Since I covered Pro Artists (and since I don't have a review ready yet for 2312), I thought I might touch on Fan Artists.
In many ways, this is an easier category for me to judge than Pro Artist for the past few years. Again, I don't know much about the technique of art, but my guess is that the Fan Artists presented in the category tend to have less wide-spread appeal (for whatever reason), and so in a sampling of the art, I am more likely to be strongly drawn to some and not at all interested in others.
Again this year, one of the fan artist nominations was for sculpture rather than just images, which I appreciate even if I didn't rank it the highest.
Normally I'd go from bottom up, eliminating what I think is the weakest from a strong group of contenders, but in this case the work from one artist that was included in the nominating packet stands out so much for me that I'll skip right to it. That is Galen Dara, with a strong showing across the board. Each of the pieces included in the packet intrigue me, and each of them have further details for me to notice when I am looking at them.
Next I'd go for Brad Foster. His samples in the voter packet are hit-and-miss for me, but they appear well-drawn, and a couple of the samples really catch my eye.
Third I'd take Maurine Starkey. None of the samples of her work appealed to me as strongly as did Brad's (or even others ranked lower), but they are all consistently interesting and appear well-done.
Fourth, then, I'd take Spring Schoenhuth. This kind of irritates me, because I'd like to take sculpture higher, but I'm afraid that the very form doesn't appeal to me as much as the images do. All of the sample sculptures presented looked neat and I'd love to have them, but I just am attracted to the images more.
Finally, then, comes Steve Stiles, who loses out not by being bad (the Scalzi piece included as a sample I thought was really good, individually) but by having 2-4 eek out victories over his stuff this time.
1. Galen Dara
2. Brad Foster
3. Marine Starkey
4. Spring Schoenhuth
5. Steve Stiles
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