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Thomas and Patricia Dodds Award for Excellence

The jury for the Thomas and Patricia Dodds Award for Excellence selects students in the last two years of their degree in Ventura County’s colleges and universities to receive the cash prize. The jury selects work from student submissions to the Emergence exhibition each year.

Award Sponsors: Thomas and Patricia Dodds

Founding Studio Channel Islands artist Pat Richards Dodds and husband, philanthropist, and art collector Tom Dodds have supported the Award for Excellence since its inception. Over the past decade Tom and Pat Dodds have been delighted to watch the Award winners flourish as artists, going on to establish careers as arts professionals.

It is with great sadness that Studio Channel Islands marks the passing of Tom Dodds, on the 22nd of December 2024. Tom was a long time Ventura resident, father, husband and grandfather. With an insurance career spanning more than five decades, Tom was well known throughout the county, he served on the Chamber of Commerce, on the Board of Casa Pacifica and Studio Channel Islands.

If you would like to support Tom’s passion for the arts and his belief in growing the creative talent of our community please consider making a donation to help grow the Award for Excellence.

Gifts in memory of Tom Dodds to support the Award for Excellence

Terri & Mark Lisagor

Susan R and Dan Kaufman

Bill and Elise Kearney

Joan Osborne

Handel and Carol Evans

Carolyn Daily Menne

Claire Carty

Dwayne and Joan Brown

Bob and Norma Privitt

Hiroko Yoshimoto

Kate McLean and Steve Stone

Mary Brown

Paul Finkel

“The hardest fighter we’ve ever known.” – Kathy and Herb Goodman

Previous Recipients

2025

Mara Hales-Garcia

2025 Recipient

“Using any tools at hand, often brushes and acrylic paint on canvas, I create art that stems from the solace I find in the landscapes of Southern California, which I am grateful to call home. My art explores humans in nature, as integral part and product. I find that most everything is worthy of awe and my efforts are a devotion to moments caught in memory and the small endemic or endangered life around us that could easily be passed by. Often depicting the detriment to individuals and the environment caused by human action, I hope to inspire questions about our designations of science & art, nature & home, and success & tragedy with my art.”

Elena Berdnikova

2025 Runner-up

Elena Berdnikova is a Ventura-based artist currently studying art at Ventura College. Her work bridges the tangible and the intangible, exploring the interplay of form, emotion, and storytelling. Rooted in a strong foundation of artistic training and a lifelong passion for creativity, her practice spans a variety of mediums, including painting, ceramics, and mixed media.

Her art evokes a sense of connection, exploring relationships between the natural and human worlds, the spiritual and the material, and the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Each piece is informed by her cultural heritage and a deep curiosity about the human condition, offering viewers a narrative that invites reflection and engagement. Her work aims to resonate with audiences, sparking introspection and offering moments of tranquility and meaning in an often chaotic world.

Through her practice, she captures the universal within the personal, crafting works that embody her vision while leaving space for individual interpretation.

Kylee Autotte

2025 Runner-up

“I create art simply because I think everything weird and beautiful is inspiring. And I think everything is weird and beautiful. In my artwork, I most enjoy sharing the perspective I experience through my own eyes. Cliché? Sure. But with each piece, I want to bring the viewer into the moment—as if they’re there, experiencing it with me… and also maybe holding my hand too if they’d like.

My favorite mediums tend to hover around painting, drawing and printmaking. I use painting to brighten. I like to keep my colors vibrant and my lines fluid-like. The goal is to bring out the colors that make me excited about what I’m seeing and use them in a way to get the audience to understand the feeling of that moment.

Drawing and printmaking go hand in hand for my artwork. I like to watch people and observe their life. Life is beautiful and scary and super uncomfortable. These two mediums help me to pull characteristics and nuances out that I wouldn’t have picked up on before when I sit in that one café and stare at people in their own uncomfortable lives and they stare back asking me, “What gives woman? Stop drawing me.” Drawing was my first love and we will die alone together. And although printmaking is a new medium for me, it is special to me and there is a quality there that makes me feel like I’m freezing time more than any other medium.

