Visual Artists Competition

The Caldwell Visual Artists Competition is a favorite every year, featuring 2D and 3D art by Caldwell County's artists.

Artists - read the prospectus carefully.  Artwork must be framed and ready to hang with eyelets & wire already attached.  NO artwork with sawtooth hangers or cardboard pop-out hangers will be entered in this show.  NO easel-back frames will be entered in this show.  Artwork must have eyelets & wires installed in such a way that the wire will not show above the artwork when hanging. Pieces that cannot be hung to museum standard will be rejected. Click here for the prospectus.

Our judge this year is Bud Caywood.  Bud studied furniture design at Randolph Community College in Asheboro, NC.  He is a freelance furniture designer and has worked in practically every creative area of the furniture industry since graduating college in 1971.  His professional career has allowed him to work with creative people in many parts of the world including Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Canada, The Philippines, Brazil, China and Italy.  Much of his creative influences are seeds from the cultures of these unique places.  He has been creating art and word in North Carolina for more than thirty-five years.  He has been active in the arts communities in Catawba, Wilkes, Caldwell, and Davidson counties as well as Alexander County.  Caywood is the recipient of several furniture design awards, including the Daphne Award of Merit by The Hardwoods Association and the Pinnacle Design Award by The American Society of Furniture Designers, where he served as Executive Director for three years.  His art has won awards as judged by Juan Logan, Toni Carlton, Jim Kellough, Vandorn Hinnant, and James H. Sanders.  In 1969, while in high school, his work received recognition winning three awards in the New Jersey Arts & Crafts Competition in three categories; furniture design, jewelry, and sculpture.  His poems and short essays have been published more than 100 times and have been included in The Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum, Thundersandwich, Old Mountain Press, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Referential Magazine, Griffin Poetry, Dead Mule School for Southern Literature, Asheville Writer’s Workshop, Blogging Along Tobacco Road, Best of Poetry Hickory 2011 and 2012, and Pinesong by the North Carolina Poetry Society.  His work has received numerous literary awards.  His first full-length collection of poems Blue, was published in 2001 by Morris Publishing, Kearney, NE.  He has written eleven chapbooks including The Feather Collector, collaboration with poet Gina Ball in traditional Japanese haiku.  He serves on the board for the Poetry Council of North Carolina and is a long time member of the North Carolina Poetry Society.  He is currently working on two new full-length collections of poems, Café Terrace at Night and On Water Island.  Caywood’s private studio and home is located on a quiet cove on a lake in the Bethlehem area of Alexander County, North Carolina.