Indiana University East is accepting art entries this week (September 26-30) for the 2011 Whitewater Valley Annual Art Competition.

The competition will begin at 2 p.m. on Saturday, October 8, in Whitewater Hall. The top ten entries will receive a monetary award.  Prior to the judging, there will be a juror presentation at 12:30 p.m. in Tom Raper Hall, room 124.

This year’s competition will be juried by Katherine Sherwood, a professor at University of California Berkeley in the art department and the Disability Studies Program. She is the artist-in-residence at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the co-founder of the art and disability collective – The Yelling Clinic.

Sherwood’s acclaimed mixed-media paintings gracefully investigate the point at which the essential aspects of art, medicine, and disability intersect. Her works juxtapose abstracted medical images, such as cerebral angiograms of the artist’s brain, with fluid renderings of ancient patterns; the paintings thus explore and reveal, with a most unusual palette, the strange nature of our time and current visual culture.

In addition to showing regularly throughout the United States, she co-curated the exhibition “Blind at the Museum” at the Berkeley Art Museum, and organized an accompanying conference at University of California, Berkeley. Sherwood was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 and a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant in 2006. Her work was included in the Smithsonian Museum’s “Revealing Culture” and at a solo show at Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco in 2010.

Each year 300 to 400 pieces of art are entered for the competition. Previous entries have included works from high schools and universities, art organizations and centers or independent artists. The competition is open to all artists, age 17 and older, who live within a 300-mile radius of Richmond, Ind.

Entries for the competition may include drawings, paintings, mixed media, photography, printmaking, computer graphics, relief sculpture and relief. Entries must be hand-delivered to The Gallery, Whitewater Hall, on the IU East campus between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday, September 26, through Friday, September 30. Entries will not be gathered from regional pick-up points this year. Entries will not be accepted after September 30.

Each artist may submit up to three entries. Fees are $15 for one entry, $25 for two entries, and $35 for three entries.

Accepted entries will be on exhibit in The Gallery from October 26 to December 9. The artist opening reception and awards presentation will be held at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, in Whitewater Hall.

Entry forms, information on eligibility and a calendar are available at iue.edu/gallery or by calling Ed Thornburg, The Gallery curator, at IU East at (765) 973-8605.