Bakersfield Museum of Art almost calls the Whaaaaaambulance for A.S Ashley!

A celebration is in order and a big Thank You to the Bakersfield Museum of Art for hosting a small works exhibition open to all California artists. Each year they up the caliber of jurors. Last year’s jurors were curators of the San Luis Obispo and Fresno Art Museum. This year the jurors were well respected artists from Los Angeles. The show was heavily populated by local entrants due to the submission guideline of bringing in the artwork as opposed to the usual submission of slides. The show gave the locals a chance to have their work viewed by an outside eye…a good way to give feedback without the murmur of “Oh, they won because they are a local darling of the arts!”

One local artist, A.S. Ashley, pouted outside the museum in a performance protest with his big artwork. I’m sure you are familiar with his work as you have seen the work at Barnes and Noble and in multiple shows at The Empty Space Gallery, well those were the same pieces propped up in the back of pick-up trucks. He stated, "I'm waiting for the big show!" I think he was waiting for another “Big Repeat” show! I did give him a phone call to remind him to get off his little duff and submit something to the show. He whined about how he doesn’t work small and that he didn’t want to participate. As I walked into the small works show, he sat there with his cowboy hat and lawn chair hoping for someone to pay attention to him. I told him I would come out and pay attention to him later and walked into the show for the awards ceremony.

Well, later didn’t come soon enough as the curious A.S. walked into the show to give me some whiney love. He congratulated me for my “Best of Show” award like a gentleman and spent some time chatting with me and Betty Finch (a superb artist making fanciful creatures out of gourds) also the second place winner of the show. All three prize winners were local and given generous financial awards. There were 270 entrants and the jurors selected about 25% from the entries. This was a hat tip to the local artists as the jurors judge the artwork without knowing the name or location of the artist. Thank you Bakersfield Museum of Art for opening up your prime wall space to local emerging artists!