https://www.straight.com/arts/1006596/vancouver-artist-vanessa-lam-wins-bombay-artisan-series-grand-prize
by Janet Smith on December 11th, 2017 at 10:52 AM
Vancouver mixed-media painter Vanessa Lam has won the grand prize for the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series in Miami.
Now in its eighth year, the series searches out emerging visual artists from across North America, bringing 16 finalists to the international art fair SCOPE Miami Beach. Exhibiting the work there gives the artists valuable global exposure.
Lam’s work mixes gestural brushwork, assemblage, collage, and nontraditional painting tools to create her vivid imagery. She often uses newsprint, handwriting, and paper amid her painting, her brushed forms and colours often evoking the West Coast landscape and rain.
As part of her title, Lam will now go on to collaborate with Artsy on an immersive public art installation in New York City next spring, working with a $10,000 stipend that’s part of the prize.
Held at the Villa Casa Casuarina, the glitzy fête was hosted by actress Issa Rae and featured celebrity guests like Eva Longoria, Mark Ronson, and Olivia Culpo.
Lam was chosen by a panel of judges that included Artsy Projects curator Elena Soboleva, SCOPE vice-president Daria Brit Greene, and Artisan Series international curator Andre Guichard.