No matter which project I’m working on, the process seems to roll in the same motion. When I see something that catches my eye, I take a picture and when I have a feeling or emotion about it, I’ll write it down. It’s what inspires me the most and allows me to collect the cool things I’ve seen and felt throughout my life.”

2024

Jake Ryno

2024 Recipient

“As an artist I like to communicate through my work. Art is a language in and of itself, and each piece should communicate to the viewer in the unique dialect in which everyone individually digests thoughts and emotions. My intention is not to deliver one specific message, but to provide an ambiguous foundational motif on which the viewer may build their own interpretation with their own pieces of life unique to them. I attempt to strike the viewer with an emotion or unique thought of their own creation. I hope to never strip someones personal meaning to fill its space with my own intentions. My artistic intentions are fluid, ambiguous and personal by design and I hope that any viewer of my work is able to create their own narrative for my art and my artistic intention.”

Jade Bluhm

2024 Runner-up

“Before it was a potential profession and before it was something that I could study in school, art was simply my way of experiencing and interacting with the world. From my earliest memories I was trying to create and invent, exploring and playing with the possibilities of my imagination. Today creating art is my focus in college as well as my dream career path. As a multidisciplinary artist, I draw from multiple different strengths as a result of my many fascinations. In particular my work centers around my personal experience of reality and how it can be warped and perceived in different ways. I am a daydreamer and my work reflects that, encapsulating what it feels like to drift into another world.

My paintings and sculptures are best described as surreal and naturalistic, while dissecting tropes of classical beauty inspired by the greats of John William Waterhouse and Jules Bastien-Lepage. I combine elements of fantasy and history, using subjects that feel ethereal and unreal while still holding some familiarity in the general consciousness. I admire the storytelling and immersive nature of literature and gain inspiration from historical mythology and anthropology.

Being an artist is an ever evolving life passion for me, I am constantly changing and producing unique works through time. Creating is a state of being for me, without it life would have no color or vibrance. Being able to conjure entirely new things and experience other people’s work is an extraordinarily valuable component of humanity. I learn and grow my mentality and spirit through art. I try to express my innermost thoughts and make myself vulnerable through my work, it helps me navigate my feelings and feel connected to others. I hope that anyone who experiences my art can take part in some sort of escapism, and indulge in fantasy. That people who view my work join in on my intimate perceptions and thoughts, leaving the encounter with an at least slightly altered state of mind. With my lifelong love for the arts I seek to always learn, grow, explore, and improve.”

Madison Lewis

2024 Runner-up

“My name is Madison Lewis and I am an African American artist born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Throughout my art career I’ve noticed the fine arts have a long history of Western cultural dominance. In particular, Western art has historically been dominated by a white male perspective. This has led to a systemic exclusion of people of color and minorities.This led me to pursue creating art and objects that represent myself and people like me; whether in a literal or conceptual sense. My artwork portrays themes of intimacy, self-observation, and sexuality. I primarily work in oil paint while occasionally exploring other mediums such as graphite, and oil pastel. Most of my work draws from personal experiences. My work invites viewers to engage with and confront their own perceptions while finding comfort in the complex display of human form, emotion, and desires. My creative process is largely influenced by my interests in aesthetics and sensuality. These elements, as well as personal and community histories, assist in visualizing emotional realities that often come with various facets of everyday Black life. The images are a reflection of my individuality and cultural characteristics I see in myself and my surrounding black community. With careful attention to technique, textures and color I intend to create a sense of visual empathy between viewers and the painted figures. I believe the importance of my work is to provide new lenses through which black womanhood can be represented, understood, and related to.”

Emergence, February 2024

2023

Karly Kennedy

2023 Recipient

Left to Right: SCIART Board President Daniel Bednar, 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

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

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

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