Description

The Cincinnati based non-profit arts organization and gallery, Manifest, invites visual artists and designers to submit original works made with or about fire, heat, warmth, and works that burn physically or metaphorically. Open to all traditional and non-traditional genre and media, including 2D, 3D, etc.

There have always been two sides to fire, the creator and the destroyer. In our modern world, our language reflects the means of controlling fire’s destructive power: fire trucks, fire drills, fire escapes, and fire extinguishers. Despite the risk of fire’s rampage however, it is equally as beneficial as it is dangerous. Fire provides heat for cooking, manufacturing, comfort, and incandescence for light. Certain creative/technological pursuits such as metallurgy, pyrography, ceramics, and glass working are enabled by fire.

Fire burns parallel to humans and has come to symbolize parts of our culture outside of utility. Anger, the feeling that triggers our adrenaline and brings heat to our faces, finds metaphor in fire’s uncontrollable spread. Anxiety, stress, or embarrassment plunge us into the sensation of boiling air. The formal qualities of colors can emulate and even inspire ‘hot’ feelings, with warm reds and oranges representing and even feeding irritability, hunger, and arousal. Heat has emotional reality, as well as physical.?

$45 for up to three entries. $5 per each additional entry.

Includes honorarium of $50 for each exhibiting artist, and Grand Jury Award of $1,000 for one jury-selected work from among the exhibits on view.