen, she began a career in the Commercial and Graphic Arts. In 1990, she made a complete change to Fine Arts, showing in art fairs to begin with, and soon after in numerous galleries, and then museums, including the Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Arts Las Vegas and the California Museum of Art, Thousand Oaks.
Michele's intention is to create a whole body state of being present through her painting. She has been practicing and teaching Zen and the non-violent martial arts of Aikido and Japanese sword forms that compliment these disciplines, for over four decades. The brush work comes from an inner stillness before and while she creates a piece.
She explains her art as follows: "In Japanese art and calligraphy the term Ma means the space around the brush strokes, it is also the experience of the inner pause while creating the strokes, and the constant awareness of space between the artist and the viewer. In everyday life it is the pause during conversations, the deliberate silence in a ritual, a moment of reflection in a busy day.
The work starts with energy. Brush meets paper or canvas with paint or Japanese ink. Familiar movements to me from the movement of my sword. Interplay of brush, body, and paper. After reflecting on the piece, I may leave it as it is, or add detailed drawing in pencil or other media. I integrate female figurative forms, elevating, illuminating the bodies into the brush strokes. The female figure reveals her vulnerability, strength and agency. Meditating bypasses the rational, critical, and judging mind, so that creative, intuitive and subconscious forces can enter. Dream states also bypass the conscious gatekeepers. Much of my work has been inspired by my dreams. In 2006 I had a dream I entered the palace of a great emperor, who took me into a large white room filled with enormous black and white paintings. Before waking from the dream I asked the emperor, “Who is this artist?” He replied, “This is your art!”
In 2013 I started to combine my figurative realism with calligraphic brushwork. I began to create the paintings I had seen in the emperor’s palace. The integration of my art — Japanese brush with Figurative Realism — reflects my mixed Japanese and European heritages."
AboutOffering:
Offering depicts the portrait of Michele's friend who just returned from her first time visiting her Iranian extended family.
See more of Michele's work at: https://michelebenzaminmiki.com/
Second Place Award
Julie Weaverling, Vista, CA
In Other News - Year: 2023 -
Acrylic - 36 x 36" - Price: $2,000.
Congratulations to our
Second Place Award of Excellence Winner
Julie Weaverling
Julie was awarded the second place for her
36" x 36" Acrylic Painting In Other News.
Southern California artist Julie Weaverling works in painting, fiber art and conceptual art. With a unique artistic voice and evocative exploration of our shared human workings, Weaverling strives to uplift while creating beauty in her work without it having to be pretty. Her art has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
As founder of the global art project Lift the Sky which offers a hopeful outlook for the future, Weaverling invites artists to respond to the question, “what ’s your message to the world?” Currently there are over 250 contributions from artists in fifteen countries (and growing). After an early 2023 inaugural exhibition, Lift the Sky was seen at ArtPrize Grand Rapids in Fall 2023 where it was voted Top 25 Finalist (out of 750 artists). The project is ongoing.
Weaverling served as director of Front Porch Gallery, a nonprofit gallery in Carlsbad, California, where she worked from 2006 until 2023. There she curated and juried exhibits, worked with regional and national artists and created programming for artists in ten Front Porch retirement communities, including numerous large-scale collaborative projects.
About In Other News:
In Other News presents a vibrant interplay of movement and contrast, letting every mark tell a story. Deep blues and blacks are interspersed with areas of white and subtle touches of pink and green add depth and variation, sparking discovery and thought, suggesting moments of clarity and renewal within the dynamic composition.
See more of Julie's work at www.JulieWeaverling.com
Third Place Award
Justine Javes, San Diego, CA
Girls at Del Mar Beach - Year: 2015
Material: acrylic on canvas - 24 x 30"
Price: $1,500.
Congratulations to our
Third Place Award of Excellence Winner
Justine Javes
Justine was awarded the first place for her
24"x 30" Acrylic on Canvas Painting Girls at Del Mar Beach.
Justine has been creating art all of her life. Her parents could keep her happily occupied when out to dinner by turning the placemat over and giving her a pencil with which she would draw. Art was always the favorite subject in school. She started using acrylic paints to experiment on wood and canvas at the age of ten. Her only formal training was several years of night school at the locally famous Silvermine School of Art in New Canaan, CT, where she grew up.
Painting in acrylic on canvas, she has won multiple awards from entering local exhibitions in San Diego, her present hometown. Justine paints in acrylic using a variety of techniques. Starting with a series of photographs, she makes composite preliminary sketches using the best of each photo. Once the final drawing has been executed to scale, she uses a graphite transfer paper attached to the canvas. The drawing is placed over the canvas/graphite paper and transferred by going over the original drawing, thus transferring the meticulous drawing onto the canvas.
Usually, a wash in warm colors is applied first. Blocks of color go on next, starting from dark to light, back to front. Wet on wet, blending, dry brush, scumbling and washes are the techniques most often used.
“I like acrylic for several reasons; They dry quickly, yet one can still get amazing depth and color by using many thin layers without waiting for each layer to dry, as in oil paints. When I want to blend, I can use a drying retardant (water will work fine) to slow the drying time, or, just blend the light to shadow in the style of the old “paint-by-numbers” kits; Sort of like organized Impressionism!”
About Girls at Del Mar Beach:
This painting was the reflection and memory of a truly lovely day shared at the beach.
My family met at this beach in Del Mar, CA, to celebrate my nephew's birthday. During the day, I wandered the beach, taking photos with my digital camera. Spying these three girls in a group, I quickly snapped several photos of them. What struck me about them was their hair braids. They braided them alike. That told me they were either good friends or perhaps, sisters. During the course of my photo shoot, I snapped images of other interesting people; kids playing in the surf, people looking out to sea, a jogger. I added the most interesting into this painting. I made a composite in my studio that I thought was a pleasant composition.
The red and white striped sailboat in the water was a tribute to my dad's sailboat design, the AquaCat. It was the first commercialized catamaran and was quite popular in its day....until Hobie.
See more of Justine's work at www.justinejaves.com
HONORABLE MENTION
Scott Bruckner, Carlsbad, CA
My Country - Year: 2025
Wood - 33"H x 24"W x 19"D
Price: 1,500.
Alan Cohen, San Diego, CA
New York Study 1 - Year: 2018
Archival pigment print
15 x 11" - 20 x 16" framed
Price: $375.
Olga Freedman, San Diego, CA
Mountain path in Mono Hot Springs
Year: 2025 - Watercolor on paper
28 x 22" framed, image 24 x 18
Price: 400.
Will Gibson, Escondido, CA
Cardinal in the Shadows - Year: 2024
Infrared b/w photograph pigment - 18 x 24"
Price: $350.
John Oleinik, San Diego, CA
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
Year: 2022
Oil on Linen - 48 x 36"
Price: $3,500.