AMESBURY — Local photographer Dave Saums won first prize in the Seacoast Artist Association’s annual Members Awards Show for his photograph on canvas, “Super Power Retired, Napa Valley.”
The Amesbury photographer’s work was chosen from more than 100 entries. The winning shot was taken with Kodachrome 25 transparency film, according to the association.
Saums said in a news release that the photograph shows “a tired, battle-worn old truck out in the middle of a field on the way to Napa Valley. I suspect that this old warrior could tell some stories, but silence reigns across the fields all around. Weeds and grasses grow and are slowly overtaking the mass of old steel.”
Saums has been a member of the Seacoast Artist Association since 2010. He opened Mountains-of-the-Sky Gallery at 14 Cedar Street Studios in Amesbury 15 years ago.
He has exhibited his fine art photography since 1991, beginning with a winning entry in an international competition sponsored by the Nature Company. His photographs have won numerous awards at juried artist shows and at the Topsfield Fair, and have hung in art galleries in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, California and Massachusetts, the release said.
Saums started in photography at an early age. His grandfather and uncle owned a nationally known commercial photographic business in Madison, Wisconsin, spurring his interest in photography.
Saums is known for his railroad photography and has been editor of the quarterly journal of a railroad historical society in Vermont.
He has also been a member of the Center for Railroad Photography and Art in Madison and attends the center’s annual conferences in Chicago, Connecticut and Sacramento, California. He has also served on the Amesbury Cultural Council and been a longtime member of the Andover Artist Guild, the Northern Vermont Art Association and the Newburyport Art Association.
Saums and other artists with the association will meet the public at the organization’s Second Friday reception this week from 4 to 7 p.m. at the SAA gallery on the second floor of Exeter Town Hall, 10 Front St., Exeter, New Hampshire. An awards ceremony begins Friday at 4:30 p.m.
The Members Awards Show is being held over three weekends from noon to 4 p.m. through Nov. 19. Amesbury oil painter Bob Richardson presents a talk, “The Making of a Painting,” on Sunday at 2 p.m.
The juror for the Members Awards Show is architect Tom Emerson of Kittery, Maine. Emerson is an architect and principal of studioB-E Architecture, a small design firm in Kittery. He is a graduate of the School of Architecture & Planning at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Along with practicing architecture, Emerson has been a guest lecturer, design studio critic and thesis adviser at several university architectural schools.
For more information, email questions to gallery@seacoastartist.org. For updates, follow the association on Facebook.
