Falls to Flame by Trawick Prize finalist Caryn Martin of Baltimore

The Bethesda Arts and Entertainment District has selected eight regional artists as finalists for The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards.

More than 250 artists from Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., submitted work to the 20th annual competition, according to a Monday press release.

The award winners will be announced at a private reception Sept. 7.

The first-place winner will be awarded $10,000, second place will receive $2,000, third place will win $1,000 and a Young Artist, a finalist who is younger than 30, could win $1,000.

The exhibit will be on display from Sept. 8 to Oct. 2 at Gallery B, at 7700 Wisconsin Ave., Suite E, according to the release. Gallery hours for the duration of the exhibit will be between 12 and 5 p.m. from Thursday to Sunday.

Here are the finalists:
• MK Bailey of Washington, D.C., who creates darkly colorful figurative paintings, digital drawings, and experimental landscapes that reflect her world experiences.
• WonJung Choi of Richmond, Va., whose series of sculptures, paintings, drawings, and installation explores her identity.
• Marcia Haffmans of Richmond, Va., who designed art workshops for socially excluded women and created visual dialogues of their incarceration stories.
• Ali Kaeini of Richmond, Va., an Iranian and Persian interdisciplinary artist who paints, draws, crafts and sculps.
• Caryn Martin of Baltimore, who uses landscape as a metaphor for human emotion and the environment.
• Robert Mertens of Staunton, Md., an artist whose work combines technology, religion, science, and myth.
• Evie Metz of Henrico, Va., an interdisciplinary artist and educator working in sculpture, photography, and puppet stop motion animation.
• Judith Pratt of Orange, Va., whose work connects identity, place, and history.

Founded by local community activist Carol Trawick in 2003, this regional competition is one of the largest prizes to annually honor visual artists. The Trawick Prize has awarded more than $260,000 in prize money and exhibited the work of more than 160 regional artists since its inception, according to the release.

Trawick established the Bethesda Painting Awards in 2005 and founded the Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation in 2007 to assist health, human services and arts nonprofits in Montgomery County.

She has served as the chair of the Bethesda Arts and Entertainment District, Bethesda Urban Partnership, Strathmore and the Maryland State Arts Council.

Christine Zhu of Gaithersburg, a rising junior at the University of Maryland who is studying journalism and Spanish, is the Bethesda Beat summer intern.