Gerd Koch Award for Excellence

The jury for the Gerd Koch Award for Excellence selects one student in the last two years of their degree in Ventura County’s colleges and universities to receive the $1,000 prize. The jury selects work from student submissions to the Emergence exhibition each year.

2023

Karly Kennedy

Gerd Koch Award for Excellence 2023 Recipient

Left to Right: SCIART Board President Daniel Bednar, Gerd Koch Award for Excellence 2023 Recipient Karly Kennedy, CSUCI President Richard Yao

“My work is born from a constant admiration of nature. The feelings provoked by experiences in nature, by observing her resilience, vulnerability and abundance are unmatched. Depth, repetition, color and texture are the elements I am drawn to when making. In order to achieve the density of each piece, I rely heavily on time and patience. Both coloring clay as well as making the individual repeated components, forces me to slow down and be present with my actions which aligns me with the slow and methodical rhythms and cycles of nature.

I acknowledge the complex relationship in making work that honors earth while simultaneously using materials that are extractive. I am always seeking ways of being in support of a regenerative art practice and minimizing my studio (and life) footprint whenever possible.”

Alex Lozano

Gerd Koch Award for Excellence 2023 Runner-up

“I’m currently an interdisciplinary studio artist studying to become a scientific illustrator and conservation artist. Over the course of my personal and professional study I’ve worked in printmaking, costume design, graphic design, general and natural science illustration, sculpture, painting, and book arts. I create my art as a way to study the world around me, to educate, and to express what I can’t verbally. While my work does have deep emotional meaning to me at times, I thoroughly enjoy making art that exists for nothing more than education or to be silly and absurd. This kind of a balance keeps art enjoyable for me, as I value science, art, and being silly fairly equally.”

Emergence, February 2023

2022

Jullianne De La Cruz

Gerd Koch Award for Excellence 2022 Recipient

Jullianne De La Cruz, February 2022

“The work that I do is highly influenced by the media I consumed growing up. As a kid I was constantly enamored by video games and their ability to make me fall in love, bawl my eyes out, fall in love while bawling my eyes out, and just feel like I’ve spent my whole life heroically carrying the burdens of a beautifully fictional world and its beautifully fictional people. Being at the emotional mercy of a game was something that stuck with me as I navigated my way through elementary, grade school, and even now in college.”

Emergence, February 2022

2016

Andy Lepe

Gerd Koch Award for Excellence 2016 Recipient

Andy Lepe, 2016

Andy Lepe is a previous recipient of the Award for Excellence and current Artist in Residence at Studio Channel Islands.

Andy Lepe received his Bachelor of Arts at CSU Channel Islands, where he graduated with cum laude and the highest program honors for the Art Department. His series “Shifting Balance” is all about play, positive energy and embracing the transitions life takes us on. At a young age he would lose himself for hours at a time playing a mix of different games. Board games, sports, anything that kept his active mind in that childlike mindset of excitement and discovery.

“I developed a mindset practice called “Color Flow” that has helped slow my over stimulated and hyper active mind in order to tune into being present. Embracing calmness and tapping into that gentle rhythmic stream of creative thoughts has elevated my awareness of who I really am.

I’m a geometric abstract artist that creates calm hard-edge paintings with subtle transitions in colors.

I find it exciting to depict our own unique frequencies through colors that uplift, shift and unlock the greatness within.”

Andy Lepe featured in Emergence, February 2022