BY CGN Staff via PR

As the summer art fair season comes into view soon, news from area fairs is coming in as well. The 57th St. Art Fair, celebrating it’s 73rd year on June 6+7 in Hyde Park, announced its two Newcomer Award recipients: Ceramics artist Kate Tremel of Ann Arbor, MI and jewelry designer Paz Sintes of Brooklyn, NY 

Each year the Newcomer Awards are chosen from the jury’s top scoring new artists from a total of almost 300 applications. In the first stage of jurying each jury member carefully and independently reviews each of these applications, composed of artists’ images, statements, and descriptions of their work.

“Every year after the first stage of jurying is complete, the committee looks forward to our meeting where we all gather and the jurors review the highest scoring new artists to determine our Newcomer Award or Awards,” said Cate Slighton, 57th St. Art Fair Committee Member. “Images are reviewed and after lengthy discussions and a several step voting process the jury comes to a consensus on their final decisions. We eagerly look forward to meeting the artists and seeing their work in person at the June event.”
 

Tremel began working in clay 30 years ago at the local community art center in Middlebury, VT. She went on to combine her academic studies of Spanish and Anthropology during a year abroad in Lima, Peru where she worked under José Luis Yamunaqué and studied the changing dynamic of traditional ceramic production in his native Chulucanas, Piura (1988-89). Tremel went on to study with Tony Hepburn at Cranbrook Academy of Art where she received her MFA in 1995.

She has continued to explore her interest in other cultures, participating in residencies at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Japan (1996) and in Aix en Provence (2005-06) and Paris, France (2011-12). She is currently a lecturer at the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where she also maintains a home studio. She shows her work in galleries and fine art and craft shows nationally.
 

Barcelona born and former apparel designer, Sintes, now living in New York, started to develop her handmade textile jewelry line in 2005. The lightness and freedom of Fred Astaire’s dance, jazz music, retro- cinema, contemporary art, and most notably, the luxuriousness of textiles inspire the Paz Sintes collection. After working for several years in the fashion industry as a clothing designer in Barcelona, Paris and Saint Petersburg, Paz created her light jewelry using Haute Couture European fabrics and vintage laces, guipures and passementeries embroidery. She designs by creating forms, cutting patterns which are then hand stitched, reinforced, dyed, as well as numerous other techniques.

The 57th Street Art Fair is a two-day outdoor celebration of the visual arts held in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, adjacent to the University of Chicago campus and President Barack Obama's home. Considered the Midwest’s oldest juried art fair, the 57th Street Art Fair attracted 200 artists and 25,000 attendees to this premier art and cultural event in 2019. A full list of artists for the 2020 edition will soon be posted at www.57thstreetartfair.org.