Shields & Purman Discover Their Dreams as Gold Medalists

Graduating Seniors win Scholastic National Portfolio Gold Medalists

May 15, 2012

8:04 p.m.

<o:p> </o:p> <o:p> </o:p> Two Milwaukee high school graduates will realize a dream come true this summer. In July, the Milwaukee Art Museum presents an exhibition of their award winning artwork titled “Sculptural Narratives and Photo Abstractions: Drew Shields and Leo Purman.” Shields and Purman achieved one of the highest honors awarded by the 2012 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards as National Portfolio Gold Medalists. As part of this honor, their work will also be featured at New York's Carnegie Hall in June.<o:p /> Shields and Purman achieved two of only fifteen national awards in the Scholastic competition where over 200,000 entries were reviewed from around America. Each artist won a $10,000 dollar scholarship for their portfolio, a series of eight interconnected artworks, where the award funds will help with furthering their education in the arts. To be more specific, only two photography medalists were named in the country, with one belonging to Milwaukee's Purman.<o:p /> Purman's photography portfolio began its creation long before his senior year at Nicolet High School. His parents work in television production, behind the cameras, and Purman was surrounded his entire childhood by that artistic vision, continually encouraged to pick up a camera. <o:p /> In 2011, Purman won a Scholastic Art and Writing American Vision Award for his black and white photograph Toshiba Joe, a lone figure in silhouette, standing on descending architectural and circular ramp. This year his eight colored digital photos portray abstract color fields similar to a visual puzzle. As Purman will tell someone who asks him, his work was “To create puzzles with photographs.”<o:p /> Purman\'s artwork references color blocking, often obtained in industrial settings with minimal details observed from skewed perspectives. The exact subjects in the photos might be disguised, which is exactly as Purman intends. He explains,” I use the mechanical eye of the camera to capture an abstract image.”<o:p /> Purman will attend the New York University (NYU) School of the Arts with a major in photography next fall. The Scholastic awards gave him confidence to pursue his passion, and to take his dreams of working in this are more seriously. This summer Purman will also be pursuing another short term dream, by opening Quartz Gallery at 463 North Farwell with his first exhibition featuring his own photography, Kindia Du-Plessé's charcoal drawings and Sawyer Purman's music videos. The gallery hosts a reception on June 8 beginning at 6:00 p.m. Shields will be graduating from Pius XI High School this spring and then attending Maryland Institute and College of the Arts to study animation and illustration. This education with the help of his scholarship might fulfill Shields's dream to design and illustrate scenes and special effects for the cinema. Portrayed in Shields' portfolio were eight small marquettes and environments inhabited by what Shields describes as “creatures.” Creatures more animal like than human that fit into a semi-timeless stage ranging form the prehistoric to post-apocalyptic eras. A viewer could even imagine these creatures suffering from a war torn contemporary time frame. Then Shields overlays his ambiguous and sometime ominous settings with cultural or political satire. While Shields' creatures are composed from polymer clay, his environments come from found objects and inexpensive materials that he pieces together with imagination. He plays with narratives and these science fiction scenarios that relate as he says, “The animalistic side of the human condition, the parts of being that are so integral to our primal instincts.” Shields' artistic expressions were encouraged by his parents, both who practice as architects that design their own living environments for contemporary human creatures. While Shields's sculptural narratives represent a static time frame, his dreams may come to life in the cinema of the future. Stop by the Milwaukee Art Museum's Pieper Gallery beginning this July 13 to view the gold medalist portfolios of Shields and Purman. Their extraordinary accomplishments might foresee two famous contemporary artists of the 21st century. The Milwaukee Art Museum presents “Sculptural Narrative and Photo Abstractions: Drew Shields and Leo Purman” beginning in July and visit Quartz Gallery opening June 8. <o:p /> <o:p> </o:p> <o:p /> <o:p> </o:p> <o:p> </o:p>

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