2021 Meander Challenge Award Winners
The Meander Challenge is a creative arts competition which attracts and considers a wide variety of submissions – from painting and drawing to photography and poetry, video, songwriting and more. The point is, to create something inspired by a meander or, at least, the idea of meandering. We are grateful to everyone that participated this year and, while not all were selected for an award, all submissions were worthy. We highlighted six participants this year.
Meander Master Award – Bill Boling, Sparta, GA | Atlanta, GA
William "Bill" Boling is the owner/principal of Boling & Company, where he and his associates provide legal and consulting services to hospitals, physician groups, academic medical centers, telemedicine entrepreneurs, and health IT startups. In addition to Bill’s success as an attorney, he is also a well-regarded fine art photographer and book publisher. Bill studied art at Georgia State University and L’Ecole Des Beaux Art, Rennes, France. He is founder of Fall Line Press - an independent press dedicated to publishing limited edition art (photography) books. His own work is included in museums ranging from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
Bill said of his Meander Challenge submission, “It was created (emerged) out of a meandering morning walk along the Apalachicola Bay…As I walked about Apalachicola Bay, I started seeing couples. A solo wanderer, I took pleasure in finding the patterns of duets.”
Mondo Meander Award – W Goodwin, Denver, CO
W’s submission was accompanied by this artist’s statement:
“Meandering must have a major base sequence in my DNA. It might even be my father and surely, at the very least, meandering is my muse. From my earliest days meandering infiltrated this poor writer’s life with its roots, ganglia, and mycelia: the child growing up in five different places; the young wanderer traveling to fifty countries and living in six of them. As an itinerant seeker I drove from Europe to Asia three times, the first of which I distilled into the ultrashort story “Downstream.” Meandering, yes indeed.
Writing has always been a central part of my endeavors. Scientific papers, rigid and parochial. Journalistic freedoms honed at local newspapers and numerous websites. Articles for nautical and tool magazines where I shared lessons learned as a boat builder. Illustrated stories for oceanic-themed websites reflecting countless hours spent sailing, diving and surfing. Tales about athletes when I ran the WebMD Sports Medicine Desk. High school-level reference books deriving from my years teaching science. An underway-novel growing out of everything else. And so much more tapping, leading eventually to this very story based on the Menderes River in Turkey and my younger self.
Currently I dwell and abide in Colorado with partner Jan and dawg Pete, but my location will change again when I meander once more in 2022. Of course I’ll still be bound by blood to salt water and directed by mixed genetics to explore uncommon places and themes where they occur.
I graduated from UCLA (biology and English), spent grad school steeping in biochemistry, taught high school sciences, raised two children, founded a boating and navigation school in California, and started a physical therapy clinic in Alabama. My short stories and artwork have appeared in more than half a dozen literary journals.”
Mondo Meander Award – Elliotte Bowerman, Victor, NY | San Francisco, CA
Elliotte is a natural born Mondo Meanderer. She is Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Unicorn Scouts – a multi-purpose bastion of creativity. Her firm is both a marketing communications agency as well as an organization dedicated to making magic in the world and finding it in ourselves. She described the latter objective this way: “We are born to play, and whimsy is the way we make our joy. The Unicorn Scouts is a whimsy troop for all ages and spectrums. Our award-winning conscious life crafts, whimsy magic in the mail and playful empowerment events/workshops have connected thousands of children and adults to their inner glitter.” For more about Elliotte’s perspective on whimsy (the essence of a great meander), read her article, “5 Ways to Wield Whimsy.”
Elliotte said of her Meander Challenge submission:
“Instead of packing up my camp site, I followed a field meander and painted this picture. The leaves are just about to peak. Bonus points, my dog Sugar meandered across the painting while it was drying.”
Meander Mojo Award – Gregg Bauer, Atlanta, GA
Gregg Bauer is the CEO of BauerHaus Creative – a successful marketing agency – and has served as an adjunct professor of Advertising at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) on the Atlanta campus. He teaches business of advertising classes as well as art direction and portfolio design. Gregg is also an award-winning plein air watercolorist. His Meander Challenge submission pushed beyond his typical work in medium (acrylic) and in manner. He said of it, “I focused on just letting go and playing with the canvas with no preconceived goals as to what the image should be or look like.”
Meander Mojo Award – Jody May, Zion, IL
Jody said of her submission, “I love the concept of "creative wanderlust." That idea brought me to a place of allowing myself to step outside my normal techniques for painting with watercolors. The results were deeply gratifying.”
She shared this about her meandering and art interests:
I am an educator and I have always loved to dabble in a variety of creative endeavors. This painting was an attempt to push myself outside of my typical watercolor techniques and meander creatively. I am a nightowl and I often watercolor paint as a way to decompress late at night after the rest of my family has fallen asleep.
I am a former elementary school teacher and I currently work for a nonprofit organization in Chicago, IL. My creative outlets include upcycling and watercolor painting. Along with my husband, we run a small upcycling business called Mayfly Upcycling and Design. I believe in the potential of repurposing so that discarded items may fly again. Meandering creativity helps me to see potential in what others toss aside. Cigar boxes, old books, wood scraps, retired license plates, old suitcases, and outdated furniture are opportunities for us to find new purpose and life in these objects that were once headed for the landfill.
One of my favorite mediums is beach glass found on the shores of Lake Michigan. Something ugly like littering by casting used bottles into the lake can be turned into beautiful beach glass jewelry. The broken rough edges are tossed around in the waves and the glass becomes smooth and frosted. I love to meander the beaches searching for bits of beautiful glass treasures. It reminds me of the meandering nature of life. Life can toss and turn us. We can feel lost and without purpose. But, those unexpected journeys of being tossed into new situations or life taking turns we don’t expect can smooth out our broken edges and beauty can emerge.
Meander Mojo Award - Venkat Rao, Chicago, IL
Venkat is a leading advisor on Microsoft’s Power Platform technology – a software suite that enable organizational creativity and digital transformation at scale. Venkat is Director, Power Platform Go To Market Lead - North America with Avanade – a joint venture of Microsoft and Accenture. In his “spare time,” he created a blog to promote assistive technology. Assistive technology helps disabled people achieve greater independence by enabling them to perform tasks they were formerly unable to accomplish. https://assistivetechnologyblog.com
Venkat’s Meander Challenge submission is an e-book sparked by a meander through YouTube comments left in response to music videos from the band R.E.M. He said of his submission and the impact of the band on his own meandering creativity:
R.E.M.'s songs have helped me embrace and enjoy "gray areas". Their songs have always been about certain topics but with just a tinge of obscurity that the listener is encouraged to interpret words in their own ways. Take "Flowers of Guatemala" for example - a song about genocide in Guatemala in the '80s. A reference to Amanita has some interpret this song to be about eating mushrooms. The band provides the initial premise and we (the listeners) come up with our own conclusions and decide how the words impact us. They let our brains go in whichever direction we like - whether an area we are familiar and comfortable with or not at all. I think that's pretty stellar. In my adulthood, I enjoy gray areas a lot more and I think it's because I have been conditioned to do so by R.E.M. :)
Another way I have been impacted over the years is to have the ability to speak my mind without worrying about consequences. To be clear, I do it in respectful ways through which I can justify my stance. I use that ability in my day job with my leaders. You know it very well that tech/corporate america is a toxic place run by antiquated rule books, fragile egos, and inability to understand the desires and expectations of the current crop. It is comical how clueless some of the "leaders" are. I speak up to protect the younger crop - women, people of color, introverts, people with anxiety..the audience that typically doesn't have a voice or fear drastic consequences. I am their ally and i not only fight for them but also create a safe space where they can flourish. This is a very unusual thing to do in corporate America where "suck it up, do your job, and don't question anything" is the norm. I am waiting for the consequences (and I am not afraid of them)!
Reading people's comments was extremely eye opening to me. I didn't realize how profound the impact of their words has been on others. I have read in music journals about how "Everybody Hurts" has stopped a lot of people from committing suicide but hearing (reading) directly from the people who were positively impacted did something to my brain and heart. Through my assistive technology blog, I occasionally get emails from parents who say things like "thanks to your blog, I know how to take care of my 11-year-old blind son" etc. Reading people's comments on these R.E.M. songs was good reinforcement that I should continue to do what I do for the community - I may never hear from everyone but just like the R.E.M. listeners, there are individuals who are impacted by my work.
Another thing I realized and concluded was that people who comment on videos are artists in their own ways. The honesty and sincerity in their words and the way they tell their stories is a work of art. I know the word "Youtuber" conventionally refers to the person who creates the content but the audience adds to the content through their own vulnerability.
One more - I enjoy absurdity because of R.E.M. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kenneth-whats-the-frequency-rem-game-theory-906518/ What do these words even mean? So fascinating.
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Thanks again for all who participated. Go forth and follow the meander!