Parabola Jury Prize Awarded
2021-03-04 • Sam Fox School
The Graduate Art Organization (GAO) and Des Lee Gallery are happy to announce that Jodi Woolsey Kolpakov’s Greetings from America has been awarded the jury prize for this year’s PARABOLA: SALON exhibition. The prize includes a gift card to Blick Art Materials.
“The piece caught my attention because it is well-constructed, designed with a catchy font, cleverly resembles an old-fashioned postcard recalling mid-century American travel culture—yet it also embeds contemporary ideas and politics in its message,“ juror Katherine Bernhardt said. "The work draws its spectators in playfully, at first by just grabbing our naive attention, and then just when you think you will see some wonderful ‘greetings’ about this country, the details represent many aspects of the sad, disturbing reality of American culture today.
"Jodi’s piece is socially and culturally relevant in our current era that must search harder than ever for truth, justice, and meaning in society.”
Kolpakov is a designer and artist in the Sam Fox School’s MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture program. She specializes in stationery, branding, illustration, and caricatures while fluidly crossing mediums. In addition to the large-scale work Greetings from America (vinyl on MDF), she contributed several other pieces to PARABOLA: SALON: Indoor Paradise, The Big Escape, and Thank you for visiting METH CAPITAL of America. View more of her work at jaykaycreate.com.
About the Exhibition
PARABOLA: SALON aims to contextualize all fields of study at Washington University in St. Louis as inherently creative. The exhibition stands as a platform to extend graduate students’ professional interests and connect with each other’s fields of understanding, production, and knowledge.
This year’s exhibition features work by the following students: Livia Alexander, Stephen Barany, Jessica Bremehr, Racheal Bruce, Joseph Canizales, Cydney Cherepak, Ryan Erickson, Noah Greene-Lowe, Maddie Grotewiel, Erin Johnston, Jodi Woolsey Kolpakov, Martin Lammert, Younser Seri Lee, Sam Modder, Jillian Ohl, Richard Pan, Carlos Salazar-Lermont, Jonathan Smith, Benji Snyder, Kruttika Susarla, Takura Suzuki, Alexa Velez, Christopher Weatherly, and Paulina Zuckerman.
The exhibition is organized by the Graduate Art Organization (led by Adrian Gonzalez) and the Des Lee Gallery. It remains on view through March 6.
About the Juror
Katherine Bernhardt’s work takes the form of pattern paintings depicting a crowded array of everyday items that have been isolated from their original context. Typical motifs include fast food, cigarettes, toys, and household objects, as well as tropical elements such as turtles, toucans, and exotic fruits as a result of her travels in Central America.
Born in 1975 in St Louis, Bernhardt lives and works in St. Louis and New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Watermelon World, Mario Testino Museum, Lima (2018); Concrete Jungle Jungle Love, Lever House, New York, NY (2017); Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (2017); and Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (2017).