For the first time in 48 Annual Members Shows, Hallwalls will be awarding two cash prizes for participating artists, made possible with funds given and raised by family and friends of Bruce Adams (August 19, 1952–March 5, 2021). At John Massier's emphatic suggestion, it will be called the Bruce Adams Extemporal Prize, to honor Bruce (who probably exhibited in more Annual Members Shows than any other artist, starting in 1984) and in reference to his long-running series of paintings entitled Extemporal Suite.
"The title comes from the Latin extemporalis, meaning on the spur of the moment, or less literally, unrehearsed. These are quick paintings, mostly on paper, that I do quickly as a sort of exercise" (Bruce Adams).
Each year, starting in July 2022, two Bruce Adams Extemporal Prizes will be awarded. A prize of $500 will be awarded as "best of show," as determined by jurors, for which all entrants are eligible. A second prize of $250 will be awarded to an artist under 30, to honor Bruce's decades of dedication to teaching art to high school students and training teachers of art at Buffalo State College.
Each prizewinner will be handed a check, but in my imagination the statuette looks like this (rendered here in one of my favorite Extemporal Suite paintings, Chrome, acrylic on paper, 16″ x 20″, 2015):
When I posted this image on Facebook back on February 11 of this year, around the time we started talking about and naming the prize, my friend Joe Galvin, a passionate car collector and restorer commented that he thought he had an actual hood ornament in his collection of accessories similar to the object Bruce might've painted, getting even closer to the imaginary statuette no one will actually be receiving:
Hood ornament (1941 Cadillac, replica) from the collection of Joseph Galvin.
With nearly 200 artworks submitted to the 2021 Hallwalls Annual Members Show by artists of all ages, we had no need of increasing the number of submissions. But we are grateful to Bruce's sister Cynthia for coming to us with the general idea of endowing some kind of memorial for Bruce, and for readily agreeing to making the memorial a prize for the Annual Members Show that Bruce so loved, and that will benefit selected artists, including young artists, for years to come.
Edmund Cardoni
Hallwalls Executive Director
June 7, 2022
Donors to Date: Cynthia Adams, Irving & Charleen Borman, Renée Adams, Marcia Davis, Diane & James Till, Michael & Lisa Parks, Raft Of Sanity.
