I’ve just done my ballot. Today is the last day for voting. Please don’t forget.
If you are wondering who to nominate for Best Professional Artist (besides John Picacio who should be on every ballot), here are a couple of suggestions.
1. Charles Vess has a bunch of major award wins, but has never even been nominated for a Hugo. How wrong is that? His eligible work for this year includes the illustrations for Neil Gaiman’s The Blueberry Girl.
2. As I have been saying for years, John Coultart is awesome. Surely you have all seen this:
The two art ballots usually make me sad–there’s not an awful lot of variation on them. It shifts a little through the decade, but there’s usually four guys or so who tend to dominate, with one or two newcomers who later become one of the dominating folks. I too would love to see Charles Vess on a Hugo ballot, although I can’t in good conscience say yet (without having seen it) that he deserves slots this year. (Although he probably does.)
Am definitely shocked that John Jude Palencar has only made the noms once, and never won. Tom Canty was an also-ran to Michael Whelan about three or four times, and an also-ran behind one of Bob Eggleton’s wins. And there’s only two women nominees with five nominations between them: Diane Dillon (who shares her nom with her husband) and Rowena Morrill.
Would also love to see the likes of James Jean on there. Maybe Jon Foster. Ursula Vernon, for her graphic novels since the award is no longer “Best Cover Artist”–it’s about time THAT got reflected as well.
The Hugo for Best Fan Artist definitely needs some rules clarification –the name is pretty confusing for one thing, as it doesn’t differentiate between straight fan artists and those selling at a semi-pro and zine level. And it suffers from a similar lack of movement, in the last decade anyway. I mean I’m sure Frank Wu and Brad Foster and Sue Mason are nice talented folks, but their near constant positions in the number 1 slots argues that the category has stagnated. I will note that the Fan Art Hugo has WAY more women, and even three or four women winners. But it is starting to fall into the same stratification that the Best Artist Hugo has. (Before 2000, the slate of names seemed fairly varied. Since 2000, less so.)
Just a note: In 2009 Bluebery Girl was published, but also I finished up work (design and sculpting) on the 16ft bronze fountain based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My art book, Drawing Down the Moon was also released in December of 2009 but that, of course, covers 40 some years of art making. I also completed 40 painting for the BG follow up, Instrucrtions but that wont be actually published till next month. My blog has most of this with lots of visuals on it: http://www.greenmanpress.com/news/.
And yes, besides those artists Cheryl mentioned, John Jude as well as Jon Foster ought to be on any Hugo list.
Thanks for your consideration.
Best,
Charles Vess
Hey Pixelfish, totally agree. My category (Fan artist) has definitely stagnated, which is why I declined the nomination two years ago, and will again this year if nominated.
And, yes, I’d love to see more women nominated in the pro artist category. Kinuko Craft, for example. Nene Thomas. Rowena. Janny Wurts. Jael.