Alternate Views 
“A Summer's Sun”
by Hector Valencia, Pascua Yaqui
Description: Steel, glass, sandstone and powder coating.
About this Award: Awarded for high quality in craftsmanship in sculpture or carving.
Jurors’ Comments:
Susan Folwell: The scale of it works well. I like the use of color, mixed media, and very contemporary elements but in something that still has a hint of cultural significance. I think it's a beautiful piece.
Mark Bahti: I love this. There's nothing timid about it; it's a nice bold piece. The stone that he picked is suggestive of the desert. And then the metal grille: boy, if that doesn't feel like what you're lying on when you get out in the sun in mid-July in the Sonoran Desert, nothing does. So it's a wonderful abstract piece that conveys something very, very real and concrete. I think it's a real successful piece. There's nothing thrown in here that doesn't belong, nothing gratuitous in it.
(About the alabaster sculpture, “Nurturing”, that was considered but not chosen) The pose is beautiful; the composition is good; there's so many things working for it. The one thing that I noticed almost immediately though, as I drew closer to it, is the patterning (for example, on the shawl) needs a little more care, a little more touch-up. It's not flawed; it just feels like it's incomplete. Where the triangles and diamonds are, those little points and corners just need to be a little better finished. He's got the thing that's hardest to get in a piece of sculpture, which is the feel of it so all he needs to do now is concentrate on the technique, which he can do.
Martin Kim: I find it very fascinating that a sculptor could move into totally abstract material and make a very contemporary statement, and still have some kind of cultural content reference to it. I think it strikes a good balance, taking advantage of the picture sandstone's ability to evoke a landscape. It is well crafted and I also like its human scale, it's like talking to a person.
(About the alabaster sculpture, “Nurturing”, that was considered but not chosen) I absolutely agree with Mark. I was so drawn to that piece because it has a human presence to it which is the thing that every artist wants to get out of a piece of stone. There's a sense of intimacy, it's well rendered until you look at the pattern detail, and then the craftsmanship falls apart. A little more time on that and I think it would be truly an outstanding piece.
Photo by Marnie Sharp