NSCAD student wins art competition

Winning art work displayed at the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art

NSCAD University graduate Jody Zinner, regional winner of a nationwide art competition, reviews slides of her artwork. Photo: Karen Jouhal

Listening to Jody Zinner talk as she chops up vegetables for the pot roast dinner she's preparing for her boyfriend, you wouldn't think she was recently named the regional winner of a nationwide art competition.

But Zinner, who graduated from NSCAD University last year, was one of 12 winners from 218 applicants who entered the annual BMO 1st Art! Invitational Student Art Competition.

The competition celebrates the creativity of art students from post-secondary institutions across Canada.

Instructors are invited to nominate three students from their school's graduating class. Those students then have to submit a recent piece of artwork.

For Zinner's advisor and painting class instructor, Daniel Hutchinson, selecting her as a candidate was easy.

"Her work is solid and she possesses the chops to hack it as an artist. It's common knowledge that many art students go on to other careers but I saw Jody as a professional artist well before she had even graduated. Her commitment to art was never a question."

Zinner submitted a drawing in ink on watercolour paper which at the time she called Circle of Hair, but now regrets not calling it what it really was: a hair bagel. That is, a bagel covered in hair. It's something she thought of while joking around with her friends.

"I freaked out when I found out," she says of her win. "I was really stoked. I felt really excited and I called everybody I knew crying."

But, she adds, that the win didn't really change her life. In fact, she thinks that she's become an "ad campaign" for the Bank of Montreal, which sponsored the competition.

"They're saying, ‘aren't we great? We support emerging artists. Don't you want to bank with us?'"

Zinner doesn't plan to use the win to advance her career. She won't add it to her resume and she isn't sure what she wants to do with her artistic ability. But she's grateful to have won because she desperately needed the $2,500 prize.

Her focus is spending time with her friends and enjoying life.

Zinner's winning artwork was displayed at the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art in Toronto. The Bank of Montreal flew in all the winners of the competition for the week-long exhibition in October.

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