It took many hours, but one day recently, Professors Michael Longford (Design) and Janet Werner (Painting and Drawing) looked carefully at more than 300 pieces of student work.

They selected 51 pieces executed in a variety of media: lithography, intaglio, screen printing and digital media, and awarded prizes.

The Heinz Jordan Prize for best work in the show, which consisted of $500 to be spent at the art store on Heinz Jordan supplies, was split between Lauren Nurse and Fiona Smith.

The John Topelko Print Media Award for outstanding work, a pack of 25 sheets of handmade paper, went to Kathryn Delaney and Clark Hodgson. An honorable mention went to Rossitza Ribarova.

This year, Print Media is also offering a prize for outstanding contribution to the area, and it goes to Nadine Bariteau, who also receives 25 sheets of handmade paper. Bariteau is a volunteer in the screen printing studio.

All the prints that were chosen are being matted by Encadrex. The Print Media is particularly grateful for this gesture, because it allows the unit to hold a professional-looking show on short notice at low cost.

Lauren Nurse is going to graduate this year after six long but interesting years at Concordia, as she first tried to keep working full-time, then grew increasingly devoted to her art.

She loves the variety of media that print provides, and says in her artist statement that her work “deals with a vocabulary of forms reminiscent of previous eras. Using contemporary technologies — digital photography, video, imaging software — ancestral photographs are altered, manipulated and re-informed, then printed through contemporary and traditional printmaking processes.”

Lauren inserts herself into these images both by her authorship and by physical representation, creating a dialogue between the traditional and the contemporary. She wants to “evoke a sense of nostalgia within the work, and allude to the meanings embodied by a technologically informed re-interpretation of the past.”

Lauren is going to take a year off school, and with this year’s experience as a coordinator of the student-run VAV Gallery under her belt, will be looking for work in artist-run centres. Then she hopes to do a graduate degree in her chosen field of print media.

You can see the Print Media Exhibition from March 31 to April 6 in VAV Gallery, 1395 René-Lévesque Blvd. The vernissage will take place on Tuesday, April 2, from 7-10 pm at the gallery.