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Molly Kaderka of Stillwater, Okla., has won the $5,000 Grand Award in the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts’ “Delta Triennial Exhibition” for her work “Ferrous Form.”
The announcement was made today by Brian J. Lang, the museum’s chief curator and Windgate Foundation Curator of Contemporary Craft, during a reception at the museum in Little Rock’s MacArthur Park.
Jurors Amy Kligman, Alexis McGrigg and Takako Tanabe chose Kaderka’s piece from works by 39 selected artists and seven invited artists in the exhibition, which opens Friday.
“Ferrous Form” takes up almost an entire wall in the museum’s Harriet and Warren Stephens Galleries. Made from hand-marbled paper that is collaged and laminated to the wall, it depicts a swirling mass around a black space dotted by small stars.
Kaderka, who is originally from Austin, Texas, taught herself to use hand-marbled papers during the covid-19 pandemic, and her work is inspired and informed by geology and astronomy, according to her statement accompanying the piece.
The marbled paper she uses “references the iron-rich landscape of Oklahoma,” while the dark center of the work depicts “the constellation Coma Berenices, which contains the Mice Galaxy, a system of two spiral galaxies in the process of merging.”
McGrigg, a Mississippi-based artist, was impressed with Kaderka’s use of materials.
“It’s a kind of use that I hadn’t seen before,” she said. “The way that she was able to apply it led me to questions about what was the work is about. I’d never seen that kind of medium used at that scale and quality.”
Kaderka’s work is “impressive in its execution,” said Kligman, executive director of the Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, Mo. “I felt like you can kind of fall into this work and spend a lot of time there. It’s impressively rendered and created, but there is also a lot of open room.”
Tanabe, founder of Ulterior Gallery in New York City, was also moved by the way Kaderka uses paper.
“The technique was very fresh, how she connected that material with what she is doing. I never thought I would see marbling in fine art. It’s more of a craft idea … how she put it together was very original.”
The judges sorted through more than 1,200 submissions before choosing the works that make up the exhibition.
“The quality was really high,” Kligman said. “It was a fun process of discovery.”
The show includes sculpture, installations, painting, drawing, mixed media, fabric, pottery and other media.
“It’s very refreshing to see the diversity of materials and how the artists have used those materials to the fullest to realize their artistic concept,” Lang said.
The “Delta Triennial” was founded as the “Delta Exhibition” in 1958 at what was then the Arkansas Arts Center as an annual judged show to spotlight the work of artists from Arkansas and its surrounding states.
It marks the return of the exhibit to the newly renovated museum. The last in-person “Delta” was at the Arts Center in 2019; it closed in July of that year to undergo extensive remodeling and expansion. It reopened as the Museum of Fine Arts in April 2023.
In 2020, the “Delta” was presented online in collaboration with Historic Arkansas Museum, Thea Foundation, Acansa Gallery and the Argenta Branch of the William F. Laman Library. In 2021 and 2022 it remained online as “Delta Voices.”
The exhibit is on display through Aug. 25, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free. Visit arkmfa.org.
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