Space Settlement Art Contest Winners Announced

The winners of the National Space Society Space Settlement Art Contest have just been announced. As one of the five judges for the contest, my job was to vote on the best 12 works of space art out of the 69 submitted.

My fellow judges for the contest included space artist Don Davis, my friend and fellow space artist David Robinson, the Chair of the NSS Space Settlement Calendar Committee Bart Leahy, and Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, Executive Director of Yuri's Night.

There were two rounds of judging. The first round consisted of voting for the grand prize image, a best in category image for each of the contest categories: Orbital Settlement, Lunar Settlement, Martian Settlement, and Asteroid Settlement; and voting for another 7 images for inclusion in the calendar. For the second round judges were presented with the top 12 vote getting images and were asked to vote again for the one grand prize picture and the four best of category pictures.

For my part, choosing the image to receive the grand prize presented no difficulty what so ever. After the Storm by Raymond Cassel was clearly the best entry in the contest. The image was original, realistic in its depiction of dealing with the consequences of a martian dust storm, and technically well executed. Obviously my fellow judges were in agreement on this one. I asked Raymond if it would be okay with him if I used his image to illustrate this blog entry and he kindly agreed.

The winning image in the Lunar Settlement category was The Lunar Greenhouse by Jonathan Chapin. For the Orbital Settlement category, Goetz Scheuermann won with his O'Neill Style Cylinder Colony. In the Mars Settlement category, Martian Evening by Timothy Hodg won. Bryan Versteeg took the prize in the Asteroid Settlement category with his Asteroid Mining for Station Creation.

Of the four categories, choosing a winner for the Asteroid Settlement category was the hardest because the three contending images were all so good. Of course the best aspect of the contest was all the new space art that got created. You can see all the artwork that was submitted to the contest, as well as the rest of the winning images, at the Gallery for Space Settlement 2009 Calendar Art Contest. You may also want to read the press release about the contest winners.

In closing, I would like to congratulate not only the contest winners but all the artists who took the time to create and submit entries to the Space Settlement Art Contest.

Ad Astra, Jim

| Return to the Blog Index | This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 4:33 pm and is filed under National Space Society, Space Art.